Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Mexico sides with Israel

Very good news:

Mexico says it will henceforth vote with Israel in international bodies. Netanyahu thanks Mexican leadership for refusing to go along with ‘one-sided’ resolutions against Jewish state

Mexico reportedly has announced that it will change its voting strategy at the UN and other international bodies by putting a stop to votes in favor of Palestinian resolutions, reported the UnitedWithIsrael website last Wednesday.

Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Figari contacted Israeli Ambassador to Mexico Yoni Pelad and told him of the shift in strategy for upcoming voting related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported.

The declaration was made two months after Netanyahu visited Mexico during a trip to Latin America that also included Argentina and Colombia.

Israel has sent Mexico substantial humanitarian aid at times of need, most recently after the September earthquake. I’m glad to see Mexico corresponding.

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Brazil: Rio police kill Spanish tourist

A Spanish woman visiting Rio was shot and killed by Rio police. Maria Esperanza Jimenez Ruiz, 67, was visiting a crafts fair at the Rocinha favela with her brother and his wife.

According to reports,

Police said officers opened fire on a vehicle in Rocinha, one of the city’s largest so-called favelas, or slums, hitting a passenger in the neck. The victim, whom police identified as 67-year-old María Esperanza Jiménez Ruiz of Spain, was taken to a nearby hospital but couldn’t be revived. After the shooting, police determined that the vehicle was providing an organized tour of the community.

Two police officers are now under arrest.

Police and other public employees are not getting paid because debt service over last year’s Olympics,

The surge in police violence has come amid severe budget problems in Rio following the Olympics last year. Police officers, like other civil servants, aren’t receiving their salaries on time, let alone sufficient funding for equipment ranging from office supplies to patrol cars. A touted initiative to introduce community policing to troubled neighborhoods like Rocinha has fallen into disarray.

Rio state police have killed over 700 people in the first eight months of 2017.

In other news, Odebrecht subsidiary Braskem deposited US$1,5million in a bank account belonging to Emilio Lozoya, advisor to Mexico’s president Enrique Peña Nieto and former Pemex director.

The 2012 transaction was discovered as part of the ongoing Odebrecht corruption investigation.

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Venezuela: Duncan, Sires Send Letter Urging Protection of U.S. Energy Security

In the U.S.,
Duncan, Sires Send Letter Urging Protection of U.S. Energy Security

Chairman Jeff Duncan (SC-03) and Ranking Member Albio Sires (NJ-08) of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs’ Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere sent a letter to the U.S. Department of the Treasury urging immediate attention to a potential threat to critical U.S. energy infrastructure as a result of a recent asset transfer between Venezuela’s PDVSA and Russia’s Rosneft. This development impacts PDVSA’s U.S.-based subsidiary, Citgo, and vital U.S. national security interests.

Here’s Russ Dalen’s testimony to Congress on Venezuela’s Tragic Meltdown.

As you may recall, Venezuela’s Supreme Court granted Nicolás Maduro the power to bypass the National Assembly and approve new joint ventures with foreign oil companies. Late last December, Venezuela’s PDVSA Mortgages US Refinery Citgo to Russia’s Rosneft.

Stratfor (subscription only) analysis: The government is scrambling to find money to help the national oil company meet its debt payments and avoid a disastrous default

Standing in the way of the government strategy to ride out a default is the United States. Any moves Caracas makes to further delay elections or crack down on the opposition — necessary actions to rule a one-party state — could invite further U.S. sanctions. Venezuela’s rulers, alert to this threat, have tentatively reached out to Washington. In March, a Stratfor source said the Venezuelan government was planning to open a back channel of communication with the United States. As part of its outreach to Washington, Maduro instructed Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez and Venezuelan Oil Minister Nelson Martinez, the chairman and CEO of PDVSA’s U.S. subsidiary Citgo, to explore the possibility of further opening Venezuela’s energy market to U.S. corporations.

This tracks closely with media reports that emerged Monday claiming that business executives close to Donald Trump Jr., son of the U.S. president, had discussed with National Security Council officials the possibility of loosening sanctions on Venezuelan officials in exchange for business opportunities in Venezuela. The intent by Venezuelan officials appears to have been to buy them some time to decide how to proceed with regional and presidential elections. Still, the offer, made in early February, did not prevent Washington from sanctioning El Aissami that month. There also have been indications that the Trump administration may be willing to enact additional sanctions against Venezuela.

Frank Muci writes about How Chavismo Mágico is Swallowing PDVSA

In Venezuela, a college student was shot dead during anti-government demonstrations:
Venezuela clashes leave one man dead, dozens arrested in Caracas

College student dies during Venezuela protest

Youth shot dead during protest against Venezuela President Maduro

Venezuela confirms young man killed during anti-Maduro protests

Over at the National Assembly,
Venezuelan lawmakers avoid military blockade to start recall of pro-government justices

Venezuela’s national legislature Wednesday began the process of removing pro-government justices on the constitutional branch of the Supreme Court, after opposition lawmakers gathered before dawn to avoid a National Guard blockade

The opposition majority in the National Assembly, some of whose deputies were injured Tuesday in attacks by government agents, also approved a declaration that Venezuela is suffering a coup d’etat and demanding the release of all political prisoners. It also urged the Venezuelan armed forces to listen to the people’s demands for democracy.

In other news,
Liliana Tintori met with Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico

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Mexico: $50 million to fight deportation, $39 million for flat-screen tvs

Mexico’s mismanagement is one of the reasons why Pres. Peña Nieto is so unpopular:

Mexico’s congressional audit office has ruled that a controversial government program to give away some 10 million flat-screen TV sets to the poor wasted an estimated $39 million of taxpayers’ money.

The audit found that some 339,000 of the televisions in President Enrique Peña Nieto’s nearly $1-billion program were defective. The subsidy program was aimed at helping the poor during the country’s 2015 switch from analog to digital signals for television.

Around 12,200 television sets are missing altogether

Mexico’s congressional audit office estimates that $39 billion was wasted.

Mexico is turning more to the left, spilling raw sewage on California’s beaches, and its largest source of revenue is remittances totaling US$29 billion, outpacing petroleum exports (US$18.7 billion) and revenue from foreign visitors (US$17.4 billion).

95% of remittances come from the United States.

No wonder the Mexican government wants to keep the remittances coming. They made a video: “How to prepare in case you are detained for immigration [violations]

The first item is (my translation):

“01 HAVE AN EMERGENCY PLAN
take care of your family,, especially underage children. If they were born in the US, go to the nearest consulate and register them as Mexicans.”

The US$50 million campaign will

hire lawyers for migrants facing deportation in the United States.

The money will also go to outreach programs “to promote respect for Mexicans’ rights.”

Think of the program as a business expense for the Mexican government, which gets more money from those who leave than from those who stay.

Then there’s the US Tax code. According to IRS Publication 501, Table 5,

The provision allows the U.S. taxpayer to claim an exemption and deduct $4,050 from taxable income for such relatives living in Mexico, so long as the relative’s gross income is less than $4,050 per year, and the U.S. taxpayer taking the exemption provides more than half the person’s total support for the year.

Parting question,

Who verifies that the claimed exemptions are legit?

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Mexico: Demonstrators want respect

Headline from El País:
Mexicans take to the streets to protest against Donald Trump. Non-partisan demonstrations throughout the country bring thousands out to demand “respect” and “dignity”

Marchers demanded “respect” and “dignity” from Trump and his government, with an estimated 20,000 people pouring onto the streets of Mexico City, with students from the capital’s UNAM state university joining in protest for the first time since 1968, when dozens were killed and injured in demonstrations. Among the intellectuals at the march were Enrique Graue, Enrique Krauze, Héctor Aguilar Camín, and Enrique Ochoa, presidents of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

Mexico’s ruling class has ignored the plight of the rest of the country for as long as Mexico has been a country, and I include the period where Mexico was under the French. I have said before, for decades Mexico has not even protected its own citizens from the cartels’ deadly human trafficking business; Jason Poblete writes,

Mexico and other Central American nations need to get serious about border security within their region, as well as fixing the primary reason people try to leave: poverty and lack of economic opportunities, as well as rampant corruption and crime, lack of rule of law, among many other indicators that make life tough in these countries. This latter issue is a more long-term issue (one that the U.S. companies can help with), but border security within Central America can start today.

Ricardo Valenzuela agrees [my translation]

Our anguish at Trump ought to be an opportunity, and, rather than continue riding this mass hysteria, let’s change our attitudes, let’s focus on identifying this chance that the event presents, and which we are not seeing. We are enraged that Trump threatens to deport millions of our countrymen. Let’s identify the real problem. Why did those millions were expelled by Mexico? Trump wants to build a wall. How come tons of drugs cross the border each year? Why are millions of young girls kidnapped by the same mafias who, after getting them across illegally sell them to the sex traders? Why has the border become a war zone where weapons and illegal money are exchanged, and even ISIS members are crossing?

Lest we forget,

Mexico had a major role in fostering guerrilla groups in Central America during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, backing off only when it became a hindrance to the NAFTA deal with the United States, and when some of the groups began operating in Mexico. Mexico is feared and resented throughout Central America as a bully and for its mistreatment of Central American migrants. The horror stories these migrants tell of their passage through Mexico are hair-raising and heartbreaking.

Peña Nieto’s popularity plummeted (and has not recovered) following the 2014 disappearance of 43 student teachers killed in Guerrero, a crime yet not resolved. The remains of only one student have been identified. In Mexico,

Only 4.5% of reported crimes in Mexico are ever investigated and just 1% ever go before a judge, according to a recent study by Mexico’s National Autonomous University. The criminal conviction rate in Mexico is 1.8%.

Headline from the WSJ:
Thousands March in Mexico City to Protest Trump, Peña-Nieto

Thousands took to Mexico City’s central thoroughfare to protest U.S. President Donald Trump and his plans to build a 2,000-mile border wall, while also blasting Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and the ruling PRI party.

Meanwhile, Andrés Manuel López Obrador gains in polls amid backlash against new U.S. administration, because electing a far-left candidate and blaming the U.S. has worked so well elsewhere.

Again: Respect is earned. When Mexico and the Central American countries stop seeing the U.S. as a pressure-release valve for their own countries’ problems, they won’t need to be asking for respect, they will be earning it.

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Mexico: Peña Nieto and the Juarez cartel

In the flurry of news and criticism over the cancelled Peña Nieto visit, Ildefonso Ortiz and Brandon Darby remind us that the Juarez Cartel used shell companies to finance Peña Nieto’s presidential campaign; their article from March last year explains how,

The bombshell revelation was made this week by the independent news outlet Aristegui Noticias who claim that top officials of the Juarez Cartel financed thousands of cash cards that were handed out by Mexico’s Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) during the 2012 political campaign that resulted in the victory of Enrique Pena Nieto. According to the Mexican journalists, the cash cards were provided by a company called Monex. They were reported to be financed through a series of shell corporations by key players with the Juarez Cartel.     

Through a three part series, the Mexican news organization identified Rodolfo David “El Consul” Avila Cordero as a key figure in the financial scandal that implicates the leading figures in Mexico’s ruling party the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI).

Avila Cordero was arrested in 2005 in Mexico City in connection with the seizure of almost $750,000 in cash. At the time authorities had identified him as a top tier operative with the Juarez (Carrillo Fuente) Cartel who worked as their financial operator an a key figure in their connections with Colombian drug lords.  Avila Cordero had earned the nickname “The Consul” because of his links to high ranking officials within the Mexican government and acted as an ambassador of sorts, Aristegui Noticias reported.

Eight years after his arrest, Avila Cordero became a contractor for a government funded program called Crusade Against Hunger. Using a company called Conclave SA de CV and Prodasa SA de CV, Cordero was able to secure more than $396 million pesos or $25 million in government contracts through rigged bidding processes by government officials.

The Crusade Against Hunger is a pet project of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto who claimed that with that program he would improve the quality of life for his people.

According to the investigation by the Mexican journalists, Conclave and Prodasa are shell companies that do not have real offices or staff.

Ortiz and Darby posted yesterday that

Mexico’s President Cancels White House Visit After Trump Hits CartelsMexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has cancelled his planned visit to the U.S. where he was expected to meet with President Donald J. Trump. The cancellation comes after Mexico’s government denounced Trump’s new border security measures aimed at interfering with the cash flow of the very Mexican cartels believed to have financed the current Mexican president’s campaign.

There’s room for discussion on whether or not the cancellation is directly related to this.

However, Peña Nieto’s approval ratings last week were at 11%. Every minute the media in the U.S. and in Mexico spend berating Trump and/or what Trump may or may not do is a minute they don’t spend examining the reasons why Mexico’s government has failed – and continues to fail – its own citizens.

Remember also that Peña Nieto’s popularity started its precipitous decline after the 2014 disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students. Only the remains of one student have been found.

The Ayotzinapa massacre, not Donald Trump, is emblematic of Mexico’s failures.

Related:
Southern exposure: The costly border plan Mexico won’t discuss

UPDATE
Linked to by Maggie’s Farm. Thank you!

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Mexico wants respect UPDATE

Mexican president to Trump: My nation ‘demands respect’, while offering Mexicans illegally in the U.S. help in defying immigration laws (emphasis added):

Peña Nieto also highlighted Trump’s pledge to control migration into the U.S., reassuring Mexicans that their government will offer the protection Mexican immigrants require when they are in the United States. “I’ve ordered the Secretary of Exterior Affairs to reinforce the safety measures for our co-nationals. The 50 Mexican embassies will become authentic legal defense for immigrants,” Peña Nieto added

Last time I looked, there was one embassy and the rest are consulates, but I digress.

The government of Mexico has also spent money on a pamphlet that instructs migrants how to safely enter the United States illegally and live there without being detected. (I actually read one, on my own hands.)

For decades Mexico has not protected its own citizens from the cartels’ deadly human trafficking business,

To cross the Sasabe desert and go on to Arizona, migrants are told they must pay about $4,500 to the coyote, who is appointed by the cartels. They are also forced to pay an additional $700 in a separate “tax” to the criminal groups themselves.

At the church-run shelter, there were rumours that the week before, two Honduran migrants were murdered after they took the fatal decision to embark on the journey north without paying.

Indeed,

little attention is devoted to the role that the empowerment of Mexican drug cartels has played in reshaping the human smuggling dynamics in the last years. Until 2009, at least 47 independent cartels dedicated to human smuggling and human trafficking operated in Mexico. However, with the emergence of Los Zetas as an independent cartel in 2010 and the empowerment of the Cartel Del Golfo (CDG) in the last five years, the smaller cartels have been absorbed or destroyed, producing a dramatic change in the dynamics of human trafficking and human smuggling in the country.

Mexican drug cartels have identified a lucrative niche of opportunity in the geostrategic position of Mexico as “bridge country” for migration flows towards the U.S., and are now actively exploiting it. These organizations have vigorously seized the human smuggling activities in the southern and northern borders of Mexico, and have transformed them into diverse forms of trafficking and exploitation. Every year thousands of Central Americans fall prey to drug cartels while crossing the southern border of Mexico. The victims are frequently extorted, assaulted, and trafficked for forced labor and sexual exploitation within the country and in the United States.

Jason Poblete writes,

Mexico and other Central American nations need to get serious about border security within their region, as well as fixing the primary reason people try to leave: poverty and lack of economic opportunities, as well as rampant corruption and crime, lack of rule of law, among many other indicators that make life tough in these countries. This latter issue is a more long-term issue (one that the U.S. companies can help with), but border security within Central America can start today.

Respect is earned. When Mexico and the Central American countries stop seeing the U.S. as a pressure-release valve for their own countries’ problems, they won’t need to be asking for respect, they will be earning it.

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

RELATED
Mexican woman arrested in Spain for inciting ISIS jihad

UPDATE
Mexican stand-off: Peña Nieto cancels next week’s meeting.
I was surprised Peña Nieto wanted to come this early in the game. Considering his popularity ratings, it would be insane for him to risk it.

And,
POBRE MEXICO, TAN LEJOS DE DIOS, TAN CERCA DE TRUMP

Nuestra angustia ante Trump debe ser una oportunidad y, en lugar de continuar montados en esa histeria colectiva, cambiemos nuestras actitudes para, enfocados, identificar esa oportunidad que el evento nos ofrece y no la vemos. Estamos furiosos porque Trump amenaza con deportar millones de paisanos. Vamos identificando el verdadero problema ¿Por qué esos millones de mexicanos fueron expulsados por Mexico? Trump quiere construir el muro ¿Por qué toneladas de droga cruzan esa frontera cada año? ¿Por qué miles de jovencitas son secuestradas por las mafias para, luego de cruzarlas ilegalmente, ser vendidas a los mercaderes del sexo? ¿Por qué la frontera es una zona de guerra por donde se trafican armas, dinero ilegal y cruzan hasta miembros de ISIS?

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