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American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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U.S., Mexico + 12 other countries to challenge Venezuela

The WSJ reports that, for the first time in twelve years (emphasis added),

Fourteen nations plan to issue a joint statement in coming days calling on the government of President Nicolás Maduro to release political prisoners, return full powers to the National Assembly and set a timetable to hold regional elections that Venezuela has indefinitely postponed, according to Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray.
. . .
The countries expected to sign the letter are Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and the U.S. Countries that have refused to sign are Venezuela’s closest allies, including Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic.

This long-overdue step is a marked departure from the Obama administration’s policy.

As you may recall, Pres. Trump met with Venezuelan dissident Lilian Tintori, who is married to political prisoner Leopoldo López, last month in the White House.

That same week,

the U.S. Treasury Department, following a lengthy investigation, announced that it had identified Maduro’s vice president, Tareck El-Aissami, as a drug kingpin, freezing his assets and barring U.S. entities from engaging in transactions with him.

The new diplomatic approach is not limited to relations with Venezuela; The WSJ also points out (emphasis added),

The diplomatic effort to encourage change in Venezuela has allowed Mexico to work closely with the new administration of U.S. President Donald Trump on an issue that isn’t related to trade, immigration or a border wall. “It’s not the motivation, but it helps having a common cause,” Mr. Videgaray said.

U.S.-Mexico relations are not as hostile as the propaganda media in both countries would have you believe.

As you may recall, two weeks ago I pointed out that the Trump administration has close enough relations with Mexico’s Foreign Secretary that Videgaray can meet with them directly by simply calling Secretary of State Tillerson the night before.

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

UPDATE
Trending at BadBlue.

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Mexico: Two policemen arrested for kidnapping migrants

As I have repeatedly posted over the years, migrants from other countries traveling through Mexico to reach the U.S. are frequently vulnerable to kidnapping.

This time the cops were the kidnappers:

Two agents from a special police unit known as Fuerza Coahuila have been arrested for the alleged kidnapping and extortion of a family of Central American migrants who were trying to get to Texas.
The police officers are accused of kidnapping and extorting the family by making promises of crossing them to Texas after a ransom was paid off. The agents had locked up the family at a stash house in this border city.

Sources within the Coahuila Attorney General’s Office (PGJE) confirmed to Breitbart Texas that this week that members of the PGJE Investigative Police Unit carried out a raid at the stash house where the Fuerza Coahuila members had allegedly been holding the family. The operation was kicked off after a Central American woman contacted authorities about the kidnapping of her family, The PGJE investigators arrested the two Fuerza Coahuila officers at the stash house.

Additionally, Mexico Says It Won’t House Non-Mexicans Pending Outcome of Asylum Cases in US

Mexico’s government said on Friday it would not allow the United States to send undocumented migrants of other nationalities back to Mexico to await the outcome of their asylum proceedings in the US.

Many of the undocumented migrants trying to make their way to the US are Central Americans fleeing poverty and violence in their homelands. After making a trek fraught with danger through Mexico, they often request asylum once they reach US soil.

Mexico’s Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray asserted last week that We’ll Go to the U.N. to Defend ‘Human Rights’ of Mexicans in U.S..

Never mind the dismal state of the human rights of foreigners in Mexico; Videgaray would be well advised to look into the state of human rights of his fellow Mexicans. According to Human Rights Watch,

During the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexican security forces have been implicated in repeated, serious human rights violations—including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and torture—in the course of efforts to combat organized crime. The government has made little progress in prosecuting those responsible for recent abuses, let alone the large number of abuses committed by soldiers and police since former President Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) initiated Mexico’s “war on drugs.”

HRW’s report touches on (click on link)

  1. Enforced Disappearances
  2. Extrajudicial Executions
  3. Military Abuses and Impunity
  4. Torture
  5. Criminal Justice System
  6. Self-Defense Groups
  7. Attacks on Journalists and Human Rights Defenders
  8. Women’s and Girls’ Rights
  9. Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
  10. Palliative Care
  11. Disability Rights
  12. Key International Actors



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Mexico: Ryan goes to US-Mex border UPDATED with livefeed of Tillerson press conference

House Speaker Paul Ryan is at the border; the WaPo reports,
Ryan makes trip to U.S.-Mexico border as lawmakers mull building Trump’s wall

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan led a delegation of House Republicans on a six-hour tour of the U.S.-Mexico border Wednesday, seeing firsthand by helicopter, horse and boat the security challenges of keeping out undocumented immigrants President Trump wants to block with a costly wall.

Ryan (R-Wis.), on his first trip to the border, said in a statement afterward that U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on the ground need “more tools and more support . . . for them to do their jobs effectively.” He said Congress “is committed to securing the border and enforcing our laws” and pledged cooperation with the Trump administration.

Sec. of State Rex Tillerson is in Mexico. The Mexicans are not exactly thrilled

“I want to make it emphatically clear that neither Mexico’s government or the Mexican people have any reason to accept provisions that have been unilaterally imposed by one government on the other,” Mexico’s Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said at a ceremony on Wednesday.

“We won’t accept it because we don’t have to,” he added, in an apparent reference to U.S. plans to return illegal migrants to Mexico, regardless of their nationality.

Videgaray doesn’t seem to remember how Mexico treated Andrew Tahmooressi.

If Videgaray’s name sounds familiar, he’s the guy who quit as Finance Minister after the Peña Nieto-Trump press conference didn’t work the way he expected.

UPDATE
Livefeed of Tillerson press conference in Mexico

[Read more…]

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Mexico: Finance minister resigns following Trump visit

Luis Videgaray, Mexico’s Finance Minister Resigns in Wake of Trump Visit.Resignation comes a week after Donald Trump’s controversial visit to Mexico

Donald Trump’s recent visit to Mexico, widely seen in the country as a humiliation, claimed a high-profile political victim on Wednesday with the resignation of Finance Minister Luis Videgaray, President Enrique Peña Nieto’s closest adviser.

Mr. Videgaray, who played a key role in helping orchestrate the Trump trip, was succeeded by José Antonio Meade, the country’s social development minister and former finance chief, Mr. Peña Nieto told a news conference.

When I first heard that Peña Nieto’s had invited both Hillary and The Donald, I imagined that Enrique expected two no-shows. Now I can imagine a conversation in the likes of,

Luis: Let’s get Hillary here so you and her can beat up Trump on immigration.

Enrique: Great idea!

where neither Luis nor Enrique took into account that a. Hillary’s not placing herself into any situation she can not control, b. she’s better off running out the clock until election day, and c. no [Clinton Foundation donation] money, no honey.

But enough daydreaming.

Videgaray’s resignation is not good news, as

The former investment banker was widely seen as the brains behind the Mexican president and the driving force behind a series of high-profile overhauls in the past few years, including opening Mexico’s closed oil industry to private investment for the first time since 1938.

Videgaray’s resignation means the return of Jose Antonio Meade, who served under Felipe Calderón. The WSJ:

On his first full day in office, Mexico’s new finance minister, José Antonio Meade, has the task of presenting Congress with a budget proposal for 2017 that will slash government spending to confront further declines in oil revenue and rein in growing public debt.

Over at the WaPo Aaron Blake writes about Trump’s reply to Matt Lauer’s question in last night’s foreign policy forum,

MATT LAUER: When you’re commander-in-chief, you can spark a conflict, you can destabilize a region, you can put American lives at risk. Can we afford to take that risk with you?

Trump replied with a non-sequitur,

TRUMP: Well, I think absolutely. I think if you saw what happened in Mexico the other day, where I went there, I had great relationships, everything else. I let them know where the United States stands. I mean, we’ve been badly hurt by Mexico, both on the border and with taking all of our jobs or a big percentage of our jobs.

And if you look at what happened, look at the aftermath today, where the people that arranged the trip in Mexico have been forced out of government. That’s how well we did.

Blake posts,

Mostly, though, it’s an odd claim because Trump insinuates very clearly that his goal was to shake up the Mexican government.

Maybe, maybe not. We’ll never know because Lauer didn’t press on the point and went on with other questions on his list.

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

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