Author: Dawn Paley

Critics argue that Mexico’s financial reforms could increase consumer debt and repossessions in Mexico, and lead to more publicly funded bailouts of foreign-owned banks.

Denver, Colorado-based Sunshine Silver Mines Corp. is the owner of a mining project that had its machines returned by local authorities in the village of Magdalena Teitipac last month. Media reports and news releases previously misidentified the parent company of the local subsidiary Minera Plata Real as a Canadian company, Linear Gold.

It has been five years since Mexican legislators approved a series of changes to Mexico’s constitution relating to security, the justice system, and organized crime. The changes, it was promised, would make the courts system more reliable and open, and protect the rights of citizens. The reforms introduced spoken arguments in trials, the presumption of innocence and an adversarial criminal process, marking what experts call a “paradigmatic shift in Mexican jurisprudence.”

While the new system has support in high places, it also has its detractors, many of whom point out that the legal reforms were “Made in the USA.”

If they board a bus, undocumented migrants in Mexico can be pulled off and deported by soldiers at numerous checkpoints dotting northern-bound highways. Without paperwork, they can’t make it past the airport service counter. So the train remains the most accessible means of transport for Hondurans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, and others hoping against hope to make it to the US. And the most deadly.