Tag: NORTH AMERICA

Canada, U.S., Mexico Lithium Contagion Calls for Urgent Care

April 25, 2023

Stating that “oil and lithium belong to the nation”, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador issued a decree “to nationalize lithium so that it cannot be exploited by foreigners, neither by Russia, nor by China nor by the United States” Americas Program columnist Talli Nauman argues that betting on lithium ‘is a buy-in to a doomed U.S. climate policy of incentives for electric passenger vehicles that is a myopic approach to rescuing the planet and endangers Mexican environmental stability.’

Let’s talk about militarization

January 9, 2023

Militarization, now institutionalized in the Constitution and in practice, extended for the next six years and quite possibly forever, is not just the latest bone of contention between political parties. It is an issue that has profound implications for Mexican society, democracy, security, gender equality and human rights. It has to be analyzed within the framework of these considerations, beyond the false and hypocritical positions of the political parties.

THE BRIDGE OF STONES: A MIGRANT CHRISTMAS STORY

January 9, 2023

Carefully treading a crossing of slippery stones strung across the shallow Rio Grande between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, trickles of migrants climbed up the embankment on the U.S. side.

Joining with others who had crossed from down river, the asylum seekers waited peacefully to surrender to U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents. Watching the evolving ritual were a gaggle of Mexican journalists and local residents. A young man from Venezuela with one leg hopped around on crutches while a pair of municipal cops observed the drama from a parked truck. Standing atop the Mexican embankment, a young girl gazed across the narrow river at the forming line of asylum seekers of all ages, tears welling up in her sad eyes.

Irrelevance and clashes at the Summit of the Americas

August 10, 2022

The IX Summit of the Americas was on the wrong path from the very beginning. For the first time since its creation in 1994, this meeting in which all the leaders of the Americas meet triennially, was held a year late.

Mexico got rid of the DEA’s most elite unit. Now it should get rid of the DEA.

May 30, 2022

The news that the Mexican government had shut down operations of the elite DEA team in the country – the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) – provoked an avalanche of articles in the press, most of them defending the DEA in order to criticize the president. Hardly any of them spoke about the disastrous history of the Unit, much less about the perverse history and actions of the DEA in Mexico –and in all of Latin America. The agency has left a bloody trail of failures, incompliance with regulations, complicities and corruption in its mission to export the war on drugs as an instrument of social control and U.S. hegemony.

Search for missing persons goes international

May 23, 2022

“The eyes don’t lie” repeats Ruth, a Salvadoran woman looking for her son in the city of Tijuana. She holds a large photograph of son Rafael, as two homeless men on the street watch her closely, searching their memories for a recollection of the face of the disappeared son. “He might have changed over the years, but the eyes don’t lie,” says the mother.

Native leadership, key to open climate justice door

April 18, 2022

With the release in April of the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the time is ripe to celebrate a breakthrough by Indigenous Peoples in participation on the scientific advisory board that guides global warming policy for 195 U.N. countries. Opinion leaders should push the envelope for more of the same.