Mexico 9
Díaz-Canel at Mexican Independence Day
Díaz-Canel: “Among all the brothers that Our America has given us, Mexico counts, for many reasons, as one of the most dear to Cuba” (+Video)
Address by President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez at the civic-military parade on the occasion of the celebrations for the anniversary of the Grito de Dolores. Mexico, September 16, 2021
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Díaz-Canel recalled that “Mexico was the first country to recognize our armed struggle and to open its ports to ships flying the Lone Star flag”. Photo: Estudios Revolución
(Shorthand Versions – Office of the President of the Republic)
Dear Andrés Manuel López Obrador, President of the United Mexican States;
Distinguished guests;
Dear Mexico:
Thank you for the opportunity you give us to bring Cuba’s grateful embrace to your beautiful patriotic celebrations for that Grito de Dolores that aroused so much libertarian eagerness in our region more than 200 years ago.
Among all the brothers that Our America has given us, Mexico counts, for many reasons, as one of the most dear to Cuba.
That affection that unites our lands begins with the dazzle caused by its deep and diverse traces in the literature and history of America:
“How beautiful is the land inhabited by the brave Aztecs!” said the Cuban José María Heredia in the Teocalli of Cholula, opening a fascinating door to that Mundo Nuestro, much earlier than that of the terrible conquest that began centuries later, with unrestrained slaughter and destruction, the Spanish troops coming from Santiago de Cuba, under the command of Hernán Cortés.
But no one would tell us more about Mexico than José Martí. I quote excerpts from his memorable speech delivered at the evening in honor of this country at the Hispanic American Literary Society in 1891: “(…) today we gather to pay honor to the nation girded with palm trees and orange blossoms that raises, like a flourish of glory, to the blue sky, the free summits where the whistle of the railroad awakens, crowned with roses as yesterday, with the health of work on the cheek, the indomitable soul that sparkled in the embers in the ashes of Cuauhtémoc, never extinguished. We salute a people that melts, in the crucible of its own metal, the civilizations that were cast upon it to destroy it!”.
Later, referring to the significant date we commemorate today, Martí said: “Three hundred years later, a priest (…) summoned his village to war against the parents who denied the life of soul to their own children; it was the hour of the Sun, when the adobe huts of the poor Indians were shining through the mulberry trees; and never, although veiled a hundred times by blood, has the sun of Hidalgo stopped shining since then! They hung the heads of the heroes in iron cages; the heroes bit the dust, with a bullet in the heart; but on September 16 of every year, at dawn, the President of the Republic of Mexico cheers, before the people, the free homeland, waving the flag of Dolores”.
Due to its characteristics, the Mexican independence process, which began with the Grito de Dolores, led by Father Miguel Hidalgo on a day like today in 1810 and was consummated 11 years later with the entrance of the Trigarante Army in Mexico City. It had a notorious component of social and indigenous demands that differentiated it from other processes that typified the independence era. Its impact was, without a doubt, extraordinary in the libertarian and anti-colonialist struggle in our region and particularly in Cuba.
It gathered ancestral aspirations of entire peoples that inhabited the territory, not only in Mexico, but also in Central and South America and the Antilles. It vindicated all poor Creole sectors -white, black and mulatto- submerged in misery, hunger and exploitation, and opposed the slavery of the blacks.
The broad popular presence had a decisive influence in its radicalization and in the realization of important social and political demands, which constituted an immense inspiration and encouragement for our independence movement.
There are many notable Cubans who left their blood and their names in the history of Mexico. The Cuban solidarity in Mexico’s confrontation with the Texan invasions in 1835-1836 and the North American invasion of 1846-48 stands out, especially the generals Pedro Ampudia, Juan Valentín Amador, Jerónimo Cardona, Manuel Fernández Castrillón, Antonio Gaona, Pedro Lemus and Anastasio Parrodi.
In March 1854, Cubans Florencio Villareal and José María Pérez Hernández launched the historic Plan de Ayutla, which was decisive in the rupture of the Mexican army and society with the dictatorial government of General Santa Anna.
As confirmed by the prestigious researcher René González Barrios, several of those men held key positions in Mexican political-military life and were governors or military commanders in important places in the country.
Two of them, Major Generals Anastasio Parrodi and Pedro Ampudia Grimarest were Ministers of War and Navy in the government of Benito Juarez during the Reform War.
In the Congress, the Government, in exile or in the war at Juarez’s side there were always Cubans. Prominent compatriots such as General Domingo Goicuría y Cabrera, and poets Juan Clemente Zenea and Pedro Santacilia, who was his son-in-law, secretary and agent of the Republic of Cuba in Arms before the Mexican Government, praised his magnificent work.
In the war against the French, the brothers Manuel and Rafael de Quesada y Loynaz, general and colonel respectively, served the Mexican army; colonels Luis Eduardo del Cristo, Rafael Bobadilla and Francisco León Tamayo Viedman; doctor commander Rafael Argilagos Gimferrer and captain Félix Aguirre. All of them would return to Cuba at the beginning of the Ten Years’ War.
It was Mexico, then, the first country to recognize our armed struggle and to open its ports to ships flying the Lone Star flag. The Congress approved it, Juarez pronounced it and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, President of the Republic in Arms, thanked him in a memorable letter to his Mexican counterpart: “…[it is] highly satisfactory that Mexico has been the first Nation in America to have thus manifested its generous sympathies to the cause of independence and freedom of Cuba”.
One of the main tasks that Pedro Santacilia would then fulfill, with Juarez’s consent, was to send to Cuba a select group of Mexican soldiers to contribute to the formation and training of the nascent Liberation Army. Mexicans shone in the fields of Cuba and their prowess inspired the troops and all those who heard about them.
Once again, the Father of the Cuban Homeland left a record of that dedication in a letter to the “Benemérito de las Américas”. Céspedes wrote: “Some Mexican gentlemen have come here and have shed their generous blood on our soil and for our cause, and the whole country has shown its gratitude for their heroic action”.
Two of those brave Mexican soldiers, veterans of the Reform War and the battle against the French Empire, reached the rank of Brigadier General of the Cuban Liberation Army and were part of its main chiefs: José Inclán Risco and Gabriel González Galbán.
Dear friends:
Because of that endearing memory that we share, we are moved and inspired by these acts that revere history and we return again and again to each line written for Mexico by José Martí, who forever links our two nations in all his work, but especially in his letters to his great Mexican friend Manuel Mercado.
It is also to that soul friend to whom he leaves in an unfinished letter, his resounding political testament: the will consecrated to the objective of “preventing in time, with the independence of Cuba, the United States from spreading through the Antilles and falling, with that force more, on our lands of America”.
Years before, on his way to Veracruz, Martí wrote: “O beloved Mexico, O adored Mexico, I see the dangers that surround you, I hear the clamor of a son of yours who was not born of you! From the North, an avid neighbor is curdling (…) You will be ordered; you will understand; you will be guided; I will have died, O Mexico for defending and loving you!”.
Here died for the Revolution, the young communist Julio Antonio Mella, assassinated in a street of this same city where Ernesto Che Guevara and Fidel Castro Ruz would meet, years later, through his brother Raul.
It was here that the young people of the Centennial Generation trained and organized their expedition. Here they forged friendships and affections that still endure and were immortalized in a song that is like a hymn of those epic times: La Lupe, by Juan Almeida Bosque.
From that Mexican period, among many others, the names of María Antonia González, Antonio del Conde, El Cuate, key in the acquisition of the Granma yacht; Arsacio Venegas and Kid Medrano, professional wrestlers who gave physical training to the troops; Irma and Joaquina Vanegas, who offered their house as a camp, will remain forever in Cuban history.
The passage of Fidel and his companions through Mexico left a deep impression on the future Granma expeditionaries and an accumulation of legends everywhere that are still spoken of with admiration and respect.
We will never forget that, thanks to the support of many Mexican friends, the Granma yacht set sail from Tuxpan, Veracruz, on November 25, 1956. From that historic vessel, seven days later, on December 2, the newborn Rebel Army landed to liberate Cuba.
Nor do we forget that, just a few months after the historic triumph of the Revolution in 1959, General Lázaro Cárdenas visited us. His willingness to stand by our people after the mercenary invasion of Bay of Pigs in 1961 marked the character of our relations.
Faithful to its best traditions, Mexico was the only Latin American country that did not break off relations with revolutionary Cuba when we were expelled from the OAS by an imperial mandate.
Throughout the years, we have never broken what history has indissolubly united. Our two countries have honored their sovereign policies, regardless of the closeness or distance between governments. A very Mexican principle prevails: respect for the rights of others is peace.
There is unquestionable merit in those who have dedicated life and energy, heart and soul, to nurture that brotherhood with the tenderness of peoples. I pay tribute here to the sustained, invariable, passionate and firm solidarity that we always find in this land, which all Cubans must love as our own.
It was said by the Cuban Apostle, who also drew with his colorful prose a faithful portrait of this generous people when he declared: “As from the root of the land comes to the Mexican that character of his, shrewd and stately, attached to the country he adores, where through the double work of magnificent Nature and the brilliant touch of the legend and the epic, the order of the real and the romantic feeling come together in their rare measure”.
From those words until today, the common heritage built by an infinite list of prestigious intellectuals and artists of both nations has not ceased to grow. We are united by literature, cinema, visual arts, bolero and mambo.
It could be said that the significant cultural exchange between Mexico and Cuba reaches all manifestations of culture in its broadest meaning, inasmuch as it is no less influential the relationship in sports, especially, baseball and boxing, where the connection is so natural and deep that at times the exact origin of works and facts is lost and we must conclude that it comes from both.
Friends:
For these and other reasons, which do not fit in a necessarily brief speech, it is a great honor to participate in the military parade commemorating the beginning of the struggle for Mexico’s independence and to express our feelings before your Government and your people.
I do so conscious that it is a recognition of the historical ties and brotherhood existing between Mexico and Cuba, a genuine token of appreciation, affection and respect for which I am deeply grateful on behalf of my people.
The decision to invite us has an immeasurably greater value at a time when we are suffering the onslaught of a multi-dimensional war, with a criminal blockade, opportunistically intensified with more than 240 measures in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, which has such dramatic costs for everyone, but particularly for the less developed countries.
We are facing, in parallel, an aggressive campaign of hate, disinformation, manipulation and lies, mounted on the most diverse and influential digital platforms, which ignores all ethical limits.
Under the fire of that total war, Mexico’s solidarity with Cuba has awakened in our people a greater admiration and the deepest gratitude.
Allow me to tell you, dear President, that Cuba will always remember your expressions of support, your permanent demand for the lifting of the blockade and for the annual United Nations vote to be converted into concrete deeds, something that your country has fulfilled in an exemplary manner towards our people.
We are deeply grateful for the aid received in the form of medical supplies and food to alleviate the combined effects of the economic harassment and the pandemic.
Mexican sisters and brothers:
In the face of the complex epidemiological situation facing the world, solidarity and cooperation among our peoples takes on greater transcendence.
For this reason, our health professionals and technicians did not hesitate to accompany the Mexican people whenever necessary. And we will do it again whenever they need it.
We recognize the excellent work carried out by Mexico at the head of the pro tempore presidency of the Community of Latin American and the Caribbean States, a mechanism of genuine Latin American and Caribbean vocation aimed at defending the unity in the diversity of Our America against the neoliberal recolonization project that is trying to impose on us.
As Fidel expressed in an act of Cuban-Mexican friendship held on August 2, 1980: “We will not tolerate anything against Mexico! We will feel it as our own. We will know how to be faithful to the friendship forged by centuries of history and beautiful common principles!
Long live Mexico!
Long live the friendship between Cuba and Mexico! (Applause.)
Mexico was the only Latin American country that did not break relations with revolutionary Cuba when we were expelled from the OAS by an imperial mandate, said Díaz-Canel. Photo: Estudios Revolución
Parade for the 211th anniversary of the Grito de Independencia of Mexico. Photo: Estudios Revolución
Respect for the Rights of Others is Peace
Respect for the Rights of Others is Peace
By Graziella Pogolotti
Published: Saturday 15 February 2020 | 08:54:32 pm.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
While still a child, that Indian, moved by the desire to improve himself, left the countryside and went to the city. There he learned Spanish, took possession of Latin and modern languages and entered the complex world of law, animated by the search for principles of justice. From his legendary carriage, Benito Juárez faced the anachronistic French invasion promoted by Napoleon III -Napoleon the Lessar, according to Victor Hugo-, destined to impose on the Mexican Government Maximilian of Austria, who was shot in Querétaro.
For Mexico and Latin America as a whole, Juarez proposed, as a fundamental notion for the coexistence between nations, the indispensable need for mutual respect, that is, non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, a concept that, except for brief blinks of an eye, has presided over his country’s foreign policy, a safe haven for exiles from all over, of exemplary conduct with the victims of the war in Spain and with those condemned for McCarthyism in the United States.
Because of his civic stature, Benito Juarez has been named Benemérito de las Américas. [Benemerito is Latin, roughly “Meritorious” wl]The evocation of the Mexican hero is timely these days, when, at a dizzying pace, human principles and aspirations are subverted and the most unabashed interventionism in the field of international politics is naturally assumed.
In the 20th century, two world wars produced real holocausts. Picasso, who had condemned with his Guernica the bombing of an unarmed civilian population, then designed his dove of peace, the symbol of universal hope. At the end of the first great conflagration, the failed League of Nations attempted to interpose negotiations on the use of arms. Throughout the ages, regulations had been established with a view to formulating rules of the game regarding international relations.
Nothing was done, however, to contain the arrogant expansion of Nazi Germany into its neighboring territories. In the name of Aryan supremacy, racism was institutionalized. National sentiment became aggressive chauvinism. Devastated territories accompanied the sadism of the gas chambers and concentration camps. The diary of Anne Frank, a little girl who had taken refuge with her family in the basement of the house until she fell into the hands of her victimizers, shocked millions of readers. On the eve of the surrender of the axis formed by Germany, Italy and Japan, Hiroshima and Nagasaki announced a terrible threat to the future of the planet.
The complex architecture of the UN was supposed to provide a space for negotiations, shared by the great powers and the emerging countries. It was intended to sponsor science, education, and culture and to provide platforms for the development of the most disadvantaged. Another global conflagration has not [yet] been triggered, although localized clashes at strategic points have not ceased. Big industry continues to manufacture increasingly sophisticated weaponry.
Under the pretext of the Cold War, the empire multiplied military bases on all continents. So much is the load of dynamite in the world’s precarious balance that one spark can produce an atrocious explosion. Yesterday, colonies inhabited by mixed cultures, the lands of underdeveloped countries hold strategically important minerals and water reserves. Plundering is once again looming over them. Hegemonic discourse legitimizes interventionism with the aim of securing a new world order.
In recent years, the human cost has been enormous. In addition to those who have died in war, there are the migrants who have disappeared in the ocean cemeteries. The survivors of these waves become outcasts. Rejected, their presence encourages xenophobia in rich countries, where adjustment policies reduce the benefits previously promoted by the welfare state.
Having lived a long time, always aware of what is happening inside and outside the island, gives one a perspective on the future of the opposing forces that are making history. After the horrors suffered in the Second World War, everything indicated that the generalized demand for a never again [to war] had been reached. In conjunction with the process of decolonization, specialists recognized the intrinsic value of each culture. They threw into the attic of the useless the old opposition between civilization and barbarism, which justified the adventures of conquest and the oppression of the bearers of a memory and a different color of skin.
However, under the cover of financial power, right-wing thinking was gradually recomposed. The crudest and most ominous expression is found in the speech of the President of the United States. He is appealing to the darkest atavistic feelings that remain in his nation. Manifest Destiny is projected with planetary reach. It justifies interventionism and the imposition of a model of domination.
We, Latin Americans, have a tradition of thought that deserves to be rescued. In the current circumstances, it is the source of an emancipatory proposal based on peace and mutual respect. It constitutes a space of convergence for the whole of humanity in its struggle for its well-being and for resistance in the face of the accelerated depredation of the Earth’s resources.
AMLO Offers 4000 Jobs to Migrant Caravan
López Obrador Offers 4000 Jobs to New Migrant Caravan
Migrants, seeking to reach US soil to seek asylum, are now in Guatemala.
by Juventud Rebelde digital@juventudrebelde.cu
January 17, 2020
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
MEXICO CITY, January 17.- Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador reported Friday the availability of 4,000 jobs in the southern border of the country for the migrants who are part of the caravan that left Wednesday from Honduras toward the United States.
About 2500 to 3000 migrants come in the caravan from Honduras, and El Salvador, López Obrador said during his daily news conference, in which he announced the existence of 4000 jobs available on the southern border, he said.
The migrants, who are trying to reach U.S. soil to seek asylum, are now in Guatemala. The new president of that country, Alejandro Giammattei, said that the Mexican Executive, through its foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard, assured him that it [Mexico] would prevent the entry of the new caravan.
The Mexican government has warned us that it will not let them pass, that it will use everything in its power to stop them,” Giammattei told local media, according to RT.
Nearly 1,000 people gathered in the Great Metropolitan Central, in San Pedro Sula, in northern Honduras, to start the new caravan that aims to reach the U.S. in its flight from violence, poverty and lack of employment in that Central American country.
In September 2019, President Donald Trump reached an agreement with his Honduran counterpart, Juan Orlando Hernandez, to supposedly improve asylum capacity by containing the flow of migrants from other Central American countries.
In addition, the U.S. signed a similar agreement with Jimmy Morales, former president of Guatemala, for them to become a safe third country and for Salvadoran and Honduran migrants to seek asylum in that Central American nation, not in the U.S.
On the other hand, he pressured the López Obrador government to stop migration from Central America, in exchange for not imposing tariffs on Mexican products that are exported to the United States.
AMLO Zocalo Speech, December 1, 2019
Pueblo of Mexico ‘Guardian Angel’: AMLO, full speech in the Zócalo
December 2, 2019
Translated and edited by Pedro Gellert for CubaNews.
SPEECH DELIVERED BY ANDRÉS MANUEL LÓPEZ OBRADOR, PRESIDENT OF MEXICO ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF HIS INAUGURATION
Friends:
The change we are undertaking is on the horizon. In the neoliberal period, laws were made without considering the public interest. Now, the purpose behind the reforms to the Constitution is to guarantee the country’s development and the population’s well-being. For example, the main reforms and laws approved by the legislators have been those aimed at fighting corruption; the austerity law; asset recovery legislation to reclaim and return to the people what was stolen; the reforms to Article 28 of the Constitution to prohibit tax rebates; the classification of fuel theft, tax evasion, and electoral fraud as serious crimes; the elimination of presidential immunity so that the president can be judged for any crime while still in office; presidential recall referendums; popular consultations; the new labor legislation that guarantees free, secret, and direct voting in the unions; the health law to guarantee all Mexicans free medicines and medical care.
There is also the cancellation of the misnamed educational reform, as well as the constitutional reform that allows members of the Army and Navy to participate in public security tasks and creates the National Guard. In addition, I have sent Congress a reform bill to enshrine in the Constitution the right of senior citizens and people with disabilities to obtain a pension and for poor students at all levels of schooling to receive scholarships. In reality, these modifications represent a new Constitution that reflects the demands and will of the people who decided to undertake the Fourth Transformation of the country’s public life in a legal, democratic, and peaceful manner.
As I have said many times, the main task of the government is to do away with political corruption. We are putting the house in order from the highest levels of power. That is why we are cleansing the government from top to bottom, just as we clean the stairs.
The theft of fuel has been reduced by 94 percent, and tax waivers and write-offs for large business and financial corporations has been prohibited. All government purchases are being made in consolidated fashion and under the coordination of the Chief of Staff of the Finance Ministry. This year, the savings obtained in preventing corruption in the acquisition of goods and services will reach 200 billion pesos.
The budget of the President’s office decreased from 3.6 billion to 800 million pesos, a 75 percent decline. This is, in practice, republican austerity.
The formula of ending corruption and reducing the cost of government allows us to finance the budget without increasing taxes, without boosting fuel prices, and without indebting the country. The resources earmarked to finance social programs come from what is saved with the fight against corruption and with the elimination of luxuries and opulent expenses.
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We are implementing a new productive policy to support the popular economy, strengthen the domestic market, promote projects for regional development, encourage the participation of private enterprise, and intensify efforts to attract foreign investment.
In order to strengthen the popular economy, we have prioritized agricultural recovery. Direct economic support for planting crops has been provided to 2 million ejidatarios and comuneros (small-scale, semi-communal peasant farmers-TN) and small landowners; this includes members of indigenous communities and sugar cane and coffee growers. The program of uncollateralized, paperwork and interest-free loans for cattle raising was launched, benefitting 7,734 producers. This year, the Planting Life program is being applied in 575,000 hectares and has generated 230,000 permanent jobs. Next year it will be extended to more than one million hectares and create 430,000 jobs. The planter who cultivates his own plot of land will receive a 5,000 peso-per- month subsidy.
Thus, will are rooting young peasant farmers to the land, we are reducing migration, we are producing lumber, fruits, and food, we are rehabilitating the rain forest and woodlands, and are rescuing and protecting the native flora and fauna. In short, life is being planted. We are also preventing the overexploitation of aquifers and promoting population growth in the Southeast, where 70 percent of the country’s water is located. The use of transgenic corn seeds and the exploitation of hydrocarbons through the practice of fracking has been banned. We have supported fishermen by simplifying procedures to obtain permits with sustainability rules and we are granting them direct financial assistance.
This year, the decentralized public agency for food security Seguridad Alimentaria Mexicana (SEGALMEX) was created to administer the policy that we established of guaranteed prices and supplying the population with foodstuffs.
With the Interest-Free Loans for Well-Being program, 356,500 credits have been granted, without interest or complicated paperwork, to small merchants, businessmen, artisans, and those who earn their living as best they can.
The construction of 109 concrete roads is progressing in the municipalities of Oaxaca. We supply the resources to the authorities of local indigenous communities selected through ancestral customs, they manage them honestly and, as a result, employment is provided to women and men in the same villages. With these small but important work projects, migration is reduced and family and community life is strengthened.
It must be recognized that a major factor in strengthening the economy promoted from below, with the people and for the people, has been the contribution of our living heroes, the Mexican migrants, who in the first nine months of this year sent remittances to their families to the tune of 26.98 billion dollars, the highest amount in history.
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At the same time, we seek to strengthen the domestic market through a policy of wage recovery and a strategy of massive creation of productive jobs.
Thus far this year, according to data from the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), 648,000 new jobs have been created. This is without taking into account those created by the Planting Life, Young People Building the Future, and the road construction with labor power programs and others that, together, surpass one million additional jobs.
The minimum wage increased by 16 percent, something that had not occurred in 36 years of neoliberalism. According to the IMSS, during our administration, the average salary obtained by its 20,727,424 affiliates increased to 11,352 pesos per month.
We have healthy public finances. From January to October, tax collection increased by 139.70 billion pesos compared to last year, that is, 1.6 percent in real terms. In October, annual inflation was 3 percent, the lowest since September 2016.
During our time in office, the peso has strengthened 4 percent against the dollar and the stock market has appreciated 2 percent. The economic growth that we hope for has still not taken place, but there is a better distribution of wealth; the public budget does not remain in the hands of a few, but reaches the majority of the population. We have completed a year in government and unlike other beginnings of the six-year presidential administrations, we have not rebated or condoned taxes to those who financed the election campaigns; we have not privatized public goods or properties nor have we declared war on anyone, just on corruption and impunity.
We have rigorously fulfilled all financial commitments. Salaries, benefits and pensions have been paid to workers and budgetary outlays have been paid to states and municipalities on time. There has been no further delay in paying suppliers. In addition, we have complied with recognizing and dealing with the enormous debt we inherited of 10.8 trillion pesos. So far we have paid 454 billion pesos in interest alone.
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We have begun basic engineering studies for the Mayan Train, and they will be completed on December 13 in order to carry out the bidding process on this important work project that will benefit five states in southeast Mexico. I would like to clarify that the project will depend on the outcome of the consultation we are conducting in the municipalities where the new railroad will pass through.
To further the integral development of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, work is already proceeding on the expansion of the port of Salina Cruz and the same will be done in Coatzacoalcos. Work has also begun on the modernization of the container freight train line that will connect the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
A free zone will be established in this stretch of land; that is, taxes and energy prices will be reduced in order to promote the installation of industrial parks that will generate jobs with good salaries.
We are successfully facing the obstinate attitude of the corrupt conservatives who resorted to legal sabotage in the construction of the new Felipe Ángeles airport, for which they filed 103 injunctions with the aim of preventing us from beginning work in Santa Lucía. But reason and the law prevailed and work on the project has begun. The military engineers have assured me that we will inaugurate the new international airport on March 21, 2022.
Since January of this year, the free zone program began along the 3,180 kilometer border with the United States. There, the Income Tax was reduced to 20 percent; the VAT was cut from 16 to 8 percent; fuel was made cheaper and the minimum wage was doubled.
The company Telecomunicaciones e Internet para Todos, a subsidiary of the Federal Electricity Commission, was created and the concession was obtained to offer nonprofit Internet service for all throughout the country.
We are proud to report that for the first time in 14 years, we halted the progressive decline in oil production. In 2018 oil production had decreased by 200,000 barrels per day and thus far during this current administration, not only have we not seen a fall in output, but by the end of the month we will be extracting an additional 50,000 barrels per day.
The country’s six refineries are being refurbished. Their production rose from 32 to 40 percent of their capacity. Construction has already begun on the new refinery in Dos Bocas, Paraíso, Tabasco.
The investment for the construction and maintenance of highways and rural roads is 42.5 billion pesos, of which 20 billion pesos are earmarked for the conservation of the country’s road network, something that had never occurred before.
The construction of the Emisor Oriente Tunnel has been completed. With this project, floods will be prevented in a good part of the Valley of Mexico. The Guadalajara Light Train will also be completed this year and the Toluca-Mexico City train is still under construction.
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The participation of private enterprise in the development of Mexico is a positive and necessary reality. A few days ago we agreed on a joint plan for the construction of infrastructure with 134 projects and an investment of 709 billion pesos. I would also mention that an agreement was reached with national and foreign companies that installed gas pipelines. It was agreed to recognize the contracts signed by the previous administration but rates were reduced and a savings of 4.5 billion dollars obtained for the CFE. This arrangement also guarantees the supply of gas, a key raw material for the generation of electricity and for the development of Mexico, for the next 20 years.
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In the first 9 months of this year, 26 billion dollars entered the country in foreign investment, the highest figure in history. From January to October 2019 our exports totaled more than 384 billion dollars, a 3 percent increase over the same period last year.
This year, tourism has grown compared to 2018. From January to September, 32.8 million international tourists arrived, 7.6 percent more than in the same period last year, injecting more than 18.56 billion dollars in the economy, 11.3 percent more than last year. I would like to emphasize the effective and timely intervention of the Ministry of the Navy to keep our beaches in the Caribbean free of sargassum seaweed. I would like to add that we are already the main trade partner of the United States and I feel that the new trade treaty will be approved, sooner rather than later, in the congresses of that country and Canada.
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We are committed, above all, to achieving a higher goal, namely, the general well-being of the population, material well-being and well-being of the soul, spiritual well-being.
At least half of Mexican households receive benefits from at least one social welfare program. Among the indigenous peoples, 95 percent of households already have access to at least one of the support programs and the figure will soon reach 100 percent.
I am pleased to report that eight million senior citizens have received their pensions of 2,550 pesos bimonthly, double what they obtained previously. This support will increase in accordance with inflation and includes both those who receive a contributory pension and those who had no income; in other words, it became a universal right.
Assistance is also provided to 790,000 people with disabilities, especially poor children, with a subsidy of 2,550 pesos every two months. Soon we will reach one million beneficiaries.
Scholarships of 1,600 pesos bimonthly are also being granted to poor preschool, primary, and secondary school students. In the case of high school students, the support is universal; that is, it is granted to all adolescents between the ages of 15 and 18 on average; and at the higher education or university level, 300,000 young people are being assisted with scholarships of 2,400 pesos per month. In total, more than 10 million students are receiving a scholarship, which means an annual investment of 60 billion pesos.
The Young People Building the Future program has provided work as apprentices to 930,000 youth who were previously discriminated against and characterized as ninis (those without work and who are not studying-TN). The federal government grants them a monthly scholarship of 3,600 pesos to train for a year in companies, workshops, public institutions, and social organizations, which facilitates their successful insertion into the labor market and prevents them from falling prey to crime.
The National Reconstruction Program serves the population affected by the earthquakes of September 2017 and February 2018, and has provided financial support for housing to 13,805 families. Schools and clinics and hospitals are under reconstruction and progress is being made in the restoration of temples and other structures or spaces catalogued as historical heritage sites.
We have begun the Urban Improvement and Housing Program, both in cities on the northern border and in tourist development poles, to reduce the contrast between luxury hotels and marginalized neighborhoods.
This program is bearing fruit in Tijuana, Mexicali, San Luis Río Colorado, Nogales, Ciudad Juárez, Acuña, Piedras Negras, Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa and Matamoros, as well as in marginalized neighborhoods in four tourist centers: Los Cabos, Bahía de Banderas, Acapulco, and Playa del Carmen. To date, 18,455 housing units have been built or refurbished, and the introduction of water, sewage, and pavement has begun, as well as providing the property deeds for homes in low-income neighborhoods in 14 cities. The INFONAVIT government housing agency has restructured 147,523 housing loans for the benefit of workers who paid debts that grew instead of decreased. Those who have covered 90 percent of their credit will have the remainder forgiven and will be able to receive their property deed. This modality has benefited 31,000 families. In addition, no one has been evicted from their apartment or housing, as was the case when the so-called overdue loan portfolios were sold to “coyotes”, collection offices or influence traffickers.
The vast majority of the poor cannot use the banking system. To remedy this situation, the federal government has created the Banco del Bienestar social welfare bank, whose main purpose is to allocate resources via cards to beneficiaries of the social programs. Next year, the Banco de Bienestar will increase the number of its branches from 433 to 13,000 throughout the country.
These offices will operate in integration centers located in areas with large populations in order to then serve more than 180,000 communities in the country with less than 2,500 inhabitants.
In the last six-year presidential administration, the so-called “educational reform” was imposed, which generated a bitter social conflict and led to unjustifiable repressive measures. Our government is committed to improving the quality of teaching and the material conditions of the country’s schools, to guaranteeing access to education for all young people, and to reversing legislative adulteration. Following an intense process of dialogue and reflection, the schools, the Federal Executive branch, Congress, and the national teachers’ movement reached a broad agreement that led to the approval of a new legal framework for public education.
With the new 2019-2020 school year, the School is Ours program began, which provides resources for the construction, repair, and maintenance of public schools to the Participatory Management School Committees, made up of students, teachers, and parents from each school. With this program, each school will receive its annual budget.
Resources are beginning to arrive directly from the federal treasury to the school, without intermediaries or cumbersome paperwork procedures. In the first stage, 103,000 of the 173,000 existing schools will be served. The amount of resources per school was defined as follows: for schools with from five to 50 students, 150,000 pesos per school year; from 51 to 150 pupils, 200,000 pesos; more than 150 students, 500,000 pesos. The initial budget is 21 billion pesos and we are reaching agreements with the state governments for the latter to contribute half the amount. Most have responded well and the first to accept was the governor of Puebla, Miguel Barbosa. The delivery of financial resources to 14,000 school committees has already begun.
The strategy for rescuing historical memory and promoting reading is functioning. The Fondo de Cultura Económica publishing house has issued 29 books by great writers in the Vientos del Pueblo collection with press runs of 40,000 copies, reaching a total of 1,160,000 copies. These books are sold at affordable prices ranging from 9 to 20 pesos. In addition, 8.5 million copies of the Castilla Moral (Moral Primer) of Alfonso Reyes were reprinted.
We made progress in supporting universities and public research centers with financial resources. This year, the National Council for Science and Technology, the CONACYT, has allocated more than 2.25 billion pesos to basic or frontier science. In addition, 24,453 new scholarships were granted to graduate students.
The Benito Juarez Garcia Universities for Social Wellbeing began their activities in March 2019 with one hundred campuses. Altogether, they serve 39,600 students from marginalized areas who receive scholarships of 2,400 pesos per month. These universities are staffed by 815 academics and administrative employees.
This coming January, the University of Health will start operating. It is designed for the training and education of doctors and nurses and is promoted by the Mexico City government.
The opening of what had been the former official residence of Los Pinos to the population has allowed 2.8 million people to visit the old presidential mansion and a project is already being developed, in coordination with the City Government, to convert the Chapultepec Forest and the land where the Army Weapons Factory was located into an artistic and ecological space of 800 hectares. Soon, very soon, it will be one of the most important cultural sites in the world.
We have created the National Institute of Health for Well-Being, which has begun to resolve four basic demands: supply of all medicines in hospitals and clinics located in the most remote communities of the country; the assignment of doctors, nurses, and paramedics in all population centers; the refurbishing and expansion of the health infrastructure, including the improvement of medical equipment, and the basification of more than 80,000 employees who have been working for a long time as casual workers and paid by fees rather than fixed salaries. The health budget will be increased by 40 billion pesos to guarantee quality level and free medicines, clinical analysis, and medical and hospital care, to all the inhabitants of Mexico as soon as possible. A national information campaign on addictions has already been launched, basically focused on young people, to provide orientation on the tremendous harm caused by drugs.
All types of sports are being promoted. The athletic delegation that represented Mexico at the 2019 Pan American Games in Lima, Peru, in July and August, won the largest number of medals in competitions outside the country. The 546 athletes and their coaches were given financial support for one year.
We did the same with the Paralympic athletes, who won 55 gold medals (a historic record), 58 silver medals, and 45 bronze medals.
The financial resources provided to athletes and the poorest villages in Mexico come from the sale of movable and immovable property seized from common and white-collar crime, and are delivered by the newly created Institute to Return Stolen Goods to the People.
The federal executive branch has undertaken a change in the public security policy model. Between 2006 and 2018, the government sought to resolve public insecurity and criminal violence through the deployment of the military and police forces, without addressing the root causes of the problem. The result was catastrophic and that strategy left in its wake a frightening toll of dead, disappeared, and injured; a human rights crisis; an unprecedented institutional decomposition; and very serious damage to the social fabric. The country still suffers the consequences of that erroneous policy.
It should not be forgotten that on January 2, 2007 in Apatzingán, Michoacán, Felipe Calderón, in an attempt to legitimize himself after the electoral fraud, ordered the participation of the Armed Forces in what he called the “War against Drug Trafficking”. This irresponsible decision led soldiers and sailors into a head-on battle against organized crime, under the slogan “cleaning up” no matter what, with executions, massacres, or extermination. In the military high command, the officers were told: you finish them off and we’ll take care of human rights. The best proof of this authoritarian approach is that this six-year period has the highest fatal casualty rate in combat since the Mexican Revolution. This indicator is obtained from the average number of alleged criminals killed or taken down in confrontations, compared to the number of those wounded and detained presented by the military forces to the authorities. In just two years of Calderón’s government (2011-2012), there were 1,898 confrontations in which 2,459 people died, 231 were wounded, and 1,519 were arrested; that is, the number of deaths was 709 higher than the number of wounded and arrested.
By the same token, in the last three years of the Felipe Calderón administration (2010-2012), the number of military and navy personnel killed in confrontations reached 154, an average of 51 per year, while in 12 months of our government, we can only regret that 15 members of the Armed Forces have lost their lives. Although the data speak for themselves, it is obvious that this absurd and deranged strategy will not be repeated and that the life and prestige of the members of the Armed Forces will never again be irresponsibly put at risk, much less used to commit excesses and execute illegal and inhumane orders.
The validity of the new security policy was clearly demonstrated in the response to the terror crisis experienced on Thursday evening, October 17, in Culiacán, Sinaloa, on the occasion of the arrest of Ovidio Guzmán, son of Joaquín Guzmán Loera. In that true test of fire in which criminals took to the streets with high-caliber weapons and a high risk was posed, we preferred to halt the operation and release the suspect to avoid a massacre in which hundreds of individuals, mostly civilians, innocent people, would have lost their lives, according to the calculation of the Armed Forces. Our adversaries may say that we displayed weakness, but nothing is worth more than people’s lives.
The rationale for this new strategy is contained in the Development Plan, but I would like to reiterate that among the main actions to achieve peace is the creation of better living and working conditions, in order to address the root causes of violence: unemployment, poverty, marginalization, and the lack of jobs and educational opportunities for young people.
The new public security strategy also includes zero tolerance of torture and any other human rights violations. We are devoting time and resources to the search for those who were disappeared as a result of political violence. We will not rest until we know the whereabouts of the young people of Ayotzinapa. Protection is being provided to 365 journalists and 721 human rights defenders. Forty-seven political prisoners have been released and we will continue to free those still unjustly imprisoned, in accordance with applicable legal dispositions. Rescue operations have already begun for the remains of the 63 miners whose bodies have not been recovered since 2006 in the Pasta de Conchos Mine, Coahuila.
The Army and the Navy have not been used and will not be used to repress the people. The state is no longer the main human rights violator. I would like to thank the soldiers and sailors who have accepted the challenge of guaranteeing public security with full respect for human rights and with the regulated use of force for their support. The loyalty of the Armed Forces of Mexico is not in doubt; as a uniformed people they are participating fully, one hundred percent, in the transformation of the homeland.
I wish to reiterate that the decrease in crime in the country is our main challenge, but we are sure that we will bring calm to Mexico with the support of the people and with the coordinated work of the entire government, with perseverance, professionalism, honesty, and, above all, with actions guided by the principle that peace is the fruit of justice.
- ● ●
The government of Mexico offers cooperation, friendship, and respect to all the nations of the world and particularly to the brother countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.
In keeping with our exemplary tradition of offering safe haven to those politically persecuted from around the world, we decided to grant humanitarian and political asylum to the President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, and his Vice President, Álvaro García Linera. Evo is not only our brother who with dignity represents the majority indigenous people of Bolivia. Evo was the victim of a coup d’état. And from Mexico to the world, we declare: democracy yes, militarism no.
Mexico’s membership in the North American region, together with the United States and Canada, is an unavoidable historical, cultural, political, and economic reality. The relationship with the first of these countries, with which we share more than three thousand kilometers of border, is marked by a history of invasions, territorial dispossession, and interventions, but also by an intense economic, cultural, and demographic exchange.
The Executive Branch strives for the bilateral relationship with the northern neighbor to be developed with adherence to mutual respect, cooperation for development, and negotiated solutions to common problems, among which the most significant are undoubtedly, the migratory phenomena from south to north and the expressions of transnational crime, namely, trafficking in persons and the transfer of arms, illicit drugs, and foreign currency.
Our government now defends Mexicans in the United States with full respect for the sovereignty of that country and with all the legal instruments at its disposal. The main such instrument is the network of consulates, which will operate as ombudsmen for migrants, within the framework of international conventions and U.S. laws, to prevent or remedy violations of the rights of Mexicans.
Here we once again express our condolences to the families of the victims of the collective murder in El Paso, Texas, and reiterate our condemnation of this hate crime motivated by racism and xenophobia, as well as the demand that the person responsible for this abominable aggression be punished in accordance with the law.
We also thank President Donald Trump for his solidarity expressed in the crisis of violence in Culiacán and after the sad and painful events in which three women and six children from the Mexican-American families LeBarón and Langford lost their lives. We recognize that in both cases he offered us help and respected our sovereign right to decide independently and freely. The government of Mexico will fulfill its responsibility to ensure justice.
In terms of immigration policy, we have formulated a radical change with respect to what was done in the recent past. Our purpose now is to ensure that no Mexican citizen is forced to leave his or her place of residence due to poverty, marginalization or public insecurity.
The Executive Branch has sought to involve the United States and the sister countries of Central America in this solution in order to participate together in the elaboration of mechanisms for economic reactivation, well-being, and development with the final purpose of ensuring that all people can work, study, have access to health care and well-being where they were born; that migration be optional, and not forced by hunger or violence.
Friends:
When it comes to good leaders, as José Martí said, “years go by maturing, not aging”. This applies to our special guest, Pepe Mújica, former president of Uruguay.
Friends:
A year ago, in this same place, I presented one hundred commitments to the people of Mexico. Today we have fulfilled 89 and only 11 are pending.
There is no doubt that in these first 12 months we have come a long way, but we are still in a process of transition. The old has not yet died and the new has not yet been born. However, we are not simulating, a new way of doing politics is underway, it is no longer more of the same, now we are guided by honesty, democracy, and humanism.
How much time will we need to consolidate the transformation? I think one more year, that is, in December 2020, the foundations for the construction of a new homeland will already be established. By then, it will be practically impossible, under any circumstances, to return to the era of infamy that the neoliberal or neoporfirista period (referring to the period of President Porfirio Diaz’s rule, broadly considered to be repressive and violent-TN).
I am sure that when we complete two years in government, the conservatives will no longer be able to reverse the changes or, to not be so categorical, they would have to make a tremendous effort and be very shamefaced to return to the dark days of corruption, of boilerplate contracts, of tax condonations, of electoral frauds, of abandonment of young people, of racism, of contempt for the poor, and of cold-blooded killings. But what I most desire with all my heart is that by then we live in a better society: freer, fairer, prosperous, democratic, peaceful, and fraternal.
During my long public life and, above all, in the most difficult moments, I have always had a guardian angel called the people. You have always supported me and sustained me. To the people I owe everything that I am, so I will continue to listen and serve them, and I will never, ever betray them.
Thank you for the protection and support I receive from you and many people. I am a mere leader; the people are the great lord, the master, the sovereign, the ruler, the one who truly rules and transforms.
I do not forget and I always remember what President Benito Juárez said with such depth and simplicity: “with the people everything, without the people nothing”.
Long live the Fourth Transformation!
Long live Mexico!
Long live Mexico!
Long live Mexico!
Zócalo – Mexico City, December 1, 2019
AMLO’s Victory: Parting of the Waters
AMLO’s Victory, a Parting of the Waters in Latin America
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
There is no doubt that we are facing a wave of extreme right-wing movements. In order to understand what is happening, it is important to turn to a historical perspective. For that, we turn to the explnation given by John Bellamy Foster, Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of the US left-wing magazine Monthly Review.
The political map on both sides of the Atlantic seemed to reveal a rise of the extreme right in the world. In most European economies, from the largest and strongest to the smallest and weakest, there was an increase in electoral support for right-wing forces. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, these forces of reaction achieved one success after another with impunity by resorting to various forms of disguised violence.
But the clean and resounding electoral triumph of Andres Manuel López (AMLO) in the race for Mexico’s presidency seems to have been a watershed towards a different reality.
It is known that, against this great victory by the Mexicans, there was put into practice a great clandestine Berlin operation. It’s named after the name of the street in the Mexican capital where the clandestine headquarters of the imperialist operation operated.
They used cyber techniques similar to those used shortly before, under the direction of the CIA. They targeted the electoral processes in Brazil, Ecuador and other points in Latin America and Africa that left distorting fruits of popular will, Operation Berlin was carried out in Mexico. Only this time, in Mexico, they failed. Marxist theorists, along with most historians, have explained that fascism has as its backbone a political alliance between monopoly capital and a certain stratum of the middle class (or petty bourgeoisie).
Historically, the extreme right, too, has gained followers from the countryside, from established religions and from sectors of the armed forces. Fascism is always marginally present in all capitalist societies. It never emerges with all its strength on its own. It is consolidated as a movement only in those cases in which the capitalist class offers its encouragement and support, mobilizing the most reactionary elements of the “middle class”, which acts as the rear of the system.
If, in a period of economic and political crisis, the liberal state becomes an impediment to capitalist government, the existing powers will seek to preserve, consolidate and expand their rule through a regressive change in the capitalist state using the political forms provided by the extreme right.
Neoliberalism de-legitimizes the state. It encourages the development of radical right-wing or neo-fascist movements that oppose neoliberal political elites in the exercise of power and influence impoverished sectors through bribery.
Emerging neo-fascism in the United States is rooted in the “white supremacism” that goes back to slavery and the predominant thinking of the first British settlers, mixed with all sorts of new ideological elements.
Trump’s militant political base is estimated to be between 25 and 30 percent of the electorate and is located in the lower-middle stratum, with family incomes of about $75,000 a year.
It is a very white sector of the population that finds itself in a position of extreme economic insecurity. Its ideology is national-imperialist, with militant racism. A large part of this demographic group is associated with right-wing evangelism. It is something similar to the mass in Brazil that supported Jair Bolsonaro.
Trump’s main value for the ruling class lies in the fact that the radical right has been able to deliver added value to the rich: it has removed obstacles to market dominance over the whole of society.
The notion that coheres its social base is the construction of a wall along the Mexican border and new detention centers. These symbolize a war against poor immigrants. But the economic policies of the Trump administration have little to do with the demands of its social base. Trump has increased the power of financial monopoly capital, given huge tax and subsidy exemptions to big business and the rich. He has promoted economic and environmental deregulation, undermined unions, privatized education, expanded the penal state, destroyed the little progress which had been made in health care, and waged a relentless war for U.S. hegemony. Hence, Mexicans can feel like they are on the cusp of a well-deserved future.
October 31, 2019.
Madero to Maduro
From Madero to Maduro in Latin America
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
A little more than 100 years ago, Mexico had a very popular president who was well-loved and had been democratically-elected, named Francisco Madero.
Determined to reduce foreign influence and the obscene profits that were extracted from the country, Madero wanted to raise the standard of living of his people.
The financial interests of Wall Street rejected such projects by the president of a country that was within its hegemonic sphere. It then orchestrated a military coup against him and made sure that he was brutally murdered.
Journalist and researcher Martin Sieff — in the January 21 edition Strategic Culture Foundation (Fundación de Cultura Estratégica)website– starting from the orthographic similarity of the surnames Madero and Maduro, clarifies that the president of Mexico to whom he refers is not in any way related to the Bolivarian and Chavista leader Nicolás Maduro, President of Venezuela, but the parallels and contrasts between the two men motivate consideration.
Francisco Madero, the idealistic reformist leader who ruled Mexico as President from 1911 to 1913, did not have the political acumen and common sense shown by the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
Madero naively relied on the commander in chief of the army, General Victoriano Huerta, whom he had inherited from his predecessor, President Porfirio Diaz,. Throughout the 35 years of Diaz’s government, from 1876 to 1911, Huerta had carried out a series of genocidal campaigns against the Yaqui and Mayan natives.
In 1913, Wall Street interests enthusiastically supported Huerta when he carried out a coup against Francisco Madero. The US president at the time, Woodrow Wilson, was a recalcitrant racist who despised the Mexican people, initially supported Huerta’s coup from the start.
The huge financial and mining interests of New York were anxious to continue plundering Mexico’s resources. Those were times when more than 90% of its population lived in virtual slavery in the frightful poverty that Diaz had represented and defended.
In the last decade of Porfirio Diaz’s government –supported by the financial bandits of Wall Street and by the complacent administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft– at least 600,000 people were worked to the death as rural slaves in the properties of Diaz’s supporters.
In Washington, there was not a whisper of disapproval toward Huerta’s coup d’état, who ruled with his usual thuggish brutality for less than a year and a half until he was expelled after a brief but bloody civil war.
Huerta fled to the United States, of course, but then made the mistake of encouraging American business and military leaders alike to openly embrace imperial Germany in order to plan his militaristic return to Mexico.
Huerta died in U.S. military custody in 1916 after a night of binge drinking. Poisoning by his American captors was widely suspected, but the cause could have been simply excessive intake of alcohol. His autopsy revealed terminal liver cirrhosis.
To this day, Huerta is vilified as the mass murderer and cowardly tool of the cynical foreign interests he was, while the well-intentioned, but the ineffective Madero is loved by the Mexican people.
The days elapsed since the beginning of Huerta’s coup and the execution of the president –along with his own brother and vice-president– by an improvised firing squad are remembered as The Tragic Ten Days.
In the following years, Mexico endured all the horrors of a collapsed State with rival gangs slaughtering each other and whoever stood in their way.
The country’s population plummeted from 15 million, in 1910, to 11.6 million a decade later. More than 25 % of the country’s population died in the years of anarchic violence brought about after the murder of President Madero by the hated Huerta.
The tragic decade continues to resonate in Mexico to this day when the current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador resists enormous pressure from the Trump administration to force Mexico into recognizing their puppet, Juan Guaido, as president of Venezuela.
At the same time, Lopez Obrador reveres the martyred president Madero, and painfully remembers the bloodbaths and chaos that the hated Huerta unleashed after toppling him.
Madero naively trusted the honor of the man who had been his army commander, the murderer Huerta. On the contrary, Nicolas Maduro as President of Venezuela, just like his predecessor and political mentor Hugo Chavez, has always made sure of having a high command of the army loyal to the democratically-elected national civilian leaders.
February 25, 2019.
This article may be reproduced by quoting the newspaper POR ESTO! as its source
AMLO Practices what he preaches
AMLO Practices what he preaches
Published: Tuesday 25 December 2018 | 07:39:10 pm.
By Marina Menéndez Quintero
marina@juventudrebelde.cu
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
The new President of Mexico delivers… and makes the most of the time. He could be seen as the other side of social plundering, which in other Latin American countries means the return of the ultra reactionary and extremist right.
The Mayan train will touch every ruin of the ancestors, and will bring tourism, estimated in those areas at about ten million visitors, to each place. He is confident that it will help create new jobs.
His awareness of the need to mitigate the differences between the north and south of the country was also reflected in next year’s budget, which prioritizes the south-southeast as “an act of justice, because it has been the most abandoned region of the country and its time has come”.
He also thought of the workers and decreed a minimum wage increase of 16 percent, convinced that if there are no revenues there is no internal market or income. In addition, he said, people will earn a decent wage, and an historic debt will be settled with the worst paid workers.
The increase is 50 percent in the border areas with the United States, a difference that may be due to the desire that their nationals stay in Mexico and not emigrate to the neighboring nation.
Precisely, the most transcendent action of these first days, because of the repercussions it must have for his country and Central America, is perhaps the materialization of his approach to stop illegal migration, and the decision by his own citizens and those of neighboring countries to go to another country.
Five billion dollars will be dedicated in 2019 to productive projects in Central America. He has already presented the plan to the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, who said he would analyze the project. Hopefully he will support it… and forgets the wall. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is also being consistent in this regard.
Certainly, the doors of social development may be opening for Mexico after being closed for dozens of years, including the recovery of an economy where the neoliberal model had almost reprivatized its main conquest, won by Lazaro Cardenas when he nationalized oil.
The announced creation of a National Guard is in the works and almost ready to be submitted to popular opinion. This body will henceforth be in charge of the security of all Mexico, and leave the army and the rest of the armed forces, for other types of orders.
In order to make sure that his mandate will be enough, AMLO, who insists that he will not lrun for president again, works 16 hours a day so that his term will be doubled and six years will produce twelve years’ worth of work completed, as he said just two days ago to journalists. But time is time, and in real life he only has a six-year term.
Knowing that whoever comes after him can upset everything again, he wants to have a Constituent Assembly and, in fact, has already issued decrees so that each vindicatory step that he is taking is written in ink and in the form of laws.
He is today the opposite side of the right-wing and neoliberal processes that feed on the Argentine population under Cambiemos and Mauricio Macri and, above all, on the hardships and vicissitudes that arelikely to fall on the people of Brazil when, on January 1, the intolerant and reactionary Jair Bolsonaro takes over.
Let’s hope that the Mexican opposition, respectful until today of the popular roots that demonstrated AMLO’s crushing triumph at the polls, does not trip him up or boycott him. And also that the mafias that up to now have profited from public money do not turn against him.
Let Andrés Manuel López Obrador do his job. And may he help our sister nation of Mexico get safely into 2024. That could be a good wish for Latin America on the coming New Year’s Eve.
AMLO in the Zócalo
- English
- Español
Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s full speech at the Zócalo
Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s full speech at the Zócalo — In a festival attended by nearly 160,000 people, López Obrador already mentioned, as president, his 100 government commitments. December 1, 2018.
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Video in Spanish
Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s full speech at the Zócalo — In a festival attended by nearly 160,000 people, López Obrador already mentioned, as president, his 100 government commitments.
Here in the Zócalo of Mexico City, the country’s main public square, after receiving the cane of command from the native peoples of our great nation, I reaffirm the commitment not to lie, not to steal and not to betray the people.
Today I spoke in Congress about the old regime and the new policy to carry out the Fourth Transformation of public life in Mexico; now I want to express what we have already done and are about to begin; what we could well call, a modernity forged from below and for everyone.
I reaffirm our commitments, punctually:
First of all, we are going to give special attention to the indigenous peoples of Mexico; it is an ignominy that our indigenous peoples have lived for centuries under oppression and racism, with poverty and marginalization on their backs. All government programs will have as their preferred population the indigenous peoples of the country’s diverse cultures.
All Mexicans will be served regardless of beliefs, classes, organizations, sex, parties, economic or cultural sectors, but the principle will be applied that, for the good of all, the poor come first.
The children’s rooms of the former Ministry of Social Development will be maintained and the CENDIS promoted by the Labor Party will be regularized; both programs will have guaranteed resources in the budget and will become part of the Welfare and Public Education Secretariats.
Primary and Secondary students from low-income families will receive educational scholarships. All students of high schools, technical schools, vocational and public high schools, will receive a scholarship of 800 pesos per month.
Three hundred thousand young people, in conditions of poverty, who enter or are studying at universities, will be entitled to a scholarship of 2400 pesos per month.
In 2019 will be operating 100 public universities, with careers according to each region of the country to provide quality education and without tuition payment to 64,000 students at the higher level.
Mexico’s cultural heritage will be protected. Artistic training will be promoted from basic education and support will be given to creators and cultural promoters.
Scientific and technological research will be promoted; students and academics will be supported with scholarships and other stimuli for the good of knowledge. Conacyt will coordinate the National Plan for Innovation for the benefit of society and national development with the participation of universities, peoples, scientists and businesses.
The so-called Educational Reform will be cancelled, the right to free education at all levels of schooling will be established in Article 3 of the Constitution, and the government will never again aggravate teachers.
Today begins the plan to support the victims of the earthquakes with work, housing and public services. This includes a program of construction and reconstruction of schools, health centers, public buildings and temples that are part of the country’s cultural heritage.
Also today begins a program of urban improvement in marginalized neighborhoods of the northern border: Tijuana, Mexicali, San Luis Rio Colorado, Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, Acuña, Piedras Negras, Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa and Matamoros.
The right to health will become a reality. The purpose is to guarantee free medical attention and medicines to Mexicans; we will begin in the Social Security medical units located in the poorest areas of the country and little by little the program will be expanded until we manage, in the middle of the six-year period, to establish a first class health system, as in Canada or in the Nordic countries.
The salaries of high officials will be lowered and the salaries of grassroots and unionized workers who earn less than 20,000 pesos a month will be increased proportionally.
The pension will be increased for older adults throughout the country; that is, 1,274 pesos per month will be given to each one. One million poor disabled people, especially children from marginalized towns and colonies, will also receive this support.
Two million 300 thousand unemployed young people will be hired to work as apprentices in productive activities in the countryside and the city, and will earn a salary of 3 thousand 600 pesos per month.
This month we begin the construction of concrete roads in forgotten municipalities of Oaxaca, Guerrero and other states. These roads will be built with workers from the same communities to achieve a multiplier effect: the budget will remain there, the economy will be reactivated from below, jobs will be created with fair wages and works will be done for the benefit of the people.
Small farmers, ejidatarios, communeros or small landowners will receive a six-monthly economic support for the planting of food.
Next year, this program will be applied free of charge in support of all peasants in the state of Guerrero and we will expand it in the rest of the country. In addition, soon we will have enough raw material and will start operating the fertilizer plant in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz.
The small producers of corn, beans, rice, wheat and milk will be bought at guaranteed prices in warehouses or warehouses of Diconsa and Liconsa.
Fishing activities will be encouraged to improve the lives of coastal and riverine communities. Tuna and sardine fishermen will receive a fair price for their products.
Preparations have already begun to plant one million hectares of fruit and timber trees over the next two years, with the goal of producing food, reforesting, improving the environment, creating 400,000 jobs, and rooting people in their communities of origin.
Diconsa and Liconsa will join forces in a single company to supply and distribute food for popular consumption. It will be called Mexican Food Security (SEGALMEX). In the warehouses, stores and dairies of this new agency, a basket of basic foods will be distributed at low prices to combat malnutrition and hunger of the people.
Interest-free loans will be granted to ejidatarios, communeros and small landowners for the acquisition of heifers, cows and stallions.
The artisans, owners of workshops, shops and small businesses, will also receive cheap credits by word of mouth, without so much paperwork and waste of time.
The tax charged to companies for mineral extraction will be transferred to the mining communities.
The price of gasoline, gas, diesel and electricity will not increase, only the inflation component will be applied; in other words, there will be no gasoline.
The support granted by the government to the people will be delivered directly, without intermediaries, to avoid “moches”, corruption and political manipulation. That is why a house by house census is being carried out to identify each beneficiary, give them a card and have them withdraw their support.
The Banco del Bienestar will be created so that poor people, even in the most remote villages, can collect government aid and receive remittances and other income in the same account, as well as maintain their savings with yields and security guarantees.
The increase in the budget to finance the welfare programs will be obtained from savings for not allowing corruption and governing with Republican austerity.
Taxes will not increase beyond inflation and no new taxes will be created. Nor will we increase public debt. We will not spend more than what enters the public treasury.
We will be respectful of the autonomy of the Bank of Mexico and its policies to avoid inflation or devaluations.
A strict policy of republican austerity will be applied. There will be no cronyism, nepotism and influence, none of those scourges of politics. The payroll and assets of public officials and their close relatives will be transparent; we will make few, very few trips abroad and only for justified reasons; new vehicles will not be purchased for officials; only officials responsible for security tasks will have escorts; there will only be three advisors per secretariat; there will be no private medical care, nor exclusive savings banks for officials.
No computer systems will be purchased in the first year of government.
Private secretaries will only be available to the members of the enlarged cabinet.
Trusts or any other mechanism used to hide public funds and evade legality and transparency will be cancelled.
All duplicate structures and programmes (major officials, press offices, publications, legal ombudsmen, procurement, internal comptroller’s office and others) are eliminated and these functions or programmes will be centralised in a single unit or coordination, dependent on the secretariat related to the matters in question.
Government advertising expenditure will be reduced by 50 per cent.
Officials from the Treasury, Communications, Energy and other agencies may not live together in parties, meals, sports games or travel with contractors, large taxpayers, suppliers or investors linked to the public function.
No public official may occupy at home workers at the service of the State, if it is not allowed or has no authorization to do so.
No official, without cause of emergency, may order the closing of streets, the stopping of traffic, or the passing of stops or parking in prisons.
No merchandise existing in public warehouses will be purchased in sufficient quantity.
No offices will be remodeled, and no luxury furniture will be purchased.
Only secretaries and undersecretaries will have the support of chauffeurs.
Unless fully justified, the police and military of the different corporations will not be at the service of civil servants or individuals.
Items for costumes or any protocol and ceremonial expenses dedicated to the President, his close collaborators and relatives will be eliminated.
The assets of the offices at the disposal of public servants will be taken care of to protect the collective patrimony.
Unnecessary expenses abroad will be avoided. The only government offices will be embassies and consulates. There will only be one federal government delegation in the states and all offices will save electricity, water, telephone services, internet, gasoline and other supplies paid for by the treasury.
Citizens will be treated with kindness in public offices and elsewhere, humbly accepting that they are the principals of us, the public servants.
Government purchases will be made in a consolidated manner; through convocation and with citizen observation and the UN transparency office.
Government works contracts will be carried out with the participation of citizens and UN observers.
The hiring of law firms to prepare bills, development plans or any type of analysis, recommendations, reports and other documents that can be prepared with the work and professional capacity of public servants will not be authorized.
The federal government will be decentralized and the secretariats will be located in different states of the republic, because the whole country is Mexico. This process will be carried out on a voluntary basis, without affecting workers in the service of the State; on the contrary, they will have opportunities for the acquisition of housing, education for their children, medical care and social security.
There will be an authentic rule of law. No one will be allowed to violate the Constitution and the laws, and there will be no impunity, privileges or privileges.
Impunity will end; Article 108 of the Constitution will be amended to judge the incumbent President for any crime he commits, just like any other citizen.
Corruption, theft of fuel, illegal carrying of firearms, falsification of invoices for tax evasion, electoral fraud, vote buying and the use of budget to favor candidates and parties will be prohibited and will become a serious crime without the right to bail.
There will be no budget items available to deputies or senators. There will be no more shameful practice of so-called “moches”.
No public official may receive gifts worth more than 5,000 pesos.
In commercial or financial relations with international companies, preference will be given to those originating in countries whose governments are characterized by their honesty and punish without any tolerance bribery or corruption.
As of today, the doors of Los Pinos are open, which has ceased to be the official residence of the president to become a space dedicated to recreation, art and the culture of the people.
The Presidential General Staff became part of the Secretariat of Defense; in the same way, the Cisen disappears. There will be no espionage of opponents or citizens and the successor office will have as its only task to do intelligence work to ensure peace and preserve national security.
The presidential airplane and the entire fleet of airplanes and helicopters that were used for the transfer of high public officials are for sale.
The ex-presidents will no longer receive a pension, nor will civil or military public officials be in their service.
There will be no street inspectors to be supervising commercial, business or service establishments. We are going to trust the citizens and a surveillance program will be implemented by lottery. Bribery or biting will be avoided, we will give confidence to citizens, who under protest of telling the truth will act with rectitude and fulfill their responsibilities.
We reiterate: we are not against those who invest and generate jobs and are committed to the development of Mexico, but against bad wealth.
Tourism will be fostered to boost development and create jobs; also, starting this month, an urban improvement program will begin in the marginalized neighborhoods of five tourist centers: Los Cabos, Puerto Vallarta, Bahía de Banderas, Acapulco and Solidaridad.
The President of the Republic, in accordance with the law, is the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and will never give the order that the Army or Navy massacre the people. The war will end; we will build peace and seek brotherhood among all Mexicans.
Today, the amnesty process began to release political prisoners or victims of reprisals by caciques, officials or governors of the former authoritarian regime. The criminal charges fabricated against activists and social fighters will be dropped. The Ministry of the Interior is in charge of making this determination a reality.
The disappearance of the young people of Ayotzinapa will be thoroughly investigated; the truth will be known and those responsible will be punished.
Freedom of expression will be respected; the government will never apply censorship to any journalist or media.
The Attorney General’s Office will, in fact, have absolute autonomy; it will not receive a slogan from the President of the Republic and its practices will adhere to the principle of liberal law, according to which, “outside the law, nothing and above the law, no one.
We will maintain respectful relations with the Legislative Power and with the Judicial Power and the Executive Power will cease to be the power of the powers.
Since last night the Civil Protection Plan came into effect; the ABC for floods, fires, earthquakes and other disasters.
Foreign policy will be based on diplomatic caution and the principles of self-determination of peoples, non-intervention, peaceful resolution of controversies, legal equality of states, cooperation for development, friendship, peace, defense of human rights, protection of the environment and respect for the rights of migrants; ours, Central Americans and those of all countries and continents.
The relationship with the U.S. government will be one of respect, mutual benefit and good neighborliness. It is time to shift the bilateral relationship toward development cooperation. Creating jobs in Mexico and Central America is the alternative to migration, not coercive measures.
As we promised, the 50 consulates that Mexico has in the United States are going to become ombudsmen for the defense of migrants. We are going to defend the human rights of our countrymen.
Mexico’s rebirth will be achieved by making progress a reality with justice and a way of life based on love for family, neighbor, nature, country and humanity. We will promote material well-being and the well-being of the soul.
The free expression of ideas and religious beliefs and the freedom of the press will be guaranteed. We stand for dialogue, tolerance, diversity and respect for human rights.
We will convene teachers, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, philosophers and professionals from other disciplines, as well as religious, freethinkers, respectable elders and citizens in general for the celebration of a congress in which a Moral Constitution will be drafted, which will help to strengthen national, cultural and spiritual values.
We will also preserve our historical memory. We will promote the reading in general and particularly of history, civility, ethics; we will never forget where we come from; that is why our original cultures, historical transformations and the sacrifice of our heroes will be exalted; for example, next year, 100 years after the assassination of Emiliano Zapata, his name and his motto “Earth and Freedom” will be remembered in all the government’s stationery.
Friends:
I invite all of us to help make these commitments a reality and that each year, here in the Zócalo, we review them one by one and know if they have already been fulfilled or are still pending.
Let’s discuss in all the public squares of Mexico whether we are moving forward or not, with the purpose of providing transparency and ending corruption and impunity. Let’s analyze in the houses, streets and squares if the economic and social situation of our people improves or worsens and let’s always take among all the agreements that best suit society and the nation.
Let’s not stop meeting: let’s always maintain communication. There will be no divorce between the people and the government. I need them because, as Juarez said, “with the people everything, without the people nothing”. Don’t leave me alone because without you I am worth nothing or almost nothing; without you, the conservatives would easily overwhelm me. I ask for your support, because I reiterate the commitment not to fail you; dead first than betraying you.
But above all, let us act with optimism and joy because we have the enormous joy of living in interesting times; we are before a stellar moment in history because together we begin to build the justice and happiness that our people deserve and a new life for our great nation.
The President of the Republic, in accordance with the law, is the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and will never give the order that the Army or Navy massacre the people. The war will end; we will build peace and seek brotherhood among all Mexicans.
Today, the amnesty process began to release political prisoners or victims of reprisals by caciques, officials or governors of the former authoritarian regime. The criminal charges fabricated against activists and social fighters will be dropped. The Ministry of the Interior is in charge of making this determination a reality.
The disappearance of the young people of Ayotzinapa will be thoroughly investigated; the truth will be known and those responsible will be punished.
Freedom of expression will be respected; the government will never apply censorship to any journalist or media.
The Attorney General’s Office will, in fact, have absolute autonomy; it will not receive a slogan from the President of the Republic and its practices will adhere to the principle of liberal law, according to which, “outside the law, nothing and above the law, no one.
We will maintain respectful relations with the Legislative Power and with the Judicial Power and the Executive Power will cease to be the power of the powers.
Since last night the Civil Protection Plan came into effect; the ABC for floods, fires, earthquakes and other disasters.
Foreign policy will be based on diplomatic caution and the principles of self-determination of peoples, non-intervention, peaceful resolution of controversies, legal equality of states, cooperation for development, friendship, peace, defense of human rights, protection of the environment and respect for the rights of migrants; ours, Central Americans and those of all countries and continents.
The relationship with the U.S. government will be one of respect, mutual benefit and good neighborliness. It is time to shift the bilateral relationship toward development cooperation. Creating jobs in Mexico and Central America is the alternative to migration, not coercive measures.
As we promised, the 50 consulates that Mexico has in the United States are going to become ombudsmen for the defense of migrants. We are going to defend the human rights of our countrymen.
Mexico’s rebirth will be achieved by making progress a reality with justice and a way of life based on love for family, neighbor, nature, country and humanity. We will promote material well-being and the well-being of the soul.
The free expression of ideas and religious beliefs and the freedom of the press will be guaranteed. We stand for dialogue, tolerance, diversity and respect for human rights.
We will convene teachers, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, philosophers and professionals from other disciplines, as well as religious, freethinkers, respectable elders and citizens in general for the celebration of a congress in which a Moral Constitution will be drafted, which will help to strengthen national, cultural and spiritual values.
We will also preserve our historical memory. We will promote the reading in general and particularly of history, civility, ethics; we will never forget where we come from; that is why our original cultures, historical transformations and the sacrifice of our heroes will be exalted; for example, next year, 100 years after the assassination of Emiliano Zapata, his name and his motto “Earth and Freedom” will be remembered in all the government’s stationery.
Friends:
I invite all of us to help make these commitments a reality and that each year, here in the Zócalo, we review them one by one and know if they have already been fulfilled or are still pending.
Let’s discuss in all the public squares of Mexico whether we are moving forward or not, with the purpose of providing transparency and ending corruption and impunity. Let’s analyze in the houses, streets and squares if the economic and social situation of our people improves or worsens and let’s always take among all the agreements that best suit society and the nation.
Let’s not stop meeting: let’s always maintain communication. There will be no divorce between the people and the government. I need them because, as Juarez said, “with the people everything, without the people nothing”. Don’t leave me alone because without you I am worth nothing or almost nothing; without you, the conservatives would easily overwhelm me. I ask for your support, because I reiterate the commitment not to fail you; dead first than betraying you.
But above all, let us act with optimism and joy because we have the enormous joy of living in interesting times; we are before a stellar moment in history because together we begin to build the justice and happiness that our people deserve and a new life for our great nation.
Long live Mexico! Long live Mexico! Long live Mexico!
Discurso íntegro de Andrés Manuel López Obrador en el Zócalo
Discurso íntegro de Andrés Manuel López Obrador en el Zócalo — En un festival al que llegaron cerca de 160 mil personas, López Obrador mencionó, ya como presidente, sus 100 compromisos de gobierno. 1 de diciembre de 2018.
Video en español
https://youtu.be/-FQMk6OlBbg
Aquí en el Zócalo de la Ciudad de México, principal plaza pública del país, luego de recibir el bastón de mando de los pueblos originarios de nuestra gran nación, reafirmo el compromiso de no mentir, no robar y no traicionar al pueblo.
Hoy hable en el Congreso sobre el antiguo régimen y de la nueva política para llevar a cabo la Cuarta Transformación de la vida pública de México; ahora quiero expresar lo que ya hemos hecho y estamos por iniciar; lo que bien podríamos llamar, una modernidad forjada desde abajo y para todos.
Reafirmo nuestros compromisos, puntualmente:
En primer lugar, vamos a darle atención especial a los pueblos indígenas de México; es una ignominia que nuestros pueblos originarios vivan desde hace siglos bajo la opresión y el racismo, con la pobreza y la marginación a cuestas. Todos los programas del gobierno tendrán como población preferente a los pueblos indígenas de las diversas culturas del país.
Se atenderá a todos los mexicanos sin importar creencias, clases, organizaciones, sexo, partidos, sectores económicos o culturales, pero se aplicará el principio de que, por el bien de todos, primero los pobres.
Se mantendrán las estancias infantiles de la antigua Secretaría de Desarrollo Social y se regularizarán los CENDIS promovidos por el Partido del Trabajo; ambos programas tendrán recursos garantizados en el presupuesto y pasarán a formar parte de las secretarías de Bienestar y de Educación Pública.
Los estudiantes de Primaria y Secundaria que provengan de familias de escasos recursos económicos recibirán becas educativas. Todos los estudiantes de los Colegios de Bachilleres, escuelas técnicas, vocacionales y preparatorias públicas, recibirán una beca de 800 pesos mensuales.
Trescientos mil jóvenes, en condiciones de pobreza, que ingresen o estén estudiando en universidades, tendrán derecho a una beca de 2400 pesos mensuales.
En 2019 estarán funcionando 100 universidades públicas, con carreras acordes a cada región del país para atender con educación de calidad y sin pago de colegiatura a 64 mil estudiantes del nivel superior.
Se protegerá el patrimonio cultural de México. Se impulsará la formación artística desde la educación básica y se apoyará a creadores y promotores culturales.
Se promoverá la investigación científica y tecnológica; se apoyará a estudiantes y académicos con becas y otros estímulos en bien del conocimiento. El Conacyt coordinará el Plan Nacional para la Innovación en beneficio de la sociedad y del desarrollo nacional con la participación de universidades, pueblos, científicos y empresas.
Se cancelará la llamada Reforma Educativa, se establecerá en el Artículo 3º de la Constitución el derecho a la educación gratuita en todos los niveles de escolaridad y el gobierno no agraviará nunca más a maestras y maestros.
Hoy comienza el plan para apoyar a los damnificados de los sismos con trabajo, vivienda y servicios públicos. Esto incluye un programa de construcción y reconstrucción de escuelas, centros de salud, edificios públicos y templos que forman parte del patrimonio cultural del país.
También hoy comienza un programa de mejoramiento urbano en colonias marginadas de la frontera norte: Tijuana, Mexicali, San Luis Río Colorado, Nogales, Ciudad Juárez, Acuña, Piedras Negras, Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa y Matamoros.
Se hará realidad el derecho a la salud. El propósito es garantizar a los mexicanos atención médica y medicamentos gratuitos; comenzaremos en las unidades médicas del Seguro Social ubicadas en las zonas más pobres del país y poco a poco ser irá ampliando el programa hasta que logremos, a mediados del sexenio, establecer un sistema de salud de primera, como en Canadá o en los países nórdicos.
Bajarán los sueldos de los altos funcionarios y aumentaran proporcionalmente los sueldos de los trabajadores de base y sindicalizados que ganan menos de 20 mil pesos al mes.
Se aumentará la pensión a los adultos mayores en todo el país; es decir, se le entregará a cada uno, mil 274 pesos mensuales. También recibirán este apoyo un millón de discapacitados pobres, en especial, niñas y niños de pueblos y colonias marginadas.
Dos millones 300 mil jóvenes desempleados serán contratados para trabajar como aprendices en actividades productivas en el campo y la ciudad, y ganarán un sueldo de 3 mil 600 pesos mensuales.
En este mes iniciamos la construcción de caminos de concreto en municipios olvidados de Oaxaca, Guerrero y otros estados. Estos caminos se van a construir con trabajadores de las mismas comunidades para lograr un efecto multiplicador: el presupuesto quedará allí mismo, se reactivará la economía desde abajo, se crearán empleos con salarios justos y se harán las obras en beneficio de los pueblos.
Los pequeños productores del campo, ejidatarios, comuneros o pequeños propietarios recibirán un apoyo económico semestral para la siembra de alimentos.
Iniciará un programa de entrega de fertilizantes cuidando que no se dañen los suelos, en beneficio de productores agrícolas; el año próximo, este programa se aplicará de manera gratuita en apoyo a todos los campesinos del estado de Guerrero y así iremos ampliándolo en el resto del país. Además, pronto tendremos materia prima suficiente e iniciará la operación de la planta de fertilizante de Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz.
A los pequeños productores de maíz, frijol, arroz, trigo y leche se les comprarán estos alimentos a precios de garantía en almacenes o depósitos de Diconsa y Liconsa.
Se fomentará la actividad pesquera para mejorar la vida de las comunidades costeras y ribereñas. Los pescadores de atún y sardina recibirán un precio justo por sus productos.
Ya comenzaron los preparativos para plantar en los próximos dos años árboles frutales y maderables en un millón de hectáreas, con el objetivo de producir alimentos, reforestar, mejorar el medio ambiente, crear 400 mil empleos y arraigar a la gente en sus comunidades de origen.
Se unirán Diconsa y Liconsa en una sola empresa para el abasto y la distribución de alimentos de consumo popular. Se llamará Seguridad Alimentaria Mexicana (SEGALMEX). En los almacenes, tiendas y lecherías de esta nueva dependencia se distribuirá una canasta de alimentos básicos a precios bajos para combatir la desnutrición y el hambre del pueblo.
Se otorgará créditos a la palabra y sin intereses a ejidatarios, comuneros y pequeños propietarios para la adquisición de novillonas, vacas y sementales.
Los artesanos, dueños de talleres, tiendas y pequeñas empresas, también recibirán créditos a la palabra, baratos y sin tantos trámites y pérdida de tiempo.
Se transferirá a las comunidades mineras el impuesto que se cobra a las empresas por la extracción del mineral.
No aumentará el precio de las gasolinas, el gas, el diésel y la luz, solo se le aplicará el componente de inflación; es decir, no habrá gasolinazos.
Los apoyos que otorgue el gobierno al pueblo se entregarán de manera directa, sin intermediarios, para evitar “moches”, corrupción y manipulación política. Por eso se está levantando un censo casa por casa para identificar a cada beneficiario, entregarle una tarjeta y que él mismo retire sus apoyos.
Se creará el Banco del Bienestar para que la gente pobre, hasta en los pueblos más apartados, pueda cobrar la ayuda del gobierno y en esa misma cuenta pueda también recibir remesas y otros ingresos, así como mantener sus ahorros con rendimientos y garantías de seguridad.
El incremento del presupuesto para financiar los programas del bienestar se obtendrán de ahorros por no permitir la corrupción y gobernar con austeridad republicana.
No aumentarán los impuestos más allá de la inflación y no se crearán nuevos impuestos. Tampoco aumentaremos la deuda pública. No gastaremos más de lo que ingrese a la hacienda pública.
Seremos respetuosos de la autonomía del Banco de México y de sus políticas para evitar que haya inflación o devaluaciones.
Se aplicará una estricta política de austeridad republicana. No habrá amiguismo, nepotismo e influyentismo, ninguna de esas lacras de la política. Serán transparentes la nómina y los bienes de los funcionarios públicos y de sus familiares cercanos; haremos pocos, muy pocos, viajes al extranjero y solo por causa justificada; no sé comprarán vehículos nuevos para funcionarios; únicamente tendrán escoltas los funcionarios responsables de tareas de seguridad; solo habrá tres asesores por secretaría; no habrá atención médica privada, ni cajas de ahorro exclusivas para funcionarios.
No se comprarán sistemas de cómputo en el primer año de gobierno.
Sólo tendrán secretarios particulares los funcionarios integrantes del gabinete ampliado.
Se cancelarán fideicomisos o cualquier otro mecanismo utilizado para ocultar fondos públicos y evadir la legalidad y la transparencia.
Se suprimen todas las estructuras y programas duplicados (oficialías mayores, oficinas de prensa, publicaciones, defensorías jurídicas, compras, contraloría interna y otras) y estas funciones o programas se centralizarán en una sola unidad o coordinación, dependiente de la secretaría relacionada con los asuntos en cuestión.
Se reducirá en 50 por ciento el gasto de publicidad del gobierno.
Los funcionarios de Hacienda, Comunicaciones, Energía y otras dependencias, no podrán convivir en fiestas, comidas, juegos deportivos o viajar con contratistas, grandes contribuyentes, proveedores o inversionistas vinculados a la función pública.
Ningún funcionario público podrá ocupar en su domicilio a trabajadores al servicio del Estado, si no lo tiene permitido o no cuenta con autorización para ello.
Ningún funcionario, sin causa de emergencia, podrá ordenar cerrar calles, detener el tráfico o pasarse los altos o estacionarse en lugares prohibidos.
No se comprará ninguna mercancía que exista en los almacenes públicos en cantidad suficiente.
No se remodelarán oficinas, ni se comprará mobiliario de lujo.
Sólo tendrán apoyo de choferes los secretarios y subsecretarios.
Salvo plena justificación, los policías y militares de las distintas corporaciones no estarán al servicio de funcionarios o particulares.
Se eliminarán partidas para vestuario o cualquier gasto de protocolo y ceremonial dedicado al Presidente, a sus colaboradores cercanos y a familiares.
Se cuidarán los bienes de las oficinas a disposición de servidores públicos para proteger el patrimonio colectivo.
Se evitarán gastos innecesarios en el extranjero. Las únicas oficinas del gobierno serán las embajadas y los consulados. Solo habrá una delegación del gobierno federal en los estados y en todas las oficinas se ahorrará energía eléctrica, agua, servicios telefónicos, de internet, gasolinas y otros insumos pagados por el erario.
Se tratará con amabilidad a los ciudadanos en las oficinas públicas y en cualquier lugar, aceptando con humildad que ellos son los mandantes de nosotros, los servidores públicos.
Las compras del gobierno se harán de manera consolidada; mediante convocatoria y con observación ciudadana y de la oficina de transparencia de la ONU.
Los contratos de obra del gobierno se llevarán a cabo con la participación de ciudadanos y de observadores de la ONU.
No se autorizará la contratación de despachos para elaborar proyectos de ley, planes de desarrollo o cualquier tipo de análisis, recomendaciones, informes y otros documentos que puedan elaborarse con el trabajo y la capacidad profesional de los servidores públicos.
Se descentralizará el gobierno federal y las secretarías van a estar ubicadas en distintos estados de la república, porque todo el país es México. Este proceso se llevará a cabo de manera voluntaria, sin afectar a los trabajadores al servicio del Estado; por el contrario, tendrán oportunidades para la adquisición de viviendas, educación para sus hijos, atención médica y seguridad social.
Habrá un auténtico estado de derecho. A nadie le estará permitido violar la Constitución y las leyes, y no habrá impunidad, fueros ni privilegios.
Se acabará la impunidad; se reformará el Artículo 108 de la Constitución para juzgar al Presidente en funciones por cualquier delito que cometa, igual que a cualquier ciudadano.
Estará prohibido y se convertirá en delito grave, sin derecho a fianza, la corrupción, el robo de combustible, la portación ilegal de armas de fuego, la falsificación de facturas para la evasión fiscal, el fraude electoral, la compra de votos y el uso de presupuesto para favorecer a candidatos y partidos.
No habrá partidas en el presupuesto a disposición de diputados o senadores. Se acabará la vergonzosa práctica de los llamados “moches”.
Ningún funcionario público podrá recibir regalos cuyo valor exceda los 5 mil pesos.
En las relaciones comerciales o financieras con empresas internacionales se dará preferencia a aquellas originarias de países cuyos gobiernos se caractericen por su honestidad y castiguen sin tolerancia alguna las prácticas de sobornos o de corrupción.
Desde hoy están abiertas las puertas de Los Pinos, que ha dejado de ser la residencia oficial del presidente para convertirse en un espacio dedicado a la recreación, el arte y la cultura del pueblo.
Ya el Estado Mayor Presidencial pasó a formar parte de la Secretaría de la Defensa; de la misma manera desaparece el Cisen. No habrá espionaje a opositores ni a ciudadanos y la oficina sucesora tendrá como única encomienda hacer labores de inteligencia para garantizar la paz y preservar la seguridad nacional.
Está en venta el avión presidencial y toda la flotilla de aviones y helicópteros que eran utilizados para el traslado de altos funcionarios públicos.
Ya no recibirán pensión los expresidentes, ni tendrán a su servicio funcionarios púbicos sean civiles o militares.
No habrá inspectores de vía pública para estar supervisando a establecimientos comerciales, empresariales o de servicios. Vamos a confiar en los ciudadanos y se implementará un programa de vigilancia por sorteo. Se evitará el soborno o la mordida, otorgaremos confianza a los ciudadanos, quienes bajo protesta de decir verdad actuarán con rectitud y cumplirán con sus responsabilidades.
Reiteramos: no estamos en contra de quienes invierten generan empleos y se comprometen con el desarrollo de México, sino de la riqueza mal habida.
Se fomentará el turismo para impulsar el desarrollo y crear empleos; también, desde este mes, iniciará un programa de mejoramiento urbano en las colonias marginadas de cinco centros turísticos: Los Cabos, Puerto Vallarta, Bahía de Banderas, Acapulco y Solidaridad.
Se construirá el Tren Maya para comunicar por este medio de transporte rápido y moderno a turistas y pasajeros nacionales en los estados de Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán y Quintana Roo.
Se creará un corredor económico y comercial en el Istmo de Tehuantepec que comunicará Asia y la costa este de EU. Se construirá una vía ferroviaria para contenedores; se ampliará la carretera; se rehabilitarán los puertos de Salina Cruz y Coatzacoalcos; se aprovecharán petróleo, gas, agua, viento y electricidad de la región; se instalarán plantas de ensamblaje y manufactureras, y habrá subsidios fiscales para promover la inversión y crear empleos.
Vamos a destinar mayor inversión pública para producir con urgencia más petróleo, gas y energía eléctrica y así enfrentar la crisis que dejaron los políticos neoliberales y los responsables de la llamada reforma energética. Llamo a los técnicos y obreros petroleros, en activo o jubilados, para actuar con patriotismo como se hizo en los tiempos del general Lázaro Cárdenas, y a que volvamos a rescatar la industria petrolera nacional.
Se rehabilitarán las seis refinerías existentes y se iniciará, en unos días más, la construcción de una nueva refinería en Dos Bocas, Paraíso, Tabasco, para lograr que en tres años se produzca en México toda la gasolina que consumimos.
Se detendrá el plan de desmantelamiento de la Comisión Federal de Electricidad; ni una planta más será cerrada, por el contrario, se modernizarán las existentes y se le dará atención especial a las hidroeléctricas para producir más energía limpia y de menor costo. Impulsaremos el desarrollo de fuentes de energía alternativas renovables, como la eólica, la solar, la geotérmica y la mareomotriz.
Protegeremos la diversidad biológica y cultural de México. Impulsaremos prácticas agroecológicas que aumenten la productividad sin dañar a la naturaleza. No se permitirá la introducción y el uso de semillas transgénicas.
No usaremos métodos de extracción de materias primas que afecten la naturaleza y agoten las vertientes de agua como el fracking.
No se permitirá ningún proyecto económico, productivo, comercial o turístico que afecte el medio ambiente. Se evitará la contaminación del suelo, agua y aire y se protegerá la flora y la fauna. No se privatizará el agua.
Habrá cobertura universal en telecomunicaciones y se conectará al país con internet utilizando la infraestructura y las líneas de la Comisión Federal de Electricidad. Este servicio será gratuito en carreteras, plazas, escuelas, hospitales e instalaciones públicas.
En tres años quedará solucionado en definitiva el problema de la saturación del actual aeropuerto de la Ciudad de México; para entonces ya estarán funcionando las vialidades, dos pistas nuevas y la terminal de pasajeros en la base aérea de Santa Lucía, con lo cual se salvará el Lago de Texcoco y nos habremos ahorrado 100 mil millones de pesos.
Desde el 1 de enero se creará la zona libre en los 3 mil 180 kilómetros de frontera con Estados Unidos; es decir, el año entrante en esa franja de nuestro país se impulsarán actividades productivas, se promoverá la inversión, se crearán empleos, bajará el IVA del 16 al 8 por ciento y el Impuesto Sobre la Renta será del 20 por ciento. Costarán lo mismo los combustibles de este y de aquel lado de frontera y aumentará al doble el salario mínimo.
El salario mínimo nunca se fijará por debajo de la inflación, como llegó a suceder en el periodo neoliberal.
Se reformará el Artículo 35 de la Constitución para quitar todos los obstáculos y candados en la celebración de consultas ciudadanas, a fin de que el pueblo tenga siempre el derecho a participar en las decisiones de interés público.
Cumpliré el compromiso de someterme a la revocación del mandato; el primer domingo de julio de 2021, habrá una consulta para preguntarle a los mexicanos si continúo en la presidencia o si renuncio, porque como lo creo y lo he dicho muchas veces, el pueblo pone y el pueblo quita, el pueblo es soberano.
No habrá divorcio entre el poder y el pueblo, nunca perderé la comunicación con ustedes, con la gente; estaré cinco días a la semana en municipios y estados del país recogiendo los sentimientos del pueblo y resolviendo problemas y evaluando el avance de los programas de desarrollo y bienestar.
Todos los días, a partir del lunes próximo, desde las 6 de la mañana encabezaré en el Palacio Nacional, la reunión del Gabinete de Seguridad para garantizar la paz y la tranquilidad a los mexicanos.
Se creará, si lo aprueban el pueblo y el Congreso, una Guardia Nacional para garantizar la seguridad pública en el país.
Se van a constituir 266 coordinaciones de seguridad pública en todo el país atendidas por la guardia nacional para proteger a los ciudadanos que son víctimas de asesinatos, secuestros, robos y otros delitos.
El presidente de la República, de conformidad con la ley, es el Comandante Supremo de las Fuerzas Armadas, y nunca dará la orden de que el Ejército o la Marina masacren al pueblo. Se acabará la guerra; construiremos la paz y buscaremos la hermandad entre todos los mexicanos.
Hoy inició el proceso de amnistía para dejar en libertad a presos políticos o víctimas de represalias de caciques, funcionarios o gobernantes del antiguo régimen autoritario. Se cancelarán las acusaciones penales fabricadas en contra de activistas y luchadores sociales. La Secretaría de Gobernación tiene a su cargo hacer realidad esta determinación.
Se investigará a fondo la desaparición de los jóvenes de Ayotzinapa; se conocerá la verdad y se castigará a los responsables.
Se respetará la libertad de expresión; nunca el gobierno aplicará censura a ningún periodista o medio de comunicación.
La Fiscalía General contará, en los hechos, con absoluta autonomía; no recibirá consigna del Presidente de la República y sus prácticas se apegarán al principio del derecho liberal, según el cual, “al margen de la ley, nada y por encima de la ley, nadie”.
Mantendremos relaciones respetuosas con el Poder Legislativo y con el Poder Judicial y el Poder Ejecutivo dejará de ser el poder de los poderes.
Desde anoche entró en vigor el Plan de Protección Civil; el ABC para los casos de inundaciones, incendios, temblores y otros desastres.
La política exterior se sustentará en la cautela diplomática y en los principios de autodeterminación de los pueblos, no intervención, solución pacífica de controversias, igualdad jurídica de los estados, cooperación para el desarrollo, la amistad, la paz, la defensa de los derechos humanos, la protección del medio ambiente y el respeto a los derechos de los migrantes; los nuestros, los centroamericanos y los de todos los países y continentes.
La relación con el gobierno de Estados Unidos será de respeto, beneficio mutuo y buena vecindad. Es momento de cambiar la relación bilateral hacia la cooperación para el desarrollo. Crear empleos en México y en Centroamérica es la alternativa a la migración, no las medidas coercitivas.
Como nos comprometimos, los 50 consulados que México tiene en Estado Unidos se van a convertir en defensorías para la defensa de migrantes. Vamos a defender los derechos humanos de nuestros paisanos.
Se logrará el renacimiento de México haciendo realidad el progreso con justicia y una manera de vivir sustentada en el amor a la familia, al prójimo, a la naturaleza, a la patria y a la humanidad. Promoveremos el bienestar material y el bienestar del alma.
Se garantizará la libre manifestación de ideas y de creencias religiosas y la libertad de prensa. Estamos por el diálogo, la tolerancia, la diversidad y el respeto a los derechos humanos.
Vamos a convocar a maestros, antropólogos, psicólogos, sociólogos, filósofos y profesionales de otras disciplinas, así como a religiosos, librepensadores, ancianos respetables y ciudadanos en general para la celebración de un congreso en el cual se elabore una Constitución Moral, que ayude a fortalecer valores nacionales, culturales y espirituales.
Asimismo, vamos a preservar nuestra memoria histórica. Se promoverá la lectura en general y particularmente de la historia, el civismo, la ética; nunca se olvidará de dónde venimos; por eso se exaltarán nuestras culturas originarias, las transformaciones históricas y el sacrificio de nuestros héroes; por ejemplo, el año próximo que se cumplen 100 años del asesinato de Emiliano Zapata, en toda la papelería del gobierno se recordará su nombre y su lema “Tierra y Libertad”.
Amigas y amigos:
Les invito a que ayudemos todos convertir en realidad estos compromisos y que cada año, aquí en el Zócalo, los repasemos uno por uno y podamos saber si ya se han cumplido o siguen pendientes.
Discutamos en todas las plazas públicas de México si avanzamos o no, con el propósito de que haya transparencia y acabar con la corrupción y la impunidad. Analicemos en las casas, calles y plazas si mejora o empeora la situación económica y social de nuestro pueblo y tomemos siempre entre todos los acuerdos que más convengan a la sociedad y a la nación.
No dejemos de encontrarnos: mantengamos siempre la comunicación. No habrá divorcio entre pueblo y gobierno. Yo les necesito, porque como decía Juárez “con el pueblo todo, sin el pueblo nada”. No me dejen solo porque sin ustedes no valgo nada o casi nada; sin ustedes, los conservadores me avasallarían fácilmente. Yo les pido apoyo, porque reitero el compromiso de no fallarles; primero muerto que traicionarles.
Pero por encima de todo, actuemos con optimismo y alegría porque tenemos la dicha enorme de vivir tiempos interesantes; estamos ante un momento estelar de la historia porque entre todos empezamos a construir la justicia y la felicidad que nuestro pueblo se merece y una nueva vida a nuestra gran nación.
¡Viva México! ¡Viva México! ¡Viva México!
SOURCE:
Mexico Returns to Its Place in the Vanguard
Mexico Returns to Its Place in the Vanguard
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
Mexico and Latin America are partying! Mexico elected a President who can rise to the nation’s role in history!
A broad, overwhelming and unquestionable electoral victory made Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) the next President of the United States of Mexico. His candidacy was put forth by the Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (Morena), a party he founded and whose most recent national registration, forming the Together We Will Make History alliance, together with the Labor and Social Encounter parties.
His prestige rests mainly on his honesty and his election theme, la esperanze de Mexico (Mexico’s Hope) which has now become a reality.
The popular victory of AMLO in the homeland of the priest Hidalgo, Benito Juárez, Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa and Lázaro Cárdenas constitutes a political history of Latin America and the Caribbean. It is is a milestone in the political history of Latin America and the Caribbean. It significantly shifts the balance of power in favor of popular struggles, Latin American unity and the support for progressive governments against neoliberalism.
The rise of a popular government whose foreign policy heralds a constant struggle in defense of sovereignty, independence, non-intervention and peaceful resolution of conflicts. These were given in the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace agreed by the the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in its Second Havana Summit, a vital instrument for the defense of peace in the region.
Insecurity and violence; social inequalities and poverty, all linked to rampant corruption and a tense relationship with the United States, are some of the most urgent and arduous challenges that AMLO will have to face. He will take the presidency of Mexico on December 1, after a five-month transition. In addition, the US president has threatened to build a wall on the Mexican border to isolate himself from the world and to have it paid for by the Mexican treasury
With regard to Mexico’s and Latin America’s relations in with their neighbor to the north, this proverb always resonates: “Mexico, so far away from God and so close to the United States,” Today we recall the prophetic study published by AMLO in April 2017 in Le Monde Diplomatique, on the strategy that would lead to Donald Trump to the US presidency and the situation that would be created for Mexico under Trump’s presidency:
“About two years ago, the future president (Trump) and his advisers began to systematically study the mood of the American people. Among the most frequent feelings they cited were: disappointment, irritation, anger, sadness and despair. It was enough to take advantage of this general mood, to articulate it and to push this interpretation forward in the hope that it would permeate the whole society.
“Long before Trump’s inauguration, it was clear that his campaign, the anti-Mexican approach, did not originate in an economic analysis of his country, but rather in an economic one. that was (and still is) in the political interest of taking advantage of nationalist sentiment in the U.S..”
Mexico’s new president-elect promises to cut the “top of its head” off privileges”, ending the “power mafia”, ending the the corruption by example and giving priority to the poor.
This son of merchants, born on November 13, 1953 in Tepetitán, Tabasco, and known by his initials as AMLO, embodies for many Mexicans the desire for change.
He is a mass leader who conveys confidence and trust in his speech. With a single call from him, tens of thousands of fill up the public squares.
From an ideological point of view, he is not easy to pigeonhole, but the media and the people generally think of him as a politician of the left or as an honest politician.
In economic terms, he is committed to the internal market, to set prices guarantees for the countryside and to review the opening of the oil sector to private capital.
In the social area, AMLO seeks to reduce inequalities but steers clear of issues that would fall within a traditional agenda of the left, such as abortion and same-sex marriages.
After having lost in the 2006 and 2012 elections, in the current campaign, he moderated his tone to attract sectors that previously distrusted his progressive preaching but never got past it. of his identification with the humble.
In fact, he proposes a change comparable to the big transformations in history such as the Mexican Revolution of 1910, as part of the political system.
He has declared that he is inspired by the fathers of the homeland, who left lessons on the fight for justice, for democracy, and for national sovereignty.
July 5, 2018.
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