<h4>Lawmakers defy AMLO leftists protesting measures supporters say will overhaul industry as production declines</h4>
Ignoring thousands of left-wing demonstrators. lawmakers Tuesday and passed constitutional reforms aimed at allowing foreigners limited investment in Mexico’s vulnerable petroleum industry.
After debating over the protests of leftist legislators who had taken over the podium in the Chamber of Deputies, the lawmakers passed the measures 395-82.
“With this reform the national economy wins; all Mexicans win,” President Felipe Calderon said in a nationally televised message several hours after the vote. “And it’s particularly important that Mexicans have reached agreement at a time when the world economy goes through a particularly adverse situation.”
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Turning to Mexico’s increasing narcotics consumption, President Felipe Calderon has proposed stiffer penalties for small-time drug dealers while suspending punishment for addicts who agree to enter rehabilitation.
“Drugs are the slavery of this century,” Calderon said in a speech Friday. “Criminals seek to make slaves of children and youths. They seek to place drugs, sometimes free of charge, in schools, in neighborhoods, to create addictions, to generate dependency.”
Calderon’s initiative, part of a package of proposals aimed at bolstering his offensive against the country’s powerful drug traffickers, also includes procedures for cleaning up Mexico’s police forces and getting them to better coordinate enforcement efforts.
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Migrant rights activists applauded a vote by Mexico’s Congress to remove long-standing criminal penalties for undocumented migrants found in the country.The measure passed unanimously in the lower house on Tuesday, a day after Senate approval. President Felipe Calderon’s office declined to say whether he would sign the popular measure into law.
Mexican lawmakers saw the harsh penalties as an anachronism, and some noted Mexico also owes migrants better treatment.
Immigrants here, mostly Central Americans trying to reach the U.S., are often robbed, mistreated and subject to extortion by bandits and even police.
“It is very positive that they have removed the criminal penalties from the current law,” said Karina Arias, the spokeswoman for Sin Fronteras, a Mexican group that promotes rights for migrants in Mexico. “It is a big step forward.”
Current law lays out punishments of 11/2 to 6 years, while the new measure makes undocumented immigration a minor offense punishable by fines equivalent to about US$475 (euro300) to US$2,400 (euro1,535).
Some Mexican officials acknowledged that the current harsh penalties weakened Mexico’s position in arguing for better treatment of its own migrants in the United States.
Arias said Mexico “is in a much better position” after voting for eliminating prison terms that are seldom enforced anyway. Most undocumented migrants caught in Mexico are simply deported.
Congresswoman Irma Pineiro of the small New Alliance Party said Mexico has a moral duty to protect migrants.
“Mexico is politically and morally obligated to treat migrants with dignity and to make a commitment to human rights, as a country that both exports and receives migrants,” she said.
Mexico’s lower house of Congress on Tuesday approved a sweeping judicial reform that would introduce public, oral trials and guarantee the presumption of innocence, but lawmakers deleted a proposal to allow police to search homes without a warrant.In the 462-6 vote with two abstentions, legislators approved the reform bill, which would also allow information from recorded phone calls to be used as evidence in criminal cases if at least one of the conversation’s participants agrees.
The reform must still be approved by the Senate and then by at least 17 of Mexico’s 31 states.
The original proposal, submitted last year, would have allowed police to enter homes without a judge’s warrant if they believed a person’s life or safety were in danger, or if a crime was being committed inside.
But human rights groups harshly criticized the proposed expansion of police powers, and legislators finally agreed to drop that clause.
Both the lower house and Senate approved the measure last year as well, but with minor changes that required Tuesday’s second vote in the lower house. The Senate must also give the change’s second approval.
The reforms do not include trial by jury, but public oral trials, already in place in some states, would go nationwide, replacing closed-door proceedings where judges depend mostly on written evidence and defendants cannot confront their accusers.
Suspects will also be represented by qualified public defenders instead of “advocates” who often lack law degrees. The changes would also guarantee that, for the first time in history, the presumption of innocence will be guaranteed in Mexico’s constitution.
MEXICO CITY — Mexican legislators are expected today to overhaul the country’s famously ineffective justice system, implementing public trials nationwide while turning up the heat on organized crime.
The long-awaited “justice reform” bill — the result of several years of fierce debate among security experts, academics and human rights activists — would amend the constitution to include the presumption of innocence and other guarantees. It would also provide alternatives to jail for minor crimes, in an attempt to reduce overcrowding in Mexican prisons.
Many of the new rights, however, would not apply to suspected members of the criminal mafias, who could be held for up to 40 days without charges. The bill would also insert in the constitution a liberal definition of “organized crime” as “a group of three or more people formed with the intention of repeatedly breaking the law.”
The provisions are among several concessions to the security forces, who are demanding new legal weapons in their fight against drug cartels.
Continue reading in the Houston Chronicle, including the comments of the xenophobes who troll the Chron
MONTERREY, Mexico — Cecilia Reyes can’t say where the first Democratic caucus was held but knows Hillary Clinton took New Hampshire by three points over her main opponent — whose name she can’t remember but she knows has Kenyan roots. Reyes, a Mexican citizen, can’t vote in November’s U.S. presidential election. But she’s pulling for the former first lady.
“She has a solid social and human background,” said the civil servant, 40. “And she knows about politics.”
Mexico knows politics, too.
Due to the impasse on U.S. immigration reform, recent free trade controversies over beans and corn, and unprecedented Mexican news coverage of the U.S. primaries, Mexico is tuning in — earlier than ever — to the race for the White House.
“We’re following the primaries with attention. And that’s new,” said Roy Campos, president of Consulta Mitofsky, a Mexico City pollster.
Of 10 pedestrians in downtown Monterrey interviewed on a blustery afternoon last week, Reyes was in a class of her own with her knowledge of the primaries and candidates.
Still, eight of the 10 said they knew the U.S. presidential election is this year. Seven named Clinton as one of the contenders, and three could identify Barack Obama, one of her Democratic opponents.
Not one could name a candidate for the Republican nomination, though.
“Democrats have been very popular in Mexico,” said Rogelio Rios, an opinion section editor for El Norte, Monterrey’s largest daily newspaper.
Bill Clinton’s eight-year tenure in the 1990s “was a good period for Mexico,” and many here remember the Clinton-backed Mexico bailout after the 1994 peso collapse, Rios said.
The economic prosperity of the Clinton years spilled into Mexico, while the risks for undocumented immigrants worsened during the George W. Bush years — a big consideration, since Mexicans working in the United States now send home more than $20 billion a year to help out their families.
Nine respondents in the informal street survey said immigration was the most important bilateral issue.
Almost half of Mexicans have a family member in the United States, according to an IPSOS-Bimsa/El Universal poll carried out last year, and Mexicans are genuinely frustrated by lack of progress on the immigration issue — and angered by evening newscasts about violence toward migrants.
“It was a very marked anti-immigration tendency,” Isaías Villalobos, 30, a franchise restaurant operator, said of the outgoing administration. “I hope there is change in the United States.”
Mexican news organizations are running primary and caucus results on their front pages and evening newscasts.
Grupo Reforma, El Norte’s parent company, last week launched a blog by an international affairs columnist, providing a running commentary on the candidates and process.
One reason for the coverage is the diverse backgrounds of the candidates, said Leo Zuckermann, a political scientist at CIDE, a Mexico City university.
“We’re seeing a mosaic of possibilities that have not been the traditional ones in the United States,” Zuckermann said. “I think that has awoken a greater interest, at least among the media.”
Back in Monterrey, security guard Candelario Alvarado said the newscasts on the primaries pass quickly, but he watches them. He said he’d recognize Hillary Clinton’s opponent if he saw his face, but he couldn’t remember his name.
Alvarado, 58, has followed U.S. politics since John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 and can’t understand the need for a U.S. border fence or U.S. war expenditures.
He hopes the immigration issue is sorted out “for the economic benefit of both countries.”
“What we want is more tranquility,” Alvarado said. “Whoever wins.
I ran across an interesting blog posting by our friend Sean Mattson, the San Antonio Express-News correspondent in Monterrey. For those who may not remember, Sean was a big help in providing information and follow up on the truck explosion in Monclova last year.
The article concerns a recent report issued by Transparency Mexico, dedicated to opening the shadows of government to the population.
The article concerns a report compiled by the agency about Bribery or the “merdida” in Mexico and what it costs families each year.
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Mexico City’s cathedral was closed Monday after leftist protesters stormed into the world-renowned religious landmark, and church officials said it would not reopen until city authorities can guarantee security.Dozens of supporters of former leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel López Obrador entered the building bordering the capital’s Zocalo square on Sunday, scuffling with faithful and overturning pews.
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