El Magonista Newsletter | Vol. 11, No. 24 | AUG. 17, 2023

Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum grows lead for ruling party presidential ticket in new poll.

MEXICO CITY — Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum has grown her lead to a 13-point advantage in the contest to be the ruling party’s candidate in Mexico’s 2024 presidential election, a poll published on Wednesday in newspaper El Universal showed.

With less than a month until the candidate is announced, the survey showed Sheinbaum with 35% support to be the nominee of the leftist National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), followed by former Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard at 22%.

The survey of 1,000 adults by polling firm Buendia & Marquez also showed Sheinbaum was slightly more popular with respondents who identified with the opposition.

Both candidates have long been favorites for the MORENA ticket and ranked far ahead of the poll’s next-best placed candidates, including former Interior Minister Adan Augusto Lopez, who had 7% support.

MORENA, lifted by the strong personal approval ratings of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is heavily favored to win the June 2024 election. That has prompted many analysts to view the MORENA contest as an almost de facto presidential race.

The poll showed that Ebrard was the best-known candidate, being recognized by 70% of respondents, while Sheinbaum followed closely at 69%.

Both resigned from their positions this year to compete in MORENA’s internal contest, which formally kicked off on June 19. A winner is due to be announced on Sept. 6, and is expected to be based on voters’ preferences.

The face-to-face voter survey was carried out from Aug. 10 to Aug. 14 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.53 percentage points, Buendia & Marquez said.

A survey published in June by Buendia & Marquez showed Sheinbaum polling with a 12-point lead with 34% support and Ebrard with 22% on the question of who should be MORENA’s presidential candidate.

If Sheinbaum wins the nomination, Mexico could see women at the head of the presidential election’s two top tickets... READ MORE

La exjefa de Gobierno de la Ciudad de México urge al INE facilitar el voto de los mexicanos en el extranjero.

La aspirante a la candidatura presidencial por Morena, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, expresó desde la Asamblea Informativa realizada en la Alcaldía de Venustiano Carranza, aquí en la Ciudad de México, la importancia de apoyar a los migrantes mexicanos tanto en Estados Unidos como en México.

En su discurso destacó que los migrantes son fundamentales para el desarrollo de ambas naciones, especialmente los jóvenes conocidos como dreamers.

México Nunca Olvidará A Sus Paisanos

La exjefa de Gobierno de la Ciudad de México aseguró que México nunca olvidará a sus compatriotas que residen en Estados Unidos y celebró un simulacro de encuesta realizado en dicho país sobre la Coordinación de la Cuarta Transformación, en la que obtuvo el primer lugar.

Resalta que la aspirante morenista estuvo acompañada por jóvenes dreamers, como Armando Vázquez Ramos, quienes agradecieron su apoyo. También se entregó el libro "La Antología de Sueños de un viaje imposible", con ensayos de jóvenes que regresaron a México en 2021.

Karina Ruiz afirmó que Claudia Sheinbaum es una representante idónea de la continuidad de la 4T y se comprometió a luchar desde el exterior para consolidarla... LEER MAS

The Broad Front for Mexico (FAM) opposition bloc has trimmed its field of potential presidential candidates from four to three, eliminating former tourism minister Enrique de la Madrid.

The organizing committee of the FAM – made up of the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) – announced Tuesday that Xóchitl Gálvez, Beatriz Paredes and Santiago Creel fared best in polling and will thus pass to the third stage of the alliance’s candidate selection process.
 

PAN Senator Gálvez attracted the support of 38.3% of 6,000 poll respondents, while PRI Senator Beatriz Paredes had the backing of 26%.
 

Creel, who has taken leave as a federal deputy to focus on becoming the FAM’s presidential candidate, was supported by 20.1% of those polled.
 

De la Madrid, who served as tourism minister in the second half of the 2012-18 government led by former president Enrique Peña Nieto, congratulated the three remaining aspirants in a social media post and said he was convinced that a “much better Mexico is possible.”
 

He, Gálvez, Paredes and Creel were the only FAM aspirants who met the requirements to reach the second stage of the opposition bloc’s candidate selection process, which lasted less than a week... READ MORE

MEXICO CITY —  The two presidential front-runners grew up exposed to sharply different visions of what a woman in Mexico could aspire to be.

In her impoverished home in the state of Hidalgo, Xóchitl Gálvez faced beatings from her alcoholic father, who once threatened to kill her mother. She’d hear the men in her family quip, “Women are only good for the petate (a bed) and the metate (a stone to grind grains).” 

Claudia Sheinbaum grew up hearing her parents, both scientists and former student activists, talk politics in their home in the state of Mexico. She saw firsthand what a woman could accomplish, spending a night at age 15 at a hunger strike with Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, the pioneering crusader for the disappeared whose work helped build Mexico’s human rights movement. 

As the decades ticked by, both women rose in their careers — in academics or business, and then politics — as Mexico pushed to increase women’s participation in the political arena.

Gálvez, a senator, and Sheinbaum, the former mayor of Mexico City, are campaigning hard to get on the ballot in next year’s election. As Sheinbaum aims to represent the president’s party and Gálvez fights for an opposition coalition’s nomination, each is invoking her gender and the glass ceiling she would shatter.

“Mexico is no longer written with the M of machismo ... but M of mother, M of mujer” or woman, Sheinbaum declared to thousands of supporters just before leaving her post as mayor to enter the presidential race.

Gálvez has called Mexico’s president a “machista” and told reporters, “You need many ovaries like the ones I have to confront such a powerful man.” 

But even with two women as front-runners, the election is less likely to turn on issues of gender, including rampant violence against women, than how voters feel about one man. The race is widely seen as a referendum on President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose Morena party controls a huge swath of the country.

“People vote for women without a problem. What matters is the political party, and you have to understand that Mexico is not a feminist country,” said Karolina Gilas, a political scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, or UNAM. “Mexican society continues to be very conservative.”

While the presidential hopefuls can’t ignore feminist issues in a country where an average of 10 women a day were slain last year, the movement doesn’t have the weight to tip a national election either, Gilas said... READ MORE

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients chided Republican-led states for citing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that blocked President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness plan, telling a Texas federal court the states overlooked facts that show they actually lack standing to sue over federal immigration policies.

The high court had ruled in June that the Biden administration overstepped its authority in forgiving more than $400 billion in federal student loans. Texas and eight other Republican-led states leaned on that ruling last month to back their contention that the administration similarly overstepped its authority with a 2022 final rule that rebooted DACA protections, which allow recipients to temporarily work and study in the U.S.

But the DACA recipients responded Tuesday that the ruling better showed that the states lacked standing to maintain their lawsuit. They said that while the parties in the student loan case conceded that the loan-forgiveness program directly harmed a state instrumentality — or state-created and supervised organization that serves a public function — Texas couldn't point to any evidence that DACA directly injured it or its own instrumentalities.

The recipients further noted that Texas was the only plaintiff state that tried to show standing.

Other facts they said underscored the states' lack of standing include that the loan-forgiveness program affected 43 million borrowers at an estimated cost to taxpayers of between $469 to $519 billion, while DACA had just over 825,000 recipients at its peak and has generated net benefits to the public.

"Of note, whereas the loan forgiveness program would have cost taxpayers approximately $500 billion … DHS estimated that DACA generates approximately $20 billion in discounted annualized net benefits," the recipients said in their Tuesday filing. "Thus, the court's concern in [Biden v. Nebraska ] about the 'staggering' size and scope of the administration's action … does not apply equally here... READ MORE

Illinois House Bill 3751 only allows non-citizens who are eligible to work in the U.S. and are authorized to possess firearms under federal law to become police officers. Contrary to confusion on social media, the bill does not extend this right to all non-citizens or those who are not legally allowed to work in the country.

The text in one Facebook post (here) reads: “Illinois Governor signs bill allowing illegals to become police officers. This state continues to reward bad behavior. How is any law enforcement agency going to complete a thorough background check on someone here illegally? They CAN’T!”

“Illinois Governor signs bill allowing illegal aliens to become police officers and arrest US citizens,” reads another post (here).

Olivia Kuncio, a representative for Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, said in an email to Reuters that the claim being shared is “not true at all.”

In a press conference on July 31, 2023 (here), Pritzker said, around the 44:28-minute timestamp, that undocumented immigrants are not allowed to become police officers in Illinois and that the bill extends this opportunity to legal permanent residents and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipients. At the 45:10 mark, he says, “there are people out there that think that we’re just allowing anybody to become a police officer. That’s just not accurate.”

DACA refers to a policy that protects those who came to the U.S. as children from deportation and allows them to request work authorization, as explained in a report by Reuters (here). (www.uscis.gov/DACA).

Background checks are carried out on those requesting DACA status, as detailed (here).

The bill (here), signed by Pritzker on July 28, 2023, will allow a person who is “legally authorized under federal law to work in the United States and is authorized under federal law to obtain, carry, or purchase or otherwise possess a firearm, or who is an individual against whom immigration action has been deferred by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) process and is authorized under federal law to obtain, carry, or purchase or otherwise possess a firearm” to become police officers... READ MORE

Barrier installation continued despite U.S.-Mexico river agency’s demands for federal OK and proof that flooding wouldn’t get worse.

AUSTIN — Newly uncovered records show Texas officials ignored warnings that installing anti-migrant buoys in the Rio Grande and concertina wire along the banks violated federal law and a U.S. treaty with Mexico.

On March 29, a Texas Highway Patrol captain even asked the International Boundary Commission that controls the Rio Grande to help with a permit the city of El Paso refused to grant, to put electricity in a command trailer.

The commission declined, reminding the captain that the trailer — under a bridge in the floodplain — was on federal property without authorization.

“The State of Texas, operating through various entities, including but not limited to, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) (and its contractors) does not have authorization for its presence on the federal property that is managed, owned, and/or controlled by the United States, International Boundary and Water Commission” or USIBWC, said the April 21 response.

Those warnings began in December, well before construction started on the controversial river barrier. Two migrants were found drowned near the barrier last week, sparking recriminations from Democrats and migrant advocates.

Officials from numerous state agencies were informed over at least seven months that Texas needed federal permission before intruding on federal land or installing barriers in or along the river.

Documents obtained from the border commission by The Dallas Morning News through an open records request show that DPS and other Texas entities were put on notice about federal permit and floodplain impact study requirements at least as far back as Dec. 21, and many times since then.

The commission “repeatedly made clear to Texas officials our concerns about their activities on territory under [its] jurisdiction,” and turned to the Justice Department for help when Texas kept ignoring its requests, spokesman Frank Fisher said Monday... READ MORE

The Biden administration’s glitchy new app is failing asylum seekers. Now, migrant’s rights groups are fighting back.

It has been more than half a century since U.S. immigration laws were written to enshrine the right to apply for asylum at any port of entry to the country. But a new lawsuit argues that today, the right to seek safe haven from persecution is only accessible to people who show up at America’s doorstep with a working smartphone in hand.

Since May, migrants on the Mexico side of the U.S.-Mexico border who are hoping to apply for asylum have been required to make their asylum appointments through a mobile phone app operated by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, known as CBP One. The new system has effectively oriented the first — and for many, the most urgent — stage of the asylum process around a digital tool that is, by many accounts, glitchy and unreliable.

On July 27, immigrants’ rights groups filed a class action lawsuit against the Biden administration over its use of the app, setting the stage for a legal showdown over the government’s decision to shift the first stage of the asylum application process into the realm of automation.

The plaintiffs include 10 migrants who sought asylum along the border but were turned away by U.S. immigration officials because they hadn’t made appointments using CBP One. Their suit alleges that the U.S. government’s use of CBP One has created steep, and in some cases insurmountable, technological obstacles that have prevented migrants from pursuing their right to asylum. As a result, they’re often left with little choice but to remain in Mexican border towns, where violence and crime targeting migrants is notoriously high. 

CBP One became the primary entry point into America’s asylum system after the Biden administration lifted Title 42, a Trump-era policy that barred most people from seeking asylum in the U.S. because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, in order to be eligible for protection, migrants must possess an up-to-date smartphone, internet access, mobile data and the ability to read and write in English, Spanish or Haitian Creole — the only three languages the app offers. These requirements, the lawsuit argues, disadvantage refugees who don’t have or can’t afford a smartphone and those who lack the requisite language skills. The suit also argues that the government has established new criteria for asylum applications that do not align with asylum laws that were vetted and approved long before the dawn of the smartphone. Imagine telling the authors of the modern asylum system, which was created after the Holocaust, that this guarantee is only accessible to people who arrive at the border with a miniature computer in their pocket... READ MORE

Enrico Fernando Valenzuela wasn’t named after the legendary pitcher, but he became a Dodgers fan anyway.

The 55-year-old truck driver recalls how his father, a supporter since the team’s Brooklyn days, took him to 1974 World Series game. Though the Los Angeles Dodgers lost the series to the Oakland Athletics, the experience was enough to turn the then 6-year-old into a lifelong fan.

Valenzuela said he immediately bought tickets for Friday’s home game against the Colorado Rockies after the team announced in February that it would honor Fernando Valenzuela, one of the most beloved players in franchise history, by finally retiring his No. 34 jersey number as part of a three-day celebration.

He wanted to be there with his wife and children because his father couldn’t, and so the Valenzuelas made the six-hour drive from Gilbert, Ariz., on Friday morning to be among the 49,315 fans who witnessed “El Toro’s” induction into the hollowed Ring of Honor in a pre-game ceremony.

“He just happened to be a Valenzuela and I’m a Valenzuela and it’s just icing on the cake. And props to my dad up there,” he added, pointing his index finger upward. “Dodger blue. The sky is blue, right?”

More than 40 years after the Mexican pitcher’s stellar 1981 rookie season, Fernandomania had once again struck Chavez Ravine.

“Fernando is the earliest memory I have in life. He’s part of the culture of my family, and I couldn’t miss today,” said Daniel James Aguilar.

“As Mexicanos, he represented us,” added his friend Roberto Muñoz, a 66-year-old who grew up in Monterey Park but now resides in Claremont. “As Angelenos, he represented us. As big guys, he represented us!”

Aguilar and Muñoz had arrived at Dodger Stadium with other friends more than two hours before the first pitch, donning their Valenzuela jerseys. Muñoz quickly pointed out that his was autographed, recalling that he got the signature at a meet-and-greet he attended with his father more than a decade ago.

“He was a gentleman and he treated my dad like he was a king,” Muñoz, whose father passed away last year, said of Valenzuela. “He just means a lot to me.”

At precisely 6:34 p.m and accompanied by mariachi, Valenzuela walked onto the field to a standing ovation from fans and stadium employees. Moments before, a tribute montage narrated by Morgan Freeman had played on the stadium’s big screens. It retold the story of a young, pudgy 20-year-old from Etchohuaquila, Sonora, whose iconic screwball helped earn the franchise its fourth championshi, and forever transformed the makeup of the team’s fan base... READ MORE

Archaeologists have uncovered a 1,500-year-old Teotihuacan village in Mexico City, complete with large concentrations of ceramics and three human burials, Mexico’s National Institute of History and Anthropology has announced.

Excavations between March and June unearthed several remnants of buildings within the settlement, including drainage channels, holes for posts, floors, stone lines and a well. 

The bodies of one child and two adults were discovered alongside a series of polished bowls with a ring-shaped base in the Teotihuacan style.

From its center of power in Teotihuacan – located about 50 kilometers (31 miles) northeast of present day Mexico City – the eponymous civilization exerted an enormous influence over Mesoamerica at its height in the 6th century, exercising an even greater influence than the later Aztec empire. 

Using ceramic evidence, experts dated the village to around 450-650, around the same date as the height of Teotihuacan influence.

Archaeologist Francisco González Rul had initially reported the settlement between 1960 and 1964, but these new findings “consolidated” and “demonstrated” its existence, said excavation leaders Juan Carlos Campos Varela and Mara Abigail Becerra Amezcua in a statement.

González Rul had proposed that the village likely contained fisherman-gatherers who used the resources of Lake Texcoco – a formerly large lake that now occupies a small area after being artificially drained in the 17th century. 

The excavation supported this hypothesis, but newly discovered artifacts suggest that the village also sustained artisanal production of ceramics “since several fragments of solid and articulated modeled figurines, green stone objects, shell, funerary offerings and various obsidian and flint projectile points were found,” Campos Varela and Becerra Amezcua added.

Due to the presence of such artifacts, archaeologists believe that the rural village must have had trade links with other Teotihuacan settlements on the shore of Lake Texcoco.

Excavations also revealed the settlement was later occupied by the Mexica people, plus communities in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries... READ MORE