Probably you haven’t heard it yet, and when you do, it will be something like “Mexican president is against clean energy” type of catchy-headline. Last Monday, President López Obrador sent to Congress a priority bill to regulate the electric-power market to chaneg the order in which power plants are allowed to put their power into the national electrical grid. This means the bill has to be discussed and voted on in the house of representatives within 31 days. The urgency and the content of the bill aim to dismantle the core of the Mexican neoliberal project: the denationalization (liberalization) of the energy sector. In other words, it seeks to restore energy sovereignty. How? why? Agárrense. The purpose of the bill is to make the necessary legal changes so the state-owned power plants have preference over private ones to put their power up into the national electric grid, the proposed order of preference is:
State owned power plants
Hydroelectric (located mostly in Chiapas and Tabasco)
Thermoelectric
Geothermal energy
Wind and solar
Private owned plants
Renewable (solar, wind)
Thermoelectric
It is evident that the priority are hydroelectric plants, so there’s no crusade against renewable energy, so a bit of context to understand the reform bill. As it is well known, General Lázaro Cárdenas nationalized the oil industry in 1938, but it was in 1960 when the last piece of the Mexican revolution was completed: the nationalization of the electric power industry. Up until 1992 it remained a state monopoly, two big companies produced and distributed electric power to the entire country. Researchers and environmental activists have documented that the opening of the energy sector to private investment in 1992 by former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari obeyed the negotiation demands of NAFTA. Since then constant, minor legal changes have allowed the expansion of private investment in the production of power, passing from 11% of the total production in 2002 to 22% in 2017. “Clean” and “renewable energy” have been used as a discourse to, de facto, denationalize the industry favoring private investment through extremely obscure and sketchy contracts that are undermining communities' livelihoods and, ironically, not providing power to those communities because the energy is sold in remote urban centers. In the twenty first-century there is no doubt, access to electric power is a right, therefore it shouldn’t be a margin for profit, that is the goal of energy sovereignty.
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There was a time when el PRI reigned over the country and its governors were fully untouchable. That time wasn’t long ago.
But that time is over and now those who committed atrocities and human rights violations must face justice. That’s the case of Mario Marín, former Governor of Puebla who was arrested this week in Acapulco after years of being on the run.
Marín is accused of ordering the detention and psychological torture against journalist Lydia Cacho. Cacho, arrested due to a defamation accusation, was threatened with rape, forced a gun into her mouth, and threatened to be drowned in the ocean while in the custody of Puebla’s police. She was held in custody in Puebla for two days before being released on bail.
Cacho’s crime? Writing a book in which she exposed a pedophile ring in Cancún that she alleged was run by businessman Jean Succar Kuri. In this book, Kamel Nacif, Marin’s personal friend, was accused of being part of that same ring. So, Nacif accused Cacho of defamation in Puebla and Marín sent State police officers to Cancun, far far away from his jurisdiction, to arrest Cacho. But everything went south for Marin when a record of him and Kamel Nacif was leaked. During that call, Marín was boasting about giving Cacho a lesson she will never forget.
Last year, the Mexican Government apologized for violating Cacho’s human rights; Jean Succar Kuri was convicted to more than 100 years in prison for his crimes; Nacif is hiding in Lebanon; Marín will finally face a judge.
Slowly but surely justice is coming.
Chew for the week:
“La guardiana de la sierra”
“20 respuestas sobre la vacunación a los adultos mayores contra covid en México”
https://piedepagina.mx/20-respuestas-sobre-la-vacunacion-a-los-adultos-mayores-contra-la-covid/ (Spanish)
“Adiós CNDH”,
Adiós CNDH (Spanish)