Angélica Rivera may have dazzled on the TV screen, but her shady relationship with a government contractor has wreaked havoc on her husband's presidency.
While most of Latin America has been reducing poverty, Mexico is moving in the other direction: new official figures reflect an increase in the number of poor in the last two years. The negative impact of the 2014 fiscal austerity program, poorly-designed and mismanaged public policies, sluggish economic growth, and frozen family incomes are all factors underlying the rise in the number of people living in poverty in the region’s second-most populous country.
Hiring migrant farm labor is very profitable for big agribusiness. Last year workers walked out of the fields at Sakuma Brothers Farms in Washington - one of the largest berry growers in the state. Berries are big business, with annual sales of $6.1 million, and big corporate customers like Häagen Dazs ice cream. Here is their story.
. . . the U.S. is helping the Mexican government cover up information about grave human rights violations. Indeed, a thorough analysis of internal government files, released through Freedom of Information requests or through leaks, reveals a pattern of abuses and cover-ups . . .
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A major agricultural labor action is entering its second week in Mexico, where such walkouts are rare. But workers report that they gained experience in the US - via the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida, or with the UFW on the west coast - and those lessons helped inspire workers to organize and fight for their rights in Mexico.
As many as 50,000 mostly indigenous workers have stopped harvesting produce for more than a week in protest of labor law violations. What they want is for their basic needs to be met, such as obtaining health care, getting overtime pay and vacation days, and being paid wages higher than the dismal $8 a day that most of them earn.
Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and its allies, suffered a major setback March 10th, when a law to privatize Mexico’s water resources was shelved. President Enrique Peña Nieto had attempted to “fast track” approval of the General Water Law, but the rapid mobilization of grassroots opposition forced the indefinite postponement of a vote on the legislation that would place water distribution under private sector control.
Thousands of farmworkers went on strike in Mexico to protest low wages. The strike, the first of its kind in decades, had a wide impact, as workers blocked highways and stopped the harvest at the height of the season. Workers not only want higher wages, but their own independent union.
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