Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Lax Industrial Controls Contribute to Spread of Chikungunya Virus in Some Latin American Countries

Chikungunya does not often result in death, but the joint pain may last for months or years and may become a cause of chronic pain and disability. There is no specific treatment for chikungunya infection, nor any vaccine to prevent it. Pending the development of a new vaccine, the only effective means of prevention is to protect individuals against mosquito bites.  -Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)

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The word chikungunya comes from the African Makonde language and means “bent over in pain.”  The disease is not usually fatal (unless the patient has other health problems), but an infection can result in crippling pain. Chikungunya is transmitted by the bite of two species of mosquito: the Aedes aegypti  (which can also transmit dengue and yellow fever, and is present in the tropics and sub-tropics of the Americas), and the Aedes albopictus mosquito (found in more temperate areas, extending from the east coast and southeast of the United States to the provinces of northern Argentina). "These mosquitoes are easily recognized by the white stripes around their legs; when they bite a person with chikungunya, the transmission cycle begins," said the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). 

There was very little mention of the disease in Latin America and the Caribbean until December 2013, when the first non-imported case was confirmed in the region. There were more than 22,000 cases in the region as of Dec. 29,  2014, including 131 in Mexico.  (Read more in the latest issue of SourceMex).  According to PAHO, the numbers continued to increase in the region, reaching  24,071 cases as of Jan. 9, 2015.

So the why is just now that the disease is appearing in the Americas?  Haven't the aedes aegypti  and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes been around a while? Those mosquito species have been responsible for the spread of dengue fever, but the virus was not present until recently. There have been several cases where humans who traveled to infected areas came home sick.  But the disease is not transmitted from one human to another. So then, what is behind its spread into the Americas?  A closer look at the 2013-2014 data, released by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), reveals that climate and human travel do not have much to do with the spread of the disease. A bigger factor are national and local policies on international shipping, industrial infrastructure and health-care response systems. Furthermore, the species of mosquitos that transmit the virus, it turns out, do not actually depend on tropical and subtropical climates, as they are able to and have in the past bred successful populations in cold climates, even in snowy areas.

Case Studies: Cuba and El Salvador
The impact of industry on the spread of chikungunya are illustrated in the cases of Cuba and El Salvador. While many major Caribbean islands have experienced an outbreak of the viral disease, Cuba--which differs from its neighbors in terms of trade embargos, security levels of shipping ports and availability of health care services--has not reported a single domestic case. Cuba has only reported 20 cases in total, all of which were imported by human travelers.

On the other hand, while El Salvador does not actually contain a Caribbean coastline, it is one of the most highly affected Latin American nations with over 135,000 suspected cases, and nonetheless reports the vast majority of its cases in regions along its Pacific Coast urban areas, where its industry and shipping ports are most active and concentrated. This, too, is true for Guatemala and Nicaragua (Central America’s other highly affected nations) where the vast majority of cases are not found in its Caribbean regions that are dominated by protected wildlife refuges and tourist oases, but rather in Pacific urban areas rife with shipping and industrial activity.

Wikimedia Commons
Used tires serve as a conduit
This pattern is further solidified by the history of the disease in Australia and New Zealand, which despite being in the middle of one of chikungunya’s most historically active regions, has been affected very little by the virus due to stringent regulations on port control and inspections, which are highly effective procedures for limiting the number of the two species of chikungunya-host mosquitos that tend to migrate in used tires and other industrial containers.

A recent special report on Chikungunya in the Dominican Republic published in the Pan American Journal of Public Health, also suggests that preventing the outbreak of the virus has everything to do with limiting the conditions in which the Asian Tiger Mosquito tends to breed. Evidently, these conditions have much to do with shipping ports, industrial materials and containers of standing water, and little to do with human travel.

Another characteristic of the mosquito might explain why chikungunya virus has spread so much more rapidly in countries like Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and French Guiana than it has in the US, Mexico, Brazil and Costa Rica: the Asian Tiger Mosquito feeds primarily during the day as opposed to night, and outdoors as opposed to indoors. What we see in cities such as Escuintla, Guatemala; Managua; San Salvador, Santo Domingo; and Caracas are conditions in which the indoor/outdoor separation between homes and workplaces is often very fluid, allowing the Asian Tiger Mosquito to spend its days in outdoor conditions, even when inside a home at dawn or dusk.

Also what we see in these cities are nearby commercial seaports and streets littered with containers, the bottles, cans and tires with little bits of liquid hanging at the bottom. Where there is litter, seaports, structures built of provisional materials and outdoor markets, there is often poverty, little access to health care and, most importantly, hordes of warm blooded mammals spending their days outside.

-Jake Sandler

Also in LADB on Jan. 7-9

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Monday, December 15, 2014

Center for Justice and Accuntability Seeks Truth, Justice, Redress for Victims of Torture, Human Rights Violations

"The administration of Salvador Sanchez Ceren has the obligation and opportunity to make a difference, to improve the lives of the people of El Salvador – the people th ey fought for – and ensure that they see justice."  Center for Justice and Accountability
Several thousand people participated in a candlelit procession through the campus of the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA), the scene, 25 years ago, of one of the most infamous episodes in El Salvador’s dozen-year civil war (1980-1992): the predawn murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and and the housekeeper's daughter.  This week's issue of NotiCen examines some of the issues surrounding the anniversary, including efforts to overturn a blanket amnesty approved in El Salvador in 1993, which allows the perpetrators to remain unpunished.
 
Photo: Center for Justice and Accountablity
Among those participating in the procession in San Salvador on Nov. 18 was Almudena Bernabeu, an attorney and rights advocate at the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) in San Francisco, California. The CJA has played a leading role in recent years in efforts to prosecute the authors of the UCA massacre

The CJA is an international human rights organization dedicated to deterring torture and other severe human rights abuses around the world. The organization also advances the rights of survivors to seek truth, justice and redress, which applies directly to its work in El Salvador. 

CJA uses litigation to hold perpetrators individually accountable for human rights abuses, develop human rights law, and advance the rule of law in countries transitioning from periods of abuse.
The case of the murdered Jesuits is just one of seven active cases in El Salvador.  The center is  involved in human-rights-related litigation in seven countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.  In addition to El Salvador, the CJA is involved in cases in Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, and Peru (as well as the United States).  The other five countries where the CJA is involved in human-rights-related cases are Bosnia, Cambodia, China, Somalia, and Timor-Leste.

The CJA was founded in 1998 with support from Amnesty International and the UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture to represent torture survivors in their pursuit of justice. The center is part of the movement for global justice for those who have been tortured or have suffered other severe human rights abuses.

"CJA is one of the few international human rights NGOs with a base of clients who speak out publicly against mass atrocities from a survivor's perspective," said the organization.  "At the heart of CJA’s mission is the belief that survivors themselves are the most effective spokespeople against torture, genocide and other abuses. CJA devotes resources to supporting clients who, as a result of participating in our litigation, are galvanized to dedicate more time and energy to anti-impunity efforts within their communities."

-Carlos Navarro 

Also in LADB on Dec. 10-12 
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Friday, October 3, 2014

Blue Helmets on Mexican Soldiers

Daniel Košinár  (Wikimedia Commons)
If you examine the composition of UN Peacekeeping forces, you would be hard-pressed to find any Mexican soldiers.  That is about to change with President  Enrique Peña Nieto's recent commitment to provide military and civilian personnel to UN missions.
The Mexican president made that pledge during an address to the UN General Assembly during the last week of September.

Peña Nieto, of course, would still have to comply with the Mexican Constitution, which prohibits any chief executive from unilaterally offering Mexican troops for peacekeeping forces. The president would require the consent of the Senate. Convesrsely, Peña Nieto and other future president are allowed to provide military and civilian personnel for UN humanitiarian missions without a vote from the Senate. How was Peña Nieto's decision received in Mexico?  There were many supporters and some detractors.  Read more in this week's issue of SourceMex.

Marie Lan-Nguyen (Wikimedia Commons)
Let's say hypothetically that Mexico had committed troops to UN peacekeeping operations a while back. Where would these Mexican soldiers be located? Currently, there are 16 ongoing UN Peacekeeping Operations, including Haiti, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, several Middle Eastern nations, as well as nine countries in Africa, from the Western Sahara to Democratic Republic of the Congo.

There are currently over 116,000 military and police personnel working under UN’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), and although many personnel are armed and trained in military operations, the DPKO’s main purpose and protocol does not normally involve active combat, but rather helping local security forces to establish the proper conditions for end of conflict and lasting peace. The UN does not have its own military force, and relies completely on contributions from member states.

There is some risk in committing military personnel to an area of conflict. In its 66-year history, the DPKO has suffered 3,177 fatalities, with more than two-thirds occurring since 1993. Uruguay, Haiti, Argentina, Guatemala and Spain have lost dozens of troops, although the majority of the casualties have come from Sub-Saharan African and Northern European nations.  While armed conflict has been the major reason for the loss of lives, more than 1,000 deaths  have occurred because of illness. The two places with the highest incident of fatalities have been Lebanon and the Congo.
-Jake Sandler

Also in LADB This Week...
Transforming the Sales Tax into a Value-Added Tax in Costa Rica: President Luis Guillermo Solís has a plan to boost government revenues: transform the current sales tax into a a value-added tax (Read more from George Rodríguez in this week's issue of NotiCen). So what's the difference?  Diane Yetter explains in the Tax & Accounting blog  "Sales tax is collected on retail sales at the time of the sale to the final consumer, and only the final sale in the supply chain is subject to tax. Sales tax is generally imposed on sales of tangible personal property and selected services. Value Added Tax, on the other hand, is imposed on each stage of the supply chain and ultimately charged in full to the final purchaser."

Investment in the Dominican Republic. Officials in the Dominican Republic are pleased about a recent increase in investment, but critics worry that the trend comes at the expense of human rights and the environment.  Read more from  Crosby Girón in NotiCen.

Argentina and U.S. Lock Horns amid ‘Default’ Fallout: Argentina’s current "default" crisis, which began three months ago when a judge in New York ruled in favor of a group of "vulture funds"—lenders that in 2005 refused to participate in a restructuring of the South American nation’s foreign debt—has gone from being a dispute between a sovereign state and private interests to a full-fledged face-off between the Argentine and US governments. Read more from Andrés Gaudín in NotiSur.

Center-Left Coalition Expected to Remain in Power in Uruguay: Uruguayan voters will head to the polls Oct. 26 for the last in a series of South American elections that also includes contests in Brazil, to be held Oct. 5, and Bolivia, on Oct. 12. The Frente Amplio (FA), in power since 2005, is hoping its progressive model—introduced by former President Tabaré Vázquez (2005-2010) and continued by the country’s current leader, President José Mujica—will earn the party a third-consecutive term. The FA’s conservative rivals, the Partido Nacional (PN or Blanco) and Partido Colorado (PC), are hoping to re-establish the political hegemony that kept them in power throughout most of Uruguay’s post-independence history (from 1830 to 2005). Read More from Andrés Gaudín in NotiSur.

Another term for Mexican Human Rights Ombud? Raúl Plascencia Villanueva, president of the semi-independent human rights commission (Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, CNDH), is facing severe criticism from what academics and opposition legislators see as the commission’s deficient and inadequate job of defending human rights in Mexico. Will the Senate reappoint him for another five years or will human-rights advocates succeed in pushing through a change?  Read more from Carlos Navarro in SourceMex.

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Friday, July 11, 2014

Holograms for Cuban Cigars

Source: Wikimedia Commons
Cuba is perfecting holographic seals to prevent the sale of counterfeit cigars, which the international black market offers to visitors for a paltry sum compared to prices determined by the official marketing network. Today, any tourist walking down the street in Havana, a major tourist destination, will probably hear three deals whispered in their ear: sex, habanos, and rum. However, sometimes those cigars are imitations made from low-quality leaves.  -from NotiCen, July 10, 2014

How can you tell if that famous habano cigar you bought from a street vendor in Havana or in the cigar store in Zurich or Buenos Aires is real? If you're a regular tourist--and not a connoisseur--you might not know until you  actually light up.  

Cigars are serious business in Cuba, and the government is very keen on ensuring that the prized habanos are of the highest quality That's why authorities are in the process of developing  holographic seals to prevent the sale of counterfeit cigars. The effort is directed not as much at the domestic market but international markets. "Cuban tobacco remains one  the fundamental sources for millions of dollars in income for the island, is a source of employment for more than 150,000 farmers, and generates impressive sales in the more remote parts of the world,"  Read more from Daniel Vázquez in this week's issue of NotiCen.  And there is more information about this prized product in The Cuban Cigar Website

Also in LADB This Week
One of the most significant developments in South America in recent weeks (and no, it's not the FIFA World Cup!) is the decision of Chilean President Michelle Bachelet's administration to cancel the polemical HidroAysén power project, a multibillion-dollar hydroelectric complex planned for a mostly untouched area of Chile's far-southern Región de Aysén. The ruling ended years of on-again, off-again legal limbo regarding the costly venture/

In Mexico,  the Congress approved the secondary laws that allow the government to implement reforms to the telecommunications sector.  But there are mixed opinions on whether the changes will truly benefit the citizenry.  Some international organizations like the OECD believe reforms to the telecommunications, energy and other sectors are essential to help the Mexican economy grow.

In Costa Rica, one of the issues is to maintain the Central American country secure. That is why Costa Rican authorities are continuing with an effort of cooperation with Colombia and the United States

Finally, in Argentina, the courts have initiated legal proceedings against journalists and media companies accused of working with the Argentine dictators in 1976-1983 to broadcast, both in and outside Argentina, a false, bucolic image of a nation whose dictators were committed to "re-educating the subversives in order to return them to society mentally sound."

-Carlos Navarro
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Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Possible Role Reversals as Caribbean Economies Face Slow Growth

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Article from NotiCen, May 1

The Caribbean economy grew only 1.3% in 2013, according to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). This rate is half that of Latin America, and the 2014 forecast shows a marginal improvement to 2.1%. As a result, many Caribbean governments are pursuing public sector cuts to stave off high debts and declining revenues, whether from sluggish tourism or lower global commodity prices. In December 2013, Barbados announced the dismissal of 3,000 government workers in order to correct a high debt ratio. The layoffs began in March, along with salary cuts for remaining public sector employees. Also in late March, Jamaica passed its third International Monetary Fund (IMF) test in order to receive further disbursements from the multilateral organization. Gregory Scruggs Read More

Friday, February 21, 2014

Anti-corruption Team to Visit Haiti, Venezuelan President Uses Decree Power To Fight "Devastating Economic War,"

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Articles in SourceMex, NotiCen and NotiSur for February 19-21

Organization of American States Anti-corruption Team to Visit Haiti, Once Ranked Most Corrupt Country
The Organization of American States (OAS) is sending members of its anti-corruption team on a tour of Caribbean nations, and one of its stops is Haiti. In 2006, the massively impoverished French-speaking island country ranked as the most corrupt of the 163 nations included in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), a yearly study the Berlin-based nongovernmental organization Transparency International (TI) has put out since 1995--two years after it was founded. Meanwhile, the Haitian government is pressing Congress to complete passage of a bill for corruption prevention and suppression, which the Senate approved in May 2013 but has yet to be voted on by the lower house.George Rodríguez Read More

Self-Defense Groups Attempt to Protect Residents from Criminal Organizations in Guerrero State
While most of the front-page headlines in Mexico have centered on the ongoing violence in Michoacán state, a similar chaotic situation has developed in neighboring Guerrero state, where local communities have formed self-defense militias, known as autodefensas, to defend themselves against the drug cartels and criminal organizations that are extorting and terrorizing communities around the state. A study by the semi-independent Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (CNDH) discovered that self-defense groups are present in more than half of Guerrero's 81 municipalities. The study, released in mid-December 2013, said the 46 municipalities where autodefensa groups are present account for almost two-thirds of the state's population of about 3.5 million. Carlos Navarro Read More

Venezuelan President Uses Decree To Fight "Devastating Economic War"
Locked in an exhausting standoff with Venezuela’s primary economic power brokers, the Venezuelan government, for the first time since the launch of the Bolivarian Revolution in 1999, is finding itself at odds with some of its own supporters. The country's chaotic economic situation is fueling discontent not just among the government’s opponents but also among some of its traditional supporters. To reverse the situation--and save the country from a "devastating economic war" launched by leading business and opposition groups--President Nicolás Maduro recently signed a pair of decrees. The first introduced a "band system" to regulate currency exchange. Government backers support the measures, even if they do not necessarily grasp their true meaning. The second limits companies to a maximum profit margin of 30%. Opposition leaders are up in arms, saying the decrees amount to "stealth devaluation." Andrés Gaudín Read More

Belize’s Booming Tourism Industry Strains Country’s Precarious Wastewater-Management Facilities
San Pedro, a town on the southern part of the island of Ambergris Caye, in the Belize District, used to be a sleepy fishing village until word of its natural beauty got around and it became one of the most popular tourist destinations of the Caribbean, widely recommended in most travel guides as an ideal location for scuba diving. This transformation has come hand in hand with a change in the population of the town, and today, according to official figures, San Pedro has a population of about 13,381, the second-largest town in the Belize District and the largest in the Belize Rural South constituency. However, this inevitably means that the dynamics of the island’s environment have also been altered as Ambergris Caye has increasingly suffered the effects of pollution from a number of sources: the oily trail left behind by boats and cruise ships, domestic sewage originating from toilets, sinks, and other domestic sources, solid waste, agrochemicals, and industrial effluents. Louisa Reynolds Read More

President-Elect Michelle Bachelet Announces Cabinet Choices
After routing the right in December’s runoff election, President-elect Michelle Bachelet now faces the considerable challenge of turning her broad campaign coalition--a loose affiliation of center-left and left parties known as the Nueva Mayoría--into a viable governing bloc. The incoming leader took her first major step toward that goal late last month, introducing a Cabinet chosen to appease her traditional power base while at the same time reach out to her more recently acquired allies, namely the far-left Partido Comunista de Chile (PCCh) and Izquierda Ciudadana (IC). Benjamin Witte-Lebhar Read More


Federal Government Reaches Truce with Yaqui in Aqueduct Dispute
President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration has reached a truce with Yaqui Indian communities in their dispute about water rights in the Río Yaqui. The dispute centers on the Acueducto Independencia, a waterway that captures 634 gallons of water per second from the Río Yaqui and diverts it through 130 km of pipeline between Presa El Novillo and the state capital of Hermosillo. After months of negotiation, the Peña Nieto administration and Yaqui representatives finally reached an agreement on Jan. 21, guaranteeing that the water extracted from the Río Yaqui would only be used for human consumption in Hermosillo and that the administration would respect court rulings spelling out the rights of the region’s Yaqui and campesino communities. Carlos Navarro Read More

Thursday, October 10, 2013

NSA Spying Damages U.S. Relations with Latin America; Mexico Strips National Park Designation from Nevado de Toluca; Nicaragua-Colombia Territorial Row Continues

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Articles in SourceMex, NotiCen and NotiSur for October 9-11

NSA Spying Damages U.S. Relations with Latin America
A wave of indignation spread through the region following revelations by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden that the US spied on Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and other South American leaders. In response, on Sept. 17, the Brazilian president postponed indefinitely her planned October official visit to Washington. A week later, in her speech at the opening session of the UN General Assembly in New York, Rousseff had harsh words regarding US foreign policy and President Barack Obama, saying, "In the absence of the right to privacy, there can be no true freedom of expression and opinion, and therefore no effective democracy." In an almost natural consequence of the general condemnation, Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño spoke for the Unión de Naciones Suramericanas (UNASUR) to say that the regional organization's political leadership had entrusted its Consejo de Defensa to analyze the possibilities for "confronting US espionage." Ecuador has the pro tem presidency of UNASUR. -Andrés Gaudín    Read More

Ecuador Forgets, Colombia Wins
With three controversial agreements, the Ecuadoran government decided to forget incidents that strained its diplomatic relations with neighboring Colombia. These include the aggression Ecuador suffered from Colombia's bombing of Angostura and downplaying the damages caused by the fumigations to eradicate coca fields in Colombia territory, but which affected the health and destroyed the crops of Ecuadoran campesinos living near the border. These agreements show that the Ecuadoran government has made consolidating trade relations and normalizing diplomatic relations with Colombia a priority, even when this again puts at risk the border communities, which will also see their ability to organize reduced because of the offers of insufficient economic compensation. -Luis Ángel Saavedra   Read More

No End In Sight For Nicaragua-Colombia Sea-Border Standoff
A maritime border dispute that was supposed to have been settled last year by the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) continues to fuel a war of words between Nicaragua and Colombia, whose respective leaders--Presidents Daniel Ortega and Juan Manuel Santos--dug their heels in still deeper in recent weeks with fresh legal challenges that threaten to extend the discord for years to come. Last November, ICJ, upheld Colombia’s claim to the Caribbean archipelago of San Andrés--even though its islands are far closer to Nicaragua--but established Nicaraguan sovereignty over much of the surrounding sea. The Santos administration made it clear from the start it was unwilling to accept the loss. The only way Colombia will accept changes to its boundary lines, Santos explained, is through direct negotiations with Nicaragua. Nicaragua says there is nothing to negotiate--except maybe how best to implement the ICJ’s binding decision. -Benjamin Witte-Lebhar  Read More

Environmental Groups Protest Government’s Decision to Remove National Park Status from Nevado de Toluca
Two environmentally sensitive areas in central Mexico--Nevado de Toluca National Park and the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve--have come under increased scrutiny because of the potential for long-term damage to the habitats in the two sites. Nevado de Toluca, southwest of Mexico City in México state, made headlines after President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration moved to strip the national-park designation from the site to remove restrictions on development. The move was opposed by environmental groups in Mexico and overseas, which urged the administration to reconsider its decision. There was also renewed attention on the monarch-butterfly reserve after a new study revealed that small-scale cutting of trees was continuing in the protected site despite severe restrictions imposed by the federal government in 2007. -Carlos Navarro   Read More

U.S. Treasury Identifies Honduran Drug Kingpins, U.S. Ambassador Warns Against Aiding Traffickers
Sept. 19 was a hectic day in the struggle against drug trafficking in Honduras. The events began with the US Treasury Department revealing the identity of seven people and several businesses as part of the Honduran drug-trafficking gang Los Cachiros. Addressing a conference on money laundering early that afternoon, US Ambassador to Honduras Lisa Kubiske warned financial institutions as well as people helping to launder assets about the risk they place themselves in. Late that evening, Policía Nacional (PN) chief Juan Carlos "El Tigre" Bonilla told reporters that members of the Cobra elite police strike force along with Army troops had secured more than 100 assets--among them real estate that included a zoo, vehicles, bank accounts--worth more than US$500 million, successfully closing an intelligence operation launched seven years ago. -George Rodríguez    Read More

Government Reduces Growth Projections After Recent Storms
The Mexican government has reduced its growth forecast for 2013 because of the two storm systems that hit Mexico in mid-September, causing significant damage in a large area of the country. The Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público (SHCP) now projects GDP growth in 2013 at 1.7%, compared with an earlier estimate of 1.8%. Many private analysts suggest, however, that the SHCP has overstated its economic projections, particularly since the country’s economic performance was already much more sluggish than projected for the first half of the year. In a recent survey by the central bank (Banco de México, Banxico) among private economists, the average of projections for Mexico’s GDP this year was 1.4%. The economic projections have prompted a debate on whether the tax plan proposed by President Enrique Peña Nieto is what the economy needs to recover. -Carlos Navarro Read More