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Canada is in: new 3-way trade agreement described as win-win-win

All three countries upbeat about accord, which will be called USMCA

by Mexico News Daily

The United States and Canada reached a last-minute deal yesterday to maintain a trilateral trade accord in North America, ending negotiations that dragged on for over a year.

Under the updated pact, the United States will have greater access to Canada’s dairy market and both Mexico and Canada will be protected from any future auto tariffs that their neighbor imposes on imports up to a quota of 2.6 million passenger vehicles annually.

To be known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) instead of NAFTA, the new accord will preserve a dispute resolution system that Canada fought to maintain to protect its lumber industry and other sectors from United States anti-dumping tariffs, Canadian and U.S. sources told the news agency Reuters.

However, United States tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum were not lifted as part of the agreement.

The deal also requires a higher proportion of auto content to be made in high-wage areas where workers are paid at least US $16 per hour, in order for vehicles to qualify for tariff-free status.

The rule is designed to bring more auto sector jobs to the United States as it will make it harder for large manufacturers to operate cheaply in Mexico.

Its inclusion in the revised pact is seen as a big win for United States President Donald Trump, who called NAFTA “one of the worst trade deals ever made” and has pledged to return auto sector jobs to the U.S.

In a joint statement, the United States and Canada said the updated pact, which will govern more than US $1.2 trillion worth of trade between the three countries, would “result in freer markets, fairer trade and robust economic growth in our region.”

Most of its provisions, however, won’t start until 2020 after legislatures in Mexico, Canada and the United States have approved the new deal.

The announcement of the new agreement ends more than a month of uncertainty about whether Canada would join the pact that Mexico and the United States reached on August 27.

Leaders of all three countries were upbeat about the new trilateral treaty.

“The modernization of the trade agreement between Mexico, Canada and the United States ends 13 months of negotiations and achieves what we proposed in the beginning: a win-win-win agreement,” Mexican President Peña Nieto wrote on Twitter.

After a late-night cabinet meeting in Ottawa to discuss the new deal, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters “it’s a good day for Canada.”

Trump, who repeatedly threatened to terminate the 24-year-old pact, posted a glowing two-part assessment of the updated agreement to his Twitter account early this morning.

“Late last night, our deadline, we reached a wonderful new Trade Deal with Canada, to be added into the deal already reached with Mexico. The new name will be The United States Mexico Canada Agreement, or USMCA. It is a great deal for all three countries, solves the many . . . deficiencies and mistakes in NAFTA, greatly opens markets to our Farmers and Manufacturers, reduces Trade Barriers to the U.S. and will bring all three Great Nations together in competition with the rest of the world. The USMCA is a historic transaction!”

At a later press conference, Trump said that “this landmark agreement will send cash and jobs pouring into the United States and into North America.”

It’s “good for Canada, good for Mexico,” he added, praising both Trudeau and Peña Nieto who he called a “terrific person.”

Economy Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo, Mexico’s chief negotiator in the drawn-out and often-contentious talks, also took to Twitter to praise the new deal.

“The new trilateral trade agreement in North America is a state-of-the-art instrument that will bring great economic benefits to Mexico, Canada and the U.S.,” he wrote.

Jesús Seade, who participated in recent negotiations as the trade representative for president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador, added his support for the new deal.

“We celebrate the trilateral agreement. It closes the door on trade fragmentation in the region. NAFTA 2 will provide certainty and stability to Mexico’s trade with its partners in North America . . .” he wrote on Twitter.

Speaking in Madrid, Spain, Foreign Affairs Secretary Luis Videgaray said the inclusion of Canada in the agreement was “fundamental” in order to maintain the advantages of having a common North American market.

“It’s important for the economic relationship and competitiveness to have the same rules, in that sense it’s something we’re delighted with, we’re excited,” he said.

Videgaray also said that it was pleasing that a so-called sunset clause was not included in the new agreement.

The proposal was pushed by the United States and would have seen a modernized pact automatically expire after five years if it wasn’t renegotiated.

“This five-year idea eliminated certainty but now this [six-year] revision mechanism is good because it eliminates uncertainty,” Videgaray said.

The foreign secretary said that a deal had been reached in time for the current government to sign it but added that the ratification process would take place in the Senate next year.

He also said he was proud of having worked with Mexico’s negotiating team, including López Obrador’s representatives.

“It’s remarkable how Mexico closed ranks [to achieve] something good for the region and particularly for Mexico,” Videgaray said.

Both the Mexican peso and the Canadian dollar made small gains against the U.S. dollar on news of the updated agreement.

Source: Reuters (sp), El Economista (sp).

Marriott Hotel workers on strike stay tough on the picket lines

Essay by David Bacon

Three weeks on the picket line will either weaken a strike or make it stronger. But workers at the Marriott hotels in eight cities around the US show no signs of wanting to go back to work anytime soon, at least not without resolving the reasons why they went on strike to begin with. Instead, the noise on the picket line is getting louder. Workers bang on pots, drums — even old folding chairs — making a racket loud enough to penetrate thick walls and double-paned windows. As a result, many hotel guests not dissuaded by their initial encounters with picketing workers are giving up and leaving.

“Over 20 guests have told me they’re checking out and moving to the Waterfront Hotel,” said Kenneth Walker, the veteran head doorman at the Marriott City Center Hotel in Oakland, California. The Waterfront Hotel, just a dozen blocks down Broadway, is not on strike.

It’s not just happening in Oakland. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Roland Li reports that organizers of the 2018 ComNet conference (a network of foundations and non-profits discussing better communications), which normally draws 1,000 attendees, moved their events out of the struck St. Francis Hotel. The St. Francis used to be a Westin property, but became part of the 700-hotel Marriott empire when Westin was bought out by what is now the world’s largest hotel chain.

Other organizations pulling out of commitments at the Bay Area Marriotts include the Human Rights Campaign, the Shanti Project, the Chicana Latina Foundation and Bay Area Wilderness Training. In response, a huge wave of robocalls is hitting thousands of people in the region, trying to lure them into the Marriotts with offers of special deals.

However, not everyone is avoiding the hotels where workers are on strike. For instance, in Boston, the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers did not cancel hotel reservations for their baseball teams. Instead, ballplayers, themselves members of a union, snuck into the rear entrances of struck hotels as workers yelled questions to them about their apparent lack of solidarity.

Nevertheless, the picket lines and the creative tactics used by the workers and their unions have largely been the reasons hotel customers have turned away. The impact of housekeepers walking picket lines, instead of making beds, has been hard for the company to deny. According to Tonya Lee, a PBX(AYS) operator on the hotel telephone switchboard for the Oakland Marriott for 28 years, “If our manager had to clean seven rooms, he couldn’t do it. Right now he just strips the bed, which is the easy part. He doesn’t then make it or do what comes next. The managers have told me that the strike has made them respect what we just do every day.”

That’s also how Walker describes his experience as a member of the negotiating committee of his union, Unite Here Local 2850. “We’re going to win,” he said. “I feel the people across the table have learned to respect us.”

To get Marriott’s directors to pay attention to the union’s demands, the picket lines have been augmented by street actions and marches. Forty-one hotel strikers and supporters were arrested on October 12 for sitting on Fourth Street in front of Marriott’s San Francisco flagship, the Marquis. In Oakland, on the coordinated national day of marches a week later, hundreds of strikers and supporters took over the intersection of 10th Street and Broadway, outside the hotel entrance. As the police stood without intervening, children painted the strike’s slogan in huge letters on the asphalt: “One Job Should be Enough.”

Workers want protection from the increased use of automated equipment for doing jobs from checking in guests to mixing cocktails. The hotel chain has implemented a “green hotel” program, encouraging guests on cards left in the rooms not to ask for new linen and towels. Although it sounds like an environmentally friendly idea, workers accuse the hotels of using it to reduce the need for housekeepers, speeding up the work and putting their jobs in danger. Instead, the union seeks to reduce a punishing workload, especially for the housekeepers who clean the rooms and make the beds.

While Unite Here locals in each city holds bargaining talks for the hotels located there, the strike has coordinated actions by more than 7,700 workers in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, San Diego, Detroit, Boston, Maui and Honolulu. Seattle Marriott workers have also voted to authorize a strike.

At some hotels, workers are veterans of strikes like this. In 2004, a strike by Local 2 in San Francisco became a lockout by the city’s swankiest establishments. The struck corporations tried to force workers to return under their terms by ending their health coverage. Even after the union defeated the lockout and the workers returned without a contract, hotels refused to deduct workers’ dues payments, thinking this would force the union to agree to concessions. Instead, for two years, the workers paid their dues voluntarily, and at the end, won agreement on the contract they sought.

Since then, what was once a network of large hotels and the companies managing them has become much more of a monopoly. Marriott owns six hotels in San Francisco where workers are striking. At two non-union ones — Airport Marriott Waterfront near the airport and the downtown JW Marriott — workers have declared their open support for joining Unite Here Local 2. They are demanding that managers agree to a fair process for recognizing the union.

Local 2’s strategy, helping workers organize in the middle of a strike, contradicts accepted wisdom among some organizers, who fear managers will use strike threats to discourage workers from union support. Local 2 organizers say their experience is the opposite — that the strike shows that the union is willing and able to fight for improvements against their employer.

In Oakland, Marriott workers are experiencing their first strike. At the beginning, they were unsure if the rest of the workers would support them, even though the strike vote was 98 percent in favor. “We weren’t really prepared for this on the first day,” said Tony Scott, a bellman for 35 years. Lee adds, “I came to work on Friday [October] 5th, and when it was time, I went in and told my coworkers to come out. I wasn’t sure they would. When they all did, I felt I was 10 feet tall.”

Strikes are an education in power, and its lessons haven’t been lost on the picket lines. “Numbers are always important,” Walker explains. “Marriott has used its numbers — how much money they make and how many hotels they own. Now we’re using our numbers to show them they can’t do it without us.”

“This is my first time being on strike, and I see the union is a very powerful force if we stick together,” said Scott. “We have to stand for something. I’ll stay on the line until this is over.”

Keiko Fujimori was held in the Annex Prison for Women in Chorrillos

The leader of Fuerza Popular in Perú will ramain in prison for 36 months by order of judge Richard Concepción

by El Comercio

The leader of Fuerza Popular, Keiko Fujimori, must serve preventive detention by decision of Judge Richard Concepción Carhuancho.

The leader of Fuerza Popular, Keiko Fujimori, was detained this morning in the Annex Prison for Women of Chorrillos, after being transferred, under strong security measures, from the jail of the Judicial Power, located in the Center of Lima.

A caravan of the National Police guarded the van of the National Penitentiary Institute (INPE), in which Fujimori Higuchi was traveling, along the Expressway of the Av. Paseo de la República and the Costa Verde. leaving the jail showed a smile for his supporters, who were in the outskirts.

Keiko Fujimori spent his first night of preventive detention on Wednesday, following the order of Judge Richard Concepcion Carhuancho in the framework of the investigation that is followed for allegedly receiving and laundering illegal contributions of the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht. It was visited by the congressmen Úrsula Letona and Karla Schaefer.

The place where the leader of Fuerza Popular will remain is next to the Chorrillos Women’s Prison and it is the same center where the former first lady Nadine Heredia was held for nine months when Concepción Carhuancho also ordered preventive detention against her and the former president. Ollanta Humala

The former presidential candidate must serve preventive detention for 36 months by order of the investigative judge Richard Concepción Carhuancho, who responded to the request made by prosecutor José Domingo Pérez to apply this measure against Keiko Fujimori and ten others investigated.

Although they have not yet finished discussing all the cases of the defendants (six were missing at the time that was ordered in custody against Keiko Fujimori), the magistrate decided to evaluate case by case and had enough elements to determine the case of the leader of Fuerza Popular.

Before this resolution, the defense of Keiko Fujimori presented an appeal that they expect to be heard within a period of about three weeks, after it is determined whether or not the recusations that have been filed against Richard Concepción Carhuancho and the National Chamber of Appeals filed by lawyer Giulliana Loza and prosecutor Rafael Vela Barba respectively.

Taking a multivitamin every day could prevent vision loss from a common eye disease

by Isabelle Z.

Most of us take our vision for granted. We don’t really give our eyesight a second thought… until something is wrong with it. Unfortunately, there’s a good chance that you will run into vision problems as you age as a result of macular degeneration, and this can negatively affect your quality of life. Luckily, scientists have found a great way you can try to hold on to your vision even when this condition sets in, and it’s as easy as consuming the right types of vitamins in the right quantities.

A progressive disease that can rob you of your sight, age-related macular degeneration affects the retina and causes you to lose your central vision. Your peripheral vision might be normal, but you eventually lose the ability to see fine details. It’s said that being overweight, older than 50, and consuming a diet high in saturated fat raises your risk of age-related macular degeneration, but it’s incredibly common overall. One out of every three people aged 80 or older have signs of the disease.

Among those with age-related macular degeneration, eight out of ten will have the dry form, which is caused by a thinning in the macula. It usually starts when tiny deposits form beneath the retina, and it often causes a blurry spot in central vision.

A team of researchers from the Cochrane Review recently carried out a study to assess whether vitamins and minerals can slow the progression of the disease in those who have it. They analyzed data taken from 19 different studies in the U.S., Europe, China and Australia. While some had mixed results, one very large study with a six-year follow-up period showed that a combination of vitamin E, carotenoids, zinc, and vitamin C could make a difference.

One of the biggest and most famous studies on the matter is known as the Age-Related Eye Disease Study 2, or AREDS 2. This study followed patients to determine how nutritional supplements could help lower the risk of the disease progressing and causing vision loss.

The combination that they found to be effective was made up of 500 milligrams of vitamin C, 400 international units of vitamin E, 80 milligrams of zinc, 10 milligrams of lutein, 2 milligrams of copper, and 2 milligrams of zeaxanthin.

Eating the right foods can make all the difference

While taking these supplements can be useful, studies indicate that nutritional supplements on their own won’t prevent or delay advanced age-related macular degeneration. That’s why experts recommend that you eat a healthy diet full of vision-enhancing nutrients.

For example, leafy greens like spinach and kale are excellent sources of lutein and zeaxanthin, while avocados and broccoli also contain high amounts. Citrus fruits like oranges, lemons and grapefruits, with their high vitamin C content, can also reduce the risk of macular degeneration in the first place. Experts recommend that you look for yellow and orange vegetables in particular as they tend to be high in carotenoids, which support eye health – and yes, carrots do help your vision, although they’re not quite as magical as some people believe.

If you have dry eyes as well, eat plenty of foods that are rich in omega 3 fatty acids, like salmon, sardines, mackerel and nuts.

The Cochrane Report researchers say that the vitamins can be helpful to those with the disease, and they suggest that eye care practitioners discuss this option with their patients in depth. Because vitamins are generally safe, there is little to lose and everything to gain. (Natural News).

Ayotzinapa 4 years later: AMLO vows to discover the truth about the 43 students

Probe will examine roles of army and Federal Police in the night of violence in Iguala, Guerrero, in 2014

by Mexico News Daily

Mexico’s new government will investigate “everyone” involved in the disappearance of 43 teaching students four years ago today in Iguala, Guerrero.

President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador met today with the families of the students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College and assured them that the truth will come out through an investigation that will go as far as to examine the roles of the army and the Federal Police.

The current federal government claims that corrupt municipal officials turned the students over to a criminal gang that killed them and incinerated their bodies.

At a press conference after their two-hour meeting, López Obrador said it was agreed that judicial authorities be called on to reaffirm a court order to implement a truth commission, a move the current government has resisted.

If a commission has not been established by December 1, when the president-elect takes office, he will create one by decree, López Obrador vowed.

The government’s investigation into the case has been widely criticized by international experts, human rights organizations, Mexican journalists and the students’ families. Many people suspect that the army may have played a role in the students’ disappearance.

In June, a federal court ordered the creation of a truth and justice commission to undertake a new investigation, ruling that the one carried out by the federal Attorney General’s office (PGR) “was not prompt, effective, independent or impartial.”

However, the government has launched legal action against the court’s order to create the commission, arguing that it is impossible to do so.

There is “a real, legal and material impossibility” to create the commission, the PGR said in June.

Alejandro Encinas, who will be an Interior Secretariat human rights undersecretary in the new government, offered his own pledge yesterday that a truth commission will be created.

“If the current government doesn’t comply [with the court order], we will implement it. It’s a matter of political will and an act of justice,” he said in a radio interview.

Meanwhile, current students of the Ayotzinapa college attacked military installations in Chilpancingo, Guerrero, yesterday as they renewed protests against the authorities’ failure to solve the case.

The students arrived in the state capital at around 5:00pm and participated in a march and rally before making their way to the army barracks where they threw Molotov cocktails, fireworks and stones that damaged the building’s façade.

The attack lasted less than 10 minutes before the students boarded buses and left, according to the newspaper Reforma.

Parents of the 43 students will take part in a march in Mexico City today with students and members of social and human rights organizations.

The father of one of the missing students said yesterday that he saw “a little hope” that the case will be solved during López Obrador’s presidency.

“Yes, there is a little hope with this government, there’s a new power, we’re going to raise everything . . .” Maximino Hernández told the television program La Nota Dura.

Vidulfo Rosales, a lawyer for the disappeared students’ parents, said the incoming administration has a chance to right the wrongs of the current government.

“The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has the opportunity to give results in a very concrete way . . . [The case] could serve as an element that helps to resolve other cases of disappeared people,” he said.

The notorious Ayotzinapa-Iguala case and its subsequent investigation is considered by many as the biggest failure of the current administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto. But the president said last month that he stands by the “historical truth” declared by investigators.

According to the official version of events, the students’ bodies were burned in the Cocula municipal dump before their remains were disposed of in a nearby river. Then attorney general Jesús Murillo Karam declared in early 2015 that the investigation had produced the “historical truth,” a phrase that has been widely ridiculed since by critics of the probe.

Earlier this year, the United Nations released a report that said that 34 people were tortured in connection with the investigation and that suspects had been arbitrarily detained.

The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) also said in June that it has “undoubted evidence” that one man was wrongfully arrested in connection with the crime in a case of mistaken identity.

Source: Reforma (sp), El Financiero (sp)

In other news in Mexico:

No plastic straws will be allowed in Querétaro by next March
Restaurants say use of straws is down 95 percent

The municipal council of Querétaro agreed yesterday to start phasing out the free distribution of plastic straws in restaurants.

Acting mayor Enrique Correa Sada explained that the technical aspects of the new regulations have yet to be worked out, and that a full prohibition won’t go into effect until March.

In the interim, the municipality will launch an information campaign about the new regulation, and give restaurateurs time to exhaust their supplies of straws.

The president of the Querétaro chapter of the restaurant industry association Canirac told the newspaper Milenio that its 185 members have reduced their plastic straw use by 95% over the last six months.

Current practice is only to provide a straw when a customer asks for one, said Sergio Salmón Franz.

He also said he supports the idea of biodegradable straws, but their use is up to each restaurateur.

The decision by council to phase out straws comes after its August decision to restrict the use of plastic bags.

Source: Milenio (sp).

Peña Nieto seeks legal protection against Chihuahua corruption probe

Unprecedented move seeks to protect federal officials as embezzling investigation continues

by the El Reportero’s wire services

With its days in office numbered, the administration of President Peña Nieto has made a last-minute and unprecedented attempt to protect itself from a corruption investigation in which federal officials could face prosecution.

The president’s legal office this month filed a motion with the Supreme Court that seeks to prevent officials from being targeted by a corruption probe in Chihuahua relating to the alleged diversion of public funds to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

It is the first publicly known case in which the president’s legal office has sought to protect him and other officials in a corruption investigation, the Associated Press reported.

Authorities in Chihuahua are investigating a suspected embezzlement scheme, allegedly operated by Alejandro Gutiérrez, a former federal lawmaker and high-ranking official in the PRI, the same party Peña Nieto represents.

The scheme allegedly diverted 250 million pesos (US $13 million) from the federal Secretariat of Finance to the administration of former Chihuahua governor César Duarte. The money is believed to have been used to fund PRI candidates’ campaigns in the 2016 state elections.

Gutiérrez was arrested last December and placed in preventative custody but he was released last month after a challenge against his acquittal was rejected.

Duarte fled Mexico to the United States last year and is considered a fugitive from justice but the federal government has so far failed to extradite him.

After Gutiérrez’s exoneration and release, current Chihuahua Governor Javier Corral of the National Action Party (PAN) called the entire process a “pretense.”

Official Complicity in Panamanian Farmers’ Eviction Denounced

The eviction of 400 farming families from their lands in the western Panamanian district of Baru, ordered by the justice system, is illegal, unconstitutional and deprives them of their rights, said defenders of the victims on Tuesday.

The contract-law between the State and the private company Banapiña Panama declared as ‘invaders’ those who produced food for almost two decades on public lands abandoned by a previous agricultural concessionaire, and this protects them legally under the Agrarian Code currently in force in the country, said lawyer Santander Tristan.

This law, in its article 157, establishes the right of anyone who maintains public agrarian possession and dedicates it to production ‘without interruption for fifteen years, with no need for a title,’ a condition met by those represented, according to the lawyer.

‘In the farms owned by THE STATE that are occupied by invaders at the signing of this Contract, THE STATE will assume, through the local police authorities, the pertinent legal actions so that, when THE COMPANY starts operations, the farms are unoccupied,’ the pact states.

Based on this affirmation, the government has demanded the ‘launch by intruders’ of the mentioned producers and the peace judge Ulsana Valdes has ordered the eviction to be executed, in spite of this competence being ‘privative and non-extendable’ of the agrarian jurisdiction, explained Tristan.

Ninth Circuit affirms relief for immigrant teens wrongly arrested

by the El Reportero’s wire services

Civil rights and immigration advocate organizations have prevailed in the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on behalf of immigrant teenagers whom the Trump Administration had arrested and jailed for “gang affiliation,” despite there being no evidence of gang crimes.

In an opinion issued on Oct. 1, 2018, the Ninth Circuit affirmed a preliminary injunction requiring the government to give the teenagers notice of the reasons for their arrests, access to the evidence being offered against them, and a prompt hearing in front of a judge, in which the government would have the burden to justify their detention.

The case involves a class comprised of teenagers who were previously released by the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to the care of relatives while their immigration proceedings were pending. Starting in June 2017, many of these teenagers were rearrested by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) based on unsubstantiated claims of gang affiliation, turned over to ORR and then held by ORR in jail-like detention facilities for many months without a hearing. The ACLU filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, challenging their wrongful arrests and illegal detention, and in November 2017, the district court judge granted the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, ordering that all of the teenagers must be given hearings within one week. He also ordered that any additional children who were rearrested under similar circumstances in the future would be entitled to the same prompt hearing.

187,000 dreamers have renewed DACA

More than 187,000 Dreamers have been able to renew their deferred action and work authorization under DACA since January. This data was published in the latest quarterly report on DACA renewals, which the federal government is required to file as part of the preliminary injunction that California secured to preserve DACA, reported the California Attorney General Office.

Tensions escalate after 25 days of general strike in Costa Rica

The general strike for an undetermined period against the fiscal reform being promoted by the Government in Parliament turns 25 days on Thursday, amid an increase in protests and police repression against demonstrators.

Members of Unidad Sindical y Social Nacional (USSN), a coalition of workers’ and social groups, have increased regional actions as part of the general strike against the draft bill Strengthening Public Finance, plan or fiscal reform, which is also known as the fiscal combo by its opponents.

On its 25th day, the general strike will consist of regional protests as usual, amid an escalation in the tone of the demonstrations, including police repression against strikers in Puntarenas and Limon, and demands for President Carlos Alvarado to listen to the people.

According to reports from the USSN, police officers launched tear gas at people who were protesting peacefully on Road 27, in Calderas, in Puntarenas province, and they did the same in Limon.

Mexican Senate begins review of USMCAN treaty

The Mexican Senate begins on Wednesday the revision of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) Agreement by welcoming the team of President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who participated in the negotiation.

This was reported by the coordinator of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), Ricardo Monreal, who stressed it is the first time that the Mexican Upper House will carry out the review of this agreement along with its U.S. counterpart.

About the agreement, he expressed his satisfaction with the energy issue, because the country’s sovereignty over its natural resources was safeguarded. But he advanced that he will wait for the revision of the text to give his definitive opinion.

Napoleón Gómez, who is also a senator from Morena, commented that he will study the USMCAN labor chapter with a lens, and the same will be done by the large trade union organizations in the United States and Canada, in order to reach a common platform of respect, justice and dignity for the workers of the three nations.

We need more push in Mexico, where wages are lagging behind, he said.

He said he hopes the labor chapter has covered the issues of safety at work, respect for the environment, as well as the obligation for multinational companies operating in Mexico to respect Mexican laws.

Next week the Secretary of Economy, Ildefonso Guajardo; and the Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray will appear before the Senate. From there, the 32 chapters of the agreement will be reviewed in commissions.

Third migrants’ caravan scheduled to leave El Salvador within the next week

The number of migrants traveling through Mexico could soon reach 10,000

by Mexico News Daily

A third caravan of migrants is expected to leave Central America within the next week, which could bring the total number of people escaping poverty and violence by making the northward trek to nearly 10,000.

The third wave, believed to have been inspired by the caravan now traveling through Chiapas, is scheduled to leave El Salvador on October 28 and cross the border into via Tecún Umán, Guatemala, according to one report.

Organized on a Facebook group called El Salvador Emigrates for a Better Future, the caravan’s communications on social media are being monitored by the United States Department of Homeland Security, NBC News reported after obtaining an internal government report. That document indicated the departure date would be October 31, and that so far the migrants were largely families traveling with children.

The first and largest caravan entered Mexico via Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, last Friday and according to the United Nations is composed of more than 7,000 people. Today it is en route to Mapastepec, Chiapas.

A second caravan of about 2,500 people from Honduras that is currently in Guatemala has divided into two smaller groups.

Guatemala police said one group of about 1,500 people is en route to Tecún Umán while the other group of about 1,000 is planning to cross into Mexico at El Ceibo, Tabasco. Local media reported that the second group’s numbers have been augmented by migrants in the Honduras caravan who were deported from Mexico last week.

“Several units of the police are accompanying the caravan for security reasons,” said police spokesman Pablo Castillo. He also explained that military personnel and police attempted unsuccessfully to stop the advance of the group on Monday.

The Guatemala government said it was adopting measures to stop the entry of more migrants from Honduras and El Salvador into its territory, although attempts by both Guatemala and Mexico to halt the flow have failed.

In El Salvador, the government has taken a different stance. President Salvador Sánchez Cerén expressed support yesterday for the first caravan of migrants and criticized the position of U.S. President Donald Trump despite the latter’s announcement that he would cut aid to El Salvador and other Central American countries for not preventing the migrants from leaving.

“For us, to migrate is a human right so the rights of migrants have to be protected; we are totally opposed to the policy of Donald Trump,” he said.

Emigration from El Salvador has contributed to the development of the U.S. and helped the North American economy, Sánchez continued.

Trump has claimed that there are “Maras,” or members of the criminal gang Mara Salvatrucha, among the migrants, although the gang originated in Los Angeles, California. However, most were originally from El Salvador.

Source: El Universal (sp), NBC News (en), Infobae (sp)

UN warns some migrants are in danger should they be deported
Refugee agency says they are fleeing ‘real danger’ back home

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has warned that the migrant caravan currently traveling through Mexico is likely to include people fleeing “real danger” in their countries of origin.

UNHCR spokesperson Adrian Edwards told a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland, today that “in any situation like this it is essential that people have the chance to request asylum and have their international protection needs properly assessed, before any decision on return/deportation is made.”

The federal government last week warned members of the caravan, made up mainly of Hondurans, that if they enter Mexico illegally, they will be detained and deported.

However, after attempts to prevent the caravan from entering Mexico on Sunday proved futile, the migrants have walked and/or traveled on the back of trucks or in other vehicles through Chiapas unimpeded.

The government invited the UNHCR to help attend to the migrant caravan, whose numbers have been estimated as high as 7,000 people.

Most of the migrants don’t have visas and haven’t formally requested asylum with the National Immigration Institute (INM).

Around 200 migrants remain camped out on the bridge in Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, on the border between Guatemala and Mexico waiting to enter Mexico legally, the newspaper Milenio reported.

Edwards said that as of yesterday there were 45 UNHCR staff in Tapachula, Chiapas, and that others are en route.

AMLO promises visa and work for Central American migrants

“We are going to offer employment, work for Central American migrants,” said the president-elect, Andrés Manuel López Obrador

by Jorge Monroy

“We are going to offer employment, work for Central American migrants,” said the president-elect, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, reiterating that in order to reduce the migratory phenomenon, it is necessary to create welfare conditions.

At a press conference in Tamaulipas, after meeting with Governor Francisco Garcia Cabeza de Vaca, Lopez Obrador was questioned about whether the Mexican government should allow the passage of the caravan of migrants from Honduras. In response, Obrador said that migrants should be seen beyond the free passage.

He reiterated that one of the solutions is that the president of the United States, Donald Trump, accept the plan that he proposed to generate development in Mexico and the Central American region.

“It has to do with the same, we are asking the government of the United States, the government of Canada, the implementation of a development plan in Mexico and in the Central American countries, we are making a proposal for cooperation for development. The one who leaves his town does it out of necessity, not for pleasure, and we want the migration to be optional, not compulsory, and for people to work, be happy where they were born, where their relatives are to temper the migratory phenomenon, they have to take care of the causes; there must be investment to generate employment, improve living conditions, work in Central America and in our country; I explained this to President Donald Trump; He will accept our proposal, is carrying out a bilateral consultation process, we have information about what is happening in Central America and our position is to face the migratory phenomenon with development, with work, with well-being in Central America and in the country ” he commented.

But should the caravan be allowed in? -She was asked.

“There are options, there are alternatives. It’s not just about that (letting the caravan go by), it’s about giving options, giving alternatives, that those who leave their villages have job opportunities, we in Mexico, from December 1, we will offer employment I work with Central American migrants, that is a plan that we have; that who wants to work in our country, will have support, will have a work visa, we are seeing that. It is not dealing with the issue only with deportations or with measures of force, but by giving options, alternatives. This plan will be announced as of December 1, and we are looking for joint support, and progress is being made. In the last call I had with President Donald Trump, we celebrated the signing of the free trade agreement with the three countries, a trilateral agreement, and I told him that the second step is the development plan that includes Central America to promote productive activities , create jobs, and in this way confront the migratory phenomenon, not with deportations, not with measures of force, but giving people who leave their villages looking for work, “he said.

López Obrador said that the migratory phenomenon must be approached with respect to human rights and giving work options to those who are forced to leave their villages.

“The plan is that nobody is forced to emigrate, that’s the ideal, and if they already make the decision to leave their villages, they have options in Mexico. The plan of our development are like curtains to give job opportunities, all the south will have possibilities of occupation, of employment, for thousands of workers, because we will plant in the south-southeast 1 million hectares of timber trees , 400,000 jobs will be created, the Mayan train will be built, it is an investment of 8,000 million dollars, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec will be developed, that is another curtain. What results from the consultation on the airport in Mexico City will involve investment that will greatly strengthen industrial development in the Bajío. Here in the north there will be a free zone from Matamoros to Tijuana, taxes will go down from 16 to 8 percent VAT, to 20 percent the ISR, will increase the minimum wage to double in the border area, then, they are opportunities so that nobody is forced to leave the country, “he said.

In another related news in Mexico under Peña Nieto administration

Mexico to migrants: you will be deported if you do not have documentation
As many as 4,000 migrants are believed to be heading for Mexico’s southern border

The federal government has warned to caravan of Central American migrants traveling to the United States via Mexico that if they enter the country illegally they will be detained and deported.
In a joint statement, the secretaries of Foreign Affairs (SRE) and the Interior (Segob) said that in accordance with the law, anyone who enters Mexico “irregularly” will be “rescued” and subjected to review.

If they do not have the required documentation they will be returned to their own country.

The statement said the measure “responds not just to compliance with national legislation” but also to the government’s interest in avoiding migrants becoming “victims of human trafficking networks.”

More than 200 Federal Police officers arrived in Tapachula, Chiapas, yesterday to help the National Immigration Institute (INM) secure the southern border. The organization’s chief, Manelich Castilla, traveled to the border city earlier this week.

As many as 4,000 mainly Honduran migrants fleeing poverty and crime are planning to travel through Mexico to the United States, infuriating U.S. President Trump.

Many are traveling on foot, some with babies and small children, while others are in buses.

One Honduran whose legs had to be amputated after he fell from a Mexican freight train during an attempt to get to the United States in 2015 is trying again. This time a fellow migrant is pushing his wheelchair.

El Chapo’s lawyers accuse government of ‘an inquisition’ as trial nears

Joaquín Guzmán Loera’s defense team complain that their client is being systematically denied due process

Edward Helmore

On the face of it, criminal complaint 1:09-cr-00466-BMC is a straightforward drug-conspiracy case based on 300,000 pages of seized documents, including drug ledgers and shipping manifests, wire-tap recordings and potentially dozens of cooperating witnesses.

But the sheer abundance of discovery material alone is an indication that little about United States v Joaquín Guzmán Loera will be straightforward when jury selection begins in Brooklyn federal Judge Brian Cogan’s court room on Nov. 5.

For the government, it’s a banner prosecution; a rare opportunity to serve justice on a notorious trafficking kingpin known variously as El Shorty (for his diminutive stature), El Rapido (for the efficiency of his trafficking operation), or El Chapo to followers of narco folklore everywhere.

But the passage from extradition on Barack Obama’s final night in office in 2017 to trial in Brooklyn has been fraught with delays caused by defense complaints that Guzmán, for two decades the head of Mexico’s dominant Sinaloa crime cartel, is being systematically denied due process.

“I’ve defended some difficult cases and some notorious clients but I’ve never had both arms tied behind my back like this,” says Jeffrey Lichtman, a heavy hitting New York criminal defence lawyer who formally joined Guzmán’s defence team last month. “This is literally an inquisition. Constitutional fairness has gone out of the window because the government wants a show trial with a quickie conviction.”

The addition of Lichtman, who is best known for winning an acquittal for John Gotti Jr on mob related racketeering charges, has amplified a sense of anticipation before the trial. Guzmán’s wife, the former beauty queen Emma Coronel Aispuro, now attends pretrial hearings with the couple’s two young daughters, who wave and coo excitedly to their father from the gallery. That space is now crammed with increasing numbers of media from Mexico and Central America, where Guzmán remains both reviled and revered.

The vast amount of evidence prosecutors have assembled to back up their story of Guzmán’s two decades at the top has now landed with the defense, a “dump” in their opinion, and assembled “with no rhyme or reason”.

If the government’s evidence against Guzmán is as good as it claims it is, Lichtman argued, why are they treating El Chapo in this fashion? “It’s making me think that maybe the evidence is not so good and they’re going to rely on the evidence of people who’ve spent their entire lives selling drugs and lying,” he said.

Exacerbating the problem of sifting through that material, the defence claims, is being denied sufficient access to a client who does not speak English and whose ability to participate in his defence is hampered by the harsh conditions of his 17-month confinement at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan.

“He’s in isolation 24 hours a day and his condition is deteriorating,” said Lichtman. “He has no contact with other prisoners and very little contact with jailers, who don’t speak Spanish. He has no ability to speak to his family and gets two calls from his sister totaling half-an-hour a month.”

Though the judge, Cogan, has indicated he’s not inclined to allow testimony about dozens of assassinations Guzmán allegedly ordered between 1989 and 2014, jurors will likely hear the story of a lowly marijuana farmer who rose to create a smuggling empire with annual revenues of $3bn and which, at its peak, was responsible for 25 percent of all illegal drugs entering the US from Mexico. Guzmán’s own fortune, prosecutors estimate, is in excess of $1bn.

After he was hauled from a drainage ditch in the coastal city of Mochis by Mexican federal authorities in January 2016, Guzmán told Mexican prosecutors that he was “just a farmer” who earns 20,000 pesos a year ($1,500) growing corn, sorghum and safflower. He did not, he claimed, “belong to any cartel or have any cartel”.

Part of the government’s rationale for keeping Guzmán under conditions of maximum detention, his legal team concedes, may be rooted in Guzmán’s proven ability to escape from maximum-security prisons in Mexico – once, according to his lore, secreted in a laundry cart and, in a second successful bid for freedom, via a mile-long tunnel that connected to the shower of his cell.
“We have to be realistic,” A Eduardo Balarezo argued. “We’re in a secure facility in downtown Manhattan. Does the government have so little faith it its own security that they think something like that could happen again?”

As the government lays out Guzman’s rise and fall at trial, much of the evidence will come in direct testimony from as many as 40 witnesses, among them Colombian drug lords, couriers, enforcers and accountants – some of who may be allowed to testify under aliases.

One likely prosecution witness is Dámaso López, Guzmán’s former right-hand man who was extradited to the US in July. One figure who might be called by the defence is actor Sean Penn.

Months ago, prosecutors petitioned the judge to exclude any mention of Guzmán’s sit-down interview with Penn for Rolling Stone magazine in 2015, which came shortly before the arrest that led to Guzmán’s extradition. Penn has denied his contact with Guzmán could have tipped off US or Mexican authorities to his whereabouts.

Asked if he believed Penn’s involvement led to his client’s arrest, Balarezo said simply: “I have no doubts about that.”

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