Mexico's Lopez Obrador sets $7.5 billion for youths, elderly

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press


Mark Stevenson, Associated Press
Updated 4:30 pm CDT, Wednesday, July 4, 2018

MEXICO CITY (AP) — President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador promised $7.5 billion for youth job training and aid to the elderly Wednesday, keystone programs that could make Mexico's business sector one of the biggest beneficiaries of his first year in office.

Lopez Obrador pledged the government would pay the salaries of apprentices employed by Mexican companies as part of a $5 billion package of scholarships and job training.

The once-fiery leftist met with Mexican businessmen on Wednesday in a surprisingly chummy encounter where he sealed the job-training deal in a handshake with business chamber leader Juan Pablo Castanon.

The programs for the elderly and youths will be the cornerstones of Lopez Obrador's first year in office, which starts when he takes office Dec. 1.

Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Mexico-s-Lopez-Obrador-sets-7-5-billion-for-13049448.php

[Judi Lynn]

1. Lpez Obrador's Youth in His Home State Shows Why He's Not a Demagogic Populist

“We saw right away that he was different. Andrés knows what the bite of an ant feels like.”
By James North
TODAY 5:01 PM

Tucta, Mexico—You can come here and listen to the people who worked with Mexico’s next president when he was a community organizer in his 20s to learn just how wrong and insulting it is to call him a “populist” or a “tropical messiah.” Here you can also get a glimpse of the political revolution that Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, hopes will continue to spread across Mexico.

Tucta, located in the steamy, swampy southeastern state of Tabasco, is a village in an area populated mainly by indigenous Chontal people, who have historically suffered high levels of poverty and discrimination. The people here are campesinos, small farmers who grow corn, beans, vegetables, and fruits. López Obrador, a native of this state, came here in the 1970s, just out of university, to work with a government agency, the National Indigenous Institute. Reyes Arias Romano, whom everyone calls Don Reyes, is one of the local leaders. He earned the honorific “Don” not because he is a big landowner—he has a small plot just like his neighbors—but because he is a respected community leader, still president of an agricultural board at age 72.

“When Andrés first came we didn’t pay him much attention,” Don Reyes says. “Others had come before him and nothing changed. But when he moved into our community alongside us, we saw right away that he was different. Andrés was not afraid to roll up his pants and step into the mud. Unlike the other politicians, he knows what the bite of an ant feels like.”

Don Reyes has a sharp memory. He enumerates the changes that started once the young organizer got to work. “We pressured the government to bring electricity,” he says. “Before, we had to use candles and kerosene lamps. The first new housing project got started: 105 new homes, and then more later. Running water arrived. We set up a cooperative to make and commercialize handicrafts. We even started a community radio station.”

More:
https://www.thenation.com/article/lopez-obradors-youth-home-state-shows-hes-not-demagogic-populist/

[mpcamb]

2. I remember when he ran in 2006 and a garbage truck full of MXCity ballots went to the dump.

The recount didn't include the poor-side-of town area that they came from.
That brought in Felipe Calderón and almost immediately the drug/cartel wars and with it, the escalating murder rate and a few minimalist reforms..

[Judi Lynn]

3. All those citizens who protested in the Zocalo in the center of town knew the results were bogus.

Some walked away from their farms, their jobs, etc. and many camped out, a vast crowd, the largest in Mexican history, for weeks trying to demand a recount. As you said, a lot of the ballots had been destroyed, anyway.

George W. Bush and Calderón created the "Mérida Initiative" after which the violence escalated wildly. Militarized the drug war, decapitated bodies started appearing, along with mass graves, people hanging from bridges, etc., etc., etc. Pouring a boatload of money into the process produced more corruption, more death, more drugs, tons of illegal guns flowing from the US into Mexico.

Hoping AMLO will have as much protection as he needs to stay safe. Safe from right-wing assassins, or apolitical assassins working for the right-wing politicians or their sponsors here or there.