Latest news with #LópezObrador
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- Business
- The Guardian
‘Historic': how Mexico's welfare policies helped 13.4 million people out of poverty
Toothless and frail, Gloria Palacios, 84, stooped as she set up her rickety sidewalk shop in Mexico City's roughshod Doctores neighborhood. On sale: peanuts, cigarettes, chewing gum, chocolates and chips. When asked how much she made in a day, Palacios's disabled son Gustavo, who helps run the tiny store, simply laughed. 'If we make 100 pesos ($5) it's a lot,' he said. Happily, said Palacios, the family has a different lifeline. With their house crumbling and bills piling up, the only thing keeping them afloat is a bimonthly transfer of 6,200 pesos ($330) implemented by the government of previous president Andrés Manuel López Obrador for adults over 65. 'God bless López Obrador,' said Palacios. 'Without him what would we do? I think we wouldn't even have enough to eat.' Palacios is one of millions of people across Mexico who have benefited from the welfare policies of López Obrador, or Amlo as he's commonly known. And now, thanks to a report released last week by the country's national statistics agency, we know just how effective those policies were. When Amlo took office in 2018, there were nearly 52 million people living below the poverty line: by the time he left office six years later, that number had dropped by 13.4 million, a decrease of almost 26%. Extreme poverty also dropped from nearly 9 million people to just 7 million. In a country that has long suffered from deep inequality and struggled with economic precarity, the steep drop in the number of people living in poverty is a remarkable achievement and suggests Amlo's policies had a measurable impact on the lives of millions of everyday Mexicans. 'It's something extraordinary, historic, the reduction [of poverty],' said Amlo's successor and ally Claudia Sheinbaum during a news conference on Thursday. ''For the good of all – first the poor' is not just a slogan, but a reality in Mexico.' Some independent Mexican analysts have been equally enthusiastic about the poverty reductions achieved under Amlo. 'There has never been a single six-year term in which poverty has been reduced or decreased so significantly,' said Viri Ríos, a public policy expert and director of Mexico Decoded. 'This is a watershed moment for the Mexican economy.' Amlo was elected in a 2018 landslide with a promise to eradicate corruption and tackle inequality. Among the legacies of his administration were the tripling of the minimum wage from 88.40 pesos ($4.75) per day when he took office to the current rate of 278.80 pesos ($15) a day. This had a knock-on effect on other sectors of the economy, according to Valeria Moy, a Mexican economist and director general of IMCO, a public policy thinktank. 'When the minimum wage increases, other wages and incomes in the economy begin to rise – even in the informal economy – because there is a greater availability of resources,' she said. 'I don't know if the [poverty reduction] was purely because of López Obrador's policies, but I do think the push in the minimum wage moved the rest.' Ríos was more emphatic. 'We're talking about a labor market that had a minimum wage well below the standard of living,' she said. 'And now it's reached a level that allows 13.4 million families to escape poverty. It's a historic achievement.' Amlo also transformed the social welfare system, implementing a system of cash transfers for elderly people, like Palacios, for young people doing apprenticeships and for farmers planting fruit trees, among others. He then doubled the amount spent on these transfers. The universal cash transfer system, which replaced a well-regarded conditional system for the poorest fifth of households requiring children to go to school and families to attend health check-ups, has received some criticism as it meant that, in the case of the pension system for example, anyone, even well-off Mexicans over 65, were entitled to a transfer. 'We lost focus and lost the ability to give to the poorest,' said Gonzalo Hernández Licona, the former head of the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL), a now defunct agency which used to measure poverty before the task was transferred to the statistics institute. 'While the amount has grown, the way the amount is distributed has worsened.' This might help explain why the 19% reduction in extreme poverty was much lower than the nearly 26% reduction in overall poverty. Many of the poorest Mexicans live in remote rural places, where accessing social welfare is hard if not impossible. 'The big problem [with the cash transfers] is not that they're universal,' said Ríos. 'The big problem is that the Mexican government has not made an effort to make it truly universal – that is, to make it reach everyone.' Meanwhile, the report from the statistics agency also revealed other glaring issues under Amlo's government: while access to food security, social security and dignified living conditions all increased, the number of people without access to health services more than doubled, from 20.1 million people in 2018 to more than 44 million in 2024. 'I think the great debt that the Mexican state still owes its people is improving access to healthcare,' said Ríos. 'As a percentage of GDP, our spending on health is similar to countries in sub-Saharan Africa.' Palacios, who has considerable medical expenses but no access to medical insurance said she felt 'horrible'. 'Medicines are so expensive,' she said. 'And I don't have anything.' Sheinbaum admitted there was still more work to do. 'Do we still have progress to make? Yes,' she said. 'With 30% of Mexico's population living in poverty, we obviously have to keep moving forward.'
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- Business
- The Guardian
‘Historic': how Mexico's welfare policies helped 13.4 million people out of poverty
Toothless and frail, Gloria Palacios, 84, stooped as she set up her rickety sidewalk shop in Mexico City's roughshod Doctores neighborhood. On sale: peanuts, cigarettes, chewing gum, chocolates and chips. When asked how much she made in a day, Palacios's disabled son Gustavo, who helps run the tiny store, simply laughed. 'If we make 100 pesos ($5) it's a lot,' he said. Happily, said Palacios, the family has a different lifeline. With their house crumbling and bills piling up, the only thing keeping them afloat is a bimonthly transfer of 6,200 pesos ($330) implemented by the government of previous president Andrés Manuel López Obrador for adults over 65. 'God bless López Obrador,' said Palacios. 'Without him what would we do? I think we wouldn't even have enough to eat.' Palacios is one of millions of people across Mexico who have benefited from the welfare policies of López Obrador, or Amlo as he's commonly known. And now, thanks to a report released last week by the country's national statistics agency, we know just how effective those policies were. When Amlo took office in 2018, there were nearly 52 million people living below the poverty line: by the time he left office six years later, that number had dropped by 13.4 million, a decrease of almost 26%. Extreme poverty also dropped from nearly 9 million people to just 7 million. In a country that has long suffered from deep inequality and struggled with economic precarity, the steep drop in the number of people living in poverty is a remarkable achievement and suggests Amlo's policies had a measurable impact on the lives of millions of everyday Mexicans. 'It's something extraordinary, historic, the reduction [of poverty],' said Amlo's successor and ally Claudia Sheinbaum during a news conference on Thursday. ''For the good of all – first the poor' is not just a slogan, but a reality in Mexico.' Some independent Mexican analysts have been equally enthusiastic about the poverty reductions achieved under Amlo. 'There has never been a single six-year term in which poverty has been reduced or decreased so significantly,' said Viri Ríos, a public policy expert and director of Mexico Decoded. 'This is a watershed moment for the Mexican economy.' Amlo was elected in a 2018 landslide with a promise to eradicate corruption and tackle inequality. Among the legacies of his administration were the tripling of the minimum wage from 88.40 pesos ($4.75) per day when he took office to the current rate of 278.80 pesos ($15) a day. This had a knock-on effect on other sectors of the economy, according to Valeria Moy, a Mexican economist and director general of IMCO, a public policy thinktank. 'When the minimum wage increases, other wages and incomes in the economy begin to rise – even in the informal economy – because there is a greater availability of resources,' she said. 'I don't know if the [poverty reduction] was purely because of López Obrador's policies, but I do think the push in the minimum wage moved the rest.' Ríos was more emphatic. 'We're talking about a labor market that had a minimum wage well below the standard of living,' she said. 'And now it's reached a level that allows 13.4 million families to escape poverty. It's a historic achievement.' Amlo also transformed the social welfare system, implementing a system of cash transfers for elderly people, like Palacios, for young people doing apprenticeships and for farmers planting fruit trees, among others. He then doubled the amount spent on these transfers. The universal cash transfer system, which replaced a well-regarded conditional system for the poorest fifth of households requiring children to go to school and families to attend health check-ups, has received some criticism as it meant that, in the case of the pension system for example, anyone, even well-off Mexicans over 65, were entitled to a transfer. 'We lost focus and lost the ability to give to the poorest,' said Gonzalo Hernández Licona, the former head of the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL), a now defunct agency which used to measure poverty before the task was transferred to the statistics institute. 'While the amount has grown, the way the amount is distributed has worsened.' This might help explain why the 19% reduction in extreme poverty was much lower than the nearly 26% reduction in overall poverty. Many of the poorest Mexicans live in remote rural places, where accessing social welfare is hard if not impossible. 'The big problem [with the cash transfers] is not that they're universal,' said Ríos. 'The big problem is that the Mexican government has not made an effort to make it truly universal – that is, to make it reach everyone.' Meanwhile, the report from the statistics agency also revealed other glaring issues under Amlo's government: while access to food security, social security and dignified living conditions all increased, the number of people without access to health services more than doubled, from 20.1 million people in 2018 to more than 44 million in 2024. 'I think the great debt that the Mexican state still owes its people is improving access to healthcare,' said Ríos. 'As a percentage of GDP, our spending on health is similar to countries in sub-Saharan Africa.' Palacios, who has considerable medical expenses but no access to medical insurance said she felt 'horrible'. 'Medicines are so expensive,' she said. 'And I don't have anything.' Sheinbaum admitted there was still more work to do. 'Do we still have progress to make? Yes,' she said. 'With 30% of Mexico's population living in poverty, we obviously have to keep moving forward.'
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Mexico and Guatemala presidents meet face-to-face for the first time to talk key regional projects
Mexico Maya Train GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — From mounting cartel violence, border security and a mega project to extend a controversial train line across their borders, the presidents of Mexico and Guatemala talked common goals and concerns in their first face-to-face meeting on Friday. The two regional allies, who met in Guatemala's northern Peten region, agreed to strengthen coordination on migration, law enforcement and economic development. But top on the agenda for both was a proposal to extend the Mexican government's Maya Train from southern Mexico to Guatemala and Belize. The idea was first floated by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum's predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, but was met with skepticism by Guatemala's Bernardo Arévalo. The Guatemalan leader has said he sees the economic potential of the project to the jungle region but remained adamant that the construction should not come with the kind of environmental damage that it inflicted in Mexico. The train, which currently runs in a rough loop around Mexico's southern peninsula, was López Obrador's mega-project, with the purpose to connect remote jungle and rural areas in Mexico's south. However, it has for years has fueled controversy and legal battles as it's sliced through large swaths of jungle and damaged a delicate cave system in Mexico that serves as the area's main source of water. Arévalo said after the meeting with Sheinbaum that extending the train "is a vision we share' but that the project must not encroach on any protected ecosystems in Guatemala, especially the dense jungles of Peten. He said there would also have to be careful environmental studies and the two presidents looked at an alternative proposal that would have the train loop instead of directly cut through the jungles of Guatemala and Belize. 'I've made it very clear at all times that the Maya Train will not pass through any protected area,' Arévalo said. His stand is a sharp contrast to that of López Obrador, who fast-tracked the train project without environmental studies. Sheinbaum and Arévalo also spoke about about mounting cartel violence along the Mexico-Guatemala border where the cartels have long fought over control of lucrative migratory routes. Earlier this week, a group of around 100 Mexicans fled across the border because of a burst of violence in their communities. Later Friday, Sheinbaum and Arévalo were to travel to Calakmul, in southern Mexico, and meet up with Belize Prime Minister Johnny Briceño to continue the talks. 'Today, Mexico and Guatemala are demonstrating the will of two sister nations, with governments committed to justice and their peoples, to move forward together toward a more dignified, equitable and free future,' Sheinbaum added.
Winnipeg Free Press
5 days ago
- Business
- Winnipeg Free Press
More than 8.3 million people pulled out of poverty in Mexico between 2022 and 2024
MEXICO CITY (AP) — More than 8.3 million people in Mexico were pulled out of poverty between 2022 and 2024, according to a report released by Mexico's statistics agency on Wednesday. It marks a nearly 18% drop in people living in poverty in a country that has long struggled with high levels of economic precarity and unemployment. The number of people living in extreme poverty dropped 23% while those in moderate poverty dropped more than 16%, according to the report by Mexico's National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI). Today, one in three Mexicans still live in poverty. 'This is a photograph' of the country, said Claudia Maldonado, a researcher at INEGI. While INEGI took over research of poverty rates from a previous government entity, official and independent researchers say the data is comparable. Manuel Martínez Espinoza, a researcher at Mexico's National Council of the Humanities, Sciences and Technologies, said the dip can be largely be attributed to two policies championed by former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The Mexican populist, who remained highly popular even after he left office last year, built his political movement on heavy support from poorer and rural-dwelling Mexicans with the promise that he would put the poor first and more equally distribute wealth in the Latin American nation. Martínez Espinoza said that while the decrease in poverty is likely due to a range of factors in an economy as diverse as Mexico's, López Obrador raising Mexico's minimum wage and instituting a roster of social welfare programs appears to have paid off. Access to social security, food security and dignified living conditions have all gone up, according to the INEGI report, though gains in other things like access to health services didn't catch up to major losses felt in years past. Between 2018, the year López Obrador took office, and 2025, Mexico's minimum wage tripled, jumping from 88.40 pesos ($4.75) to 278.80 pesos ($15) a day. At the same time, López Obrador's government scrapped a host of existing social programs and installed their own, quickly increasing overall social spending to unprecedented heights for senior citizens, unemployed youth, students, farmers and people with disabilities. The programs have also been criticized as the reforms dramatically shifted who was getting that money, as universal pension benefits also put money in the pockets of Mexico's wealthiest who didn't really need the cash injection. Martínez Espinoza noted that the cash transfers may not be a long-term solution to tackle poverty in Mexico, as poverty could jump once again if such programs end. 'If people stop receiving (the transfers), they could fall back into poverty because there wasn't enough investment in things other than addressing people's most immediate needs,' he said.
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - Mexico's judicial election will imperil its relationship with the US
This week's judicial elections in Mexico won't eliminate corruption or return power to the people. Instead, they will jeopardize the investment climate between Mexico and the U.S., strengthen the power of fentanyl traffickers and consolidate the corrupt architecture of the ruling party. Mexico elected more than 2,600 judges and magistrates, but there is concern that major drug cartels will take advantage of these changes to move from partial influence to direct intervention in the various branches of the judiciary. Organized crime will not only influence judges but will position their own players in key areas of power. Candidates running for judicial office included Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán's lawyer, a methamphetamine trafficker, an arms smuggler, an alleged murderer of a journalist and a former defender of the Zetas cartel. The 'hugs not bullets' policy of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, judicial corruption and the economic power of the drug cartels had created an ecosystem conducive to impunity. Despite this complex and challenging environment, Mexico maintained a minimum separation of powers, checks and balances, certain institutional norms and academic requirements for appointing judicial authorities. This was laid to rest with Sunday's election. Mexico has gone from judicial authorities with master's and doctoral degrees to small-time lawyers with barely five years of experience and a few letters of recommendation. The pre-selection of candidates was controlled by the ruling party's raffles, and the final selection was determined by an accordion brochure that indicated how and for whom to vote. Mexico won't become the most democratic country in the world, as President Claudia Sheinbaum promised. It will not have a judicial model like that of Switzerland or the U.S., where some judges are elected by popular vote. Mexico will be closer to the Bolivian model, with elections that have turned the judiciary into a political weapon of incumbent rulers and the powerful drug cartels. In 2009, Bolivia decided to push for constitutional reform under the leadership of President Evo Morales. In 2011, the country elected most of its judicial authorities by popular vote. There was much confusion, little information, uninterested voters, incompetent candidates and a president who sought to lay the groundwork to keep himself in power in perpetuity. It was a total disaster. In Mexico, judicial reform does not aim to give more power to the people but to the party. López Obrador saw many of his projects and promises interrupted due to the checks and balances of the judiciary. He knew that to change the system in his favor, he needed to have total control. Although López Obrador was unable to achieve his aspiration, he set the foundation and the strategy to achieve his mission, which was fulfilled with the arrival of Sheinbaum, leading to last Sunday's disastrous vote. Mexico's judicial elections also weaken and jeopardize the trade relationship with the U.S. Powerful political and economic groups will be able to pursue legal action against companies and businesspeople operating in the country. Legal security and predictability, essential for doing business, have been shattered. Those elected this weekend will serve for nine and 12 years. This means that although the maneuvers that led to the destruction of the judiciary took mere months, the consequences of these changes on security, investment and trade will prevail for many years. The U.S. will have to take preventive measures and redouble diplomatic, commercial and security efforts to successfully deal with its main trading partner. It will not be an easy task. Fortunately, the Trump administration does not hesitate or evade challenges. The policy of 'peace through strength' remains the best means to successfully face the new commercial and security challenges in Mexico. Arturo McFields is an exiled journalist, former Nicaraguan ambassador to the Organization of American States, and a former member of the Norwegian Peace Corps. He is an alumnus of the National Defense University's Security and Defense Seminar and the Harvard Leadership course. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
