Mexico is the biggest beer exporter globally, but it barely has enough water for its residents and farmers. Experiencing long-lasting droughts, the country, which is half desert, has become a cheap place for transnationals to consume its remaining water, then send the products and profits to wealthier regions.
While US President Donald Trump and other like-minded political and economic leaders are building walls, migrant activists say they are building bridges. Some 2,000 activists and academics from over 60 countries gathered in Mexico City over the weekend for the 8th World Social Forum on Migrations. The gathering aimed to create a new vision of migration and bring the various movements and organizations together.
In Mexico, over 30,000 people over the age of 60 are working long unpaid shifts as bag packers in supermarkets. These unpaid laborers are up to 89 years old. They have no work contract and receive no benefits. These workers frequently have to perform other duties such as cleaning and stocking, for no pay or tips. And although they aren't being physically or violently forced to do this work, they don't really have a lot of choice.
Source: New Internationalist
The Latin American nation goes to the polls 1 July to elect a new president. Tamara Pearson reports on the possibility that a progressive president will be elected for the first time in nearly a century
It’s being called the ‘most violent’ election campaign in Mexico’s history. One hundred and thirteen candidates and politicians have so far been murdered, up to mid-June. Narcos have set fire to vans. Local candidates are being shot as they take photos with supporters and while speaking at public events.
Mexico's sugar skulls make death beautiful, political, and humorous. “I consider this art," sugar skull artist Araceli Sanchez Millán explained. "Death happens to everyone, and what we are doing here is representing that. We're also protecting a culture from pre-hispanic times. The skulls we make mean a lot."
Source: The New Internationalist
What it’s like when narcos run your privatized water system.
It’s rainy season here in Puebla, Mexico, and water is dripping through my concrete roof, taking chunks of plaster and paint from the ceiling with it. Ironically, we still don’t have enough running water to shower everyday. Other people here have no running water at all, and our drainage system is in a state of utter abandonment.
Yet we all pay 10 times the rates of the rest of Mexico, because here in Puebla – unlike the rest of the country – our water is privatized. What’s more, the men at the helm of the consortium that run it are a collection of corrupt millionaire and billionaire businessmen who have allegedly laundered money for some of the region’s biggest drug cartels.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019