No sale
A rough day for Secretary of Governance (Home Secretary or Homeland Security chief) iJuan Camilo Mouriño, Public Security Secretary Genaro García Luna and Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora yesterday. All three made public promises to resign if they couldn’t resolve the crime issue within a reasonable time period.
David Agren covered the trio’s appearance before the Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday. Basically, the Deputies ripped them new assholes:
“Deficiency, demagoguery and disorder are the three brushstrokes that paint the entire picture of crime fighting in this administration,” said Deputy César Camacho Quiroz of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
“It´s evident that its work has been deficient.”
Others went even further in their condemnations. Members of the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, and Convergence party chanted, “Resign!” as Mouriño spoke, while other members of the two parties held up signs reading, “Let´s save Mexico. Resign.”
Agren, being an upstanding member of the “mainstream media” has to be fair and balanced (or at least deferential to the powers that be). I don’t.
Attorney General Medina Mora told Reuters that the grenade attack in Moralia, which he was trying to claim was the work of “la Familia” was now the work of either the Zetas or la Familia, or a dispute between the two, and a fight for territorial control. What’s galling isn’t that what Medina Mora is saying is “I don’t have a fuckin’ clue” but that he is trying to spin this as a success in the Administration’s anti-crime strategy of creating a wedge between various organized crime groups. As I’ve said, indiscriminate attacks on civilians are not these gangsters’ style… nor would they benefit from such a crime. And gangsters expanding their territory — and widening their attacks — can’t be seen as a success in anyone’s book.
Absent any evidence — or even logical reasoning for the claim — it’s no less plausible than the claims made in a communique from the EPR — the old guerrilla group off in the hills that was accused of coordinated attacks on PEMEX oil pipelines (and never really pursued). The ERP blames the attack on the government itself, trying to justify a military presence and the use of force in leftist Michoacan.
Texas hold’em…
From Grits For Breakfast comes another sweetheart deal for GEO Group — the rent-a-prison folks. Homeland Security isn’t just deporting improperly documented aliens (including legal ones, and the occasional natural born citizen), but they’ve decided to prosecute them for whatever they can find — the theory being that an alien deportee with a criminal record can be charged with more serious crimes if they return — which means having to hold the deportee until they have a criminal trial. So…
the GEO group has just opened yet another private prison on the border. This one is in Laredo:
The prison will hold pre-trial federal detainees for the U.S. Marshals – many of whom will be immigrants prosecuted for criminal violations under the program Operation Streamline. The facility was proposed back in 2003, and even before the official launch of Streamline, the Marshals capacity was being pushed almost exclusively by expanded criminal prosecution of immigration violations (PDF), a departure from the old style of dealing with immigration issues in the immigration court system.
Simply put, this $100 million gift to the GEO Group is almost exclusively due to the government holding border-crossers in criminal jail for 30-90 days before deporting them. Doesn’t seem too “streamlined” to me.
Fraude Mexico 2006 — part 2 of 10
This section of Fraude Mexico 2006 deals with mostly with the “videoescandelos” that eventually backfired against Lopez Obrador’s opponents as he prepared to run from President.
At the start of the segment, we see the return from Irish exile (self-imposed, Ireland being a great money-laundering country at the time, and extradition to Mexico being unlikely) of Carlos Salinas. Salinas, according to Lopez Obrador, enjoyed the support of the major companies, the mining firms, the banks, the media … and the Church (as witnessed by Cardinal Norberto Rivera’s benediction). Again, according to AMLO, Salinas and Fox were in cahoots with each other to prevent a populist party from gaining power.
The video-scandals in some ways confirm many of AMLO’s suspicions. It was a weird story that began with Federico Dorring (the badly shaven guy in the clip with the clown) releasing on Victor Trujillo’s morning Televisa program el Manañiero (literally, “a little something for your morning” though… figuratively, “the morning fuck”) a tape of the Federal District’s budget director, Rene Benejaro pocketing large amounts of cash.
Dorring was a PAN Senator from the Federal District. Trujillo — in his foul-mouthed clown disguise — was actually a powerful media figure supportive of the right, roughly comparable to Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly when the right-wing was in power in the United States.
Benejaro was the bag-man for another political figure within AMLO’s party, picking up the cash from… as he calmly related to Trujillo… Carlos Ahumada. Ahumada was not indicted by the federal authorities for bribery, but after being indicted by Federal District authorities, fled to Cuba, where he was staying in a house owned by none other than Carlos Salinas until he was arrested by the Cubans for extradition back to Mexico City.
Weird enough? Ahumada admitted to Cuban investigators (shown on this segment) that he had paid the bribes at the behest of the Fox Administration and Carlos Salinas… and made the videos given to Doring for the purpose of discrediting AMLO’s administration. Salinas is shown denying that the charges are simply an attempt to “politicize” the criminal charges.
Soon after the Benajaro tapes surfaced, in January 2004 tapes surfaced (shown on Televisa) of the City Comptroller playing blackjack in Las Vegas. That was a scandal and he was later jialed (Benajaro was later cleared of bribery charges). I thought it was very strange at the time, and wondered whether there was U.S. involvement, given that Las Vegas casino security tapes normally don’t surface in Mexican newsrooms. A Federal Court case questioning the right of the FBI to spy on ordinary citizens — specifically to required Las Vegas casinos to give the FBI access to their security camera tapes — made me wonder if the U.S. government was not looking for evidence of wrong-doing in the AMLO administration also.
AMLO, during the cut in interview, says he was hurt by the scandals, not so much poltically, as “morally”. Mexico Fraude 2006 glosses over the legal maneuvering behind his attempted “disafuero” (impunity from prosecution as a public official) by Congress — which had to do with a murky issue involving a piece of land taken by eminent domain for a hospital access road) — to focus on AMLO’s speech to the Senate. The importance of the scene showing his motorcade on the way to the senate is to re-enforce the image of AMLO as “everyman” … his official car being a regular Mexico City government fleet Tsuru and not the limosine you’d expect the elected leader of the Federal District to use as his official vehicle.
In his speech, AMLO accuses Salinas and the powers that be of not so much attacking him as a “populist”, but attacking the democratic rights of Mexicans to chose the leaders they want.
Where’s Waldo?
I’ve been sorting paperbacks in the little English-language second hand book shop here and if I saw book cover promising a story of murder, ballet, Fidel Castro, terrorists, and a hint of lesbianism what shelf would I put on? In this case, we’re talking about local, current events.
Cuban ballerina Margarita Naranjo De Saá was found dead in her downtown Mazatlan apartment on 26 August, apparently having been strangled. Naranjo De Saá was the daughter of Ramona de Saá, “one of the women closest to Fidel Castro, a symbol of the Cuban Revolution and a mythic figure in the world of ballet,” according to the Sinaloa Noreste.
By all indications, ballet was the entire focus of Naranjo De Saá’s life. After two bad marriages in Cuba, and despite having a son, Jesús Manuel Huet Naranjo from the first marriage she has been working abroad — first in Italy, then in Mexico — for about ten years. Until Jesús– now 14 years old — joined his mother in Mazatlan in a new apartment on 17 August, she lived quietly with Cuban ballerina, Zoyla Fernández Fernández, and Fernández’ sister. Naranjo De Saá’s second husband, Dr. Waldo García Ferrera, a liver specialist, defected from Cuba in November 2007 and has also been living in Mazatlan.
Garcia met Naranjo for breakfast the morning she was murdered, and is naturally a “person of interest” in the investigation of the crime. Police questioned Zoyla Fernández , and briefly detained her as a suspect. Noroeste says only that there were “rumors” about the nature of the relationship between Naranjo and Fernández (Mexican provincial papers are still squeamish about sexual matters), which might make Fernández a logical suspect in Naranjo’s murder, but then drops the subject. And reports that Fernández was not under suspicion.
On 28 August, folowing Naranjo’s funeral, and while Ramona De Saá was in Mazatlan, Dr. García kidnapped off the street — according to his complaint — by unknown persons who beat him and tried to force him to sign a written confession to the murder of his ex-wife. Though the Cuban authorities, meanwhile, Sinaloan investigators received “annotated legal documents” detailing Dr. García’s record of spousal abuse.
Ramona De Saá denied all connection with the kidnapping, as has the Mexican prosecutor. On the first of September, the Mexican police obtained a warrant to search the doctor’s apartment, and seized records and his computer. García, according to anti-Casto Cuban exile sources, appealed to the United States Consulate in Hermosillo (Sonora) and — U.S. Congressman Lincoln Bartlett-Diaz (whom he calls “my congressman”) for assistance, and then disappeared… still proclaiming his innocence.
“Solidaridad sin fronteras” — not to be confused with Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders — is a medical assistance group, based in Miami, composed of Cuban exile healthcare workers, which seeks to help Cuban professionals defect from the island and obtain professional certification in the country where they take refuge. It also seeks to provide an alternative Cuban medical presence to the well-known official Cuban medical “missions”. As a medical society for Cuban defectors, I can see their interest in Dr. García, but had a hard time figuring out the reference to them as the “humanitarian organization organizing the defense of” the doctor (as the Miami Nuevo Herald says). So far, he hasn’t been accused of anything.
It gets even murkier, when you realize that “Solidaridad sin fronteras” is more than an exile medical group. It is also “Barrio Afuera” — which seeks to assist Cuban medical personel in defecting, and seems to have a connection (which I admit I can’t figure out) with CANF… the Cuban-American National Foundation, which has been responsible for terrorist activity in Cuba (Luis Posada Carriles is one of CANF’s more outstanding leaders), and collaboration with Zetas and other criminal gangs in people and narcotics smuggling operations in Mexico.
Once Waldo surfaces — if he surfaces — I’m sure the story will get even weirder… and I imagine not so intriguing. This is a real life tragedy, not just because of the murder, but because Mazatlan became known for something besides shrimping, smuggling and sandy beaches thanks to Naranjo’s dedication to her art. This city’s dance companies are known world-wide, and her murder is a serious blow to the community. And, when we learn the facts — if we learn the facts — I imagine the thing will turn more on something very human like rage or jealousy or greed or simple stupidity than on any international intrigue.
Fraude Mexico 2006 — part 1 of 10
In this first (of ten) segments of Fraude Mexico 2006, there is a review of Mexican electorial fraud in the past century, beginning with Porfiro Diaz’s attempt to hold on to power in 1910. Despite and because of the Revolution — which led to lasting social and material progress for the Mexican people — political freedoms have been slow to develop. According to Lopez Obrador, it was the attempts by Carlos Salinas de Gortari and the “neo-liberals” to maintain power that disrupted the slow progress towards democratization.
As an example of the neo-liberals (the “right” to Lopez Obrador) willingness to turn to violence, the “legitimate President” uses the example of what happened in Chile following Salvador Allende’s election. There, a rightist coup killed the President (and a lot of other Chileans) and imposed a neo-liberal economic system on the country.
Much of the segment is taken up with the 1988 elections — “won” by Salinas only after dubious vote counting and suspicious computer counts: similar to what Lopez Obrador’s supporters believe happened in 2006.
At 5:47 into the segment, we see a meeting of the Electoral Tribunal. Among the reforms after the botched 1988 election was that Mexican elections were modernized, and considered among the best organized in the world. Voter registration and the election rules are set by the Elections Institute (IFE), and — disputes are taken to the Electoral Tribunal — the courtroom scene is from 5 September, when the Electorial Tribunal decided on Lopez Obrador’s Coalition’s complaints of widespread voter irregularities by declaring that only the ballots from specific districts presented to the court as examples of fraud — would be examined, and not the election count as a whole.
Very near the end of the segment there is a scene featuring Vicente Fox’s wife, Marta Sahugun. Her organization, Vamos Mexico — modeled on Eva Peron’s charities — was a political front for Sahugun and her wing of PAN. Lopez Obrador’s claims of corruption in Vamos Mexico were (he believes) an important factor in what he believes was a stolen election.
What is to be done?
With the argument that “we cannot allow a failed state on our borders, and ‘shit runs downhill’ President Felipe Calderon was reluctantly expected to join with the leaders of Ecuador, Venezuela, and Bolivia (the so-called “three amigos states”) in a restructuring plan for the corrupt and bankrupt North American country.
The “three amigos” plan seeks to alleviate the immediate crisis, brought on by several years of de-regulation and institutional neglect, exacerbated under the present Bush regime by open corruption in the private sector, ill-advised foreign adventurism and government policies encouraging citizens to invest in luxuries instead of necessities — tortilla, beans, education.
The initial rescue was proposed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who argued that “Once they get that drunken burro out of the White House, we might be able to turn the place into a decent country.” Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa and Bolivian President Dr. Evo Morales joined Chavez recently in an emergency meeting on the U.S. rescue plan, under which banks and financial insitutions which were hastily nationalized will be merged and their assets sold to stable foreign interests, with the understanding that until deposits are covered, the new owners will be unable to repatriate assets — a plan based on the Mexican bank securities law.
Agentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil have all agreed, in principle to stand with the “Three Amigos” if the plan includes guarantees that U.S. would make the necessary cuts to non-essential spending, and concentrate resources on essentials like health and safety. By giving the Latin American development bank, Banco del Sur oversight on government expenditures, the southern cone nations were assured enough to sign on to the rescue package. The Cuban government agreed to take at least one debit off the U.S. hands: Guantanamo Bay will be returned to Cuba, in return for a token amount of money.
Calderon, who has generally tolerated the U.S. financial irregularities, finally signed on when it became clear that political and financial instability in the United States was driving the increasing encroachment of gringos into Mexico with their guns and dollars.
Calderon, whose own economy is still recovering from privatization and – until recently – was expected to continue the process said “You think we’re totally nuts? Of course we stopped in time… but we can’t afford to have millions of gringos pouring across our borders, not doing the work Mexican fresas won’t do either. We have no choice but to sign on.”
To meet the immediate emergency, bank accounts will be frozen for the next sixty days while a new U.S. dollar, pegged to the Mexico Peso is introduced. This will give time for the Three Amigos nations to work out a debt swap with Chinese and Dubai investors, who hold most of the United States debt (estimated in the hundreds of billions of pesos). Although the true debt is unknown – mostly because the spending on recent military adventurism was a state secret, and even the Treasury Ministry seems to be in the dark about it – Banco del Sur will assume control of recently state-bought banks and management funds. The Banco del Sur will swap the debt for future agricultural and commodity exports from the United States, sold under the authority of a new international agency, managed by Mexicans Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Cuauhtemoc Cardenas.
Lopez Obrador, who has pushed for “socialist austerity” in salaries and state funding for inessential programs, is expected to mandate caps on executive compensation and cut all funding for inessential, non-productive spending that is not of direct benefit to “the poor among us.” Lopez Obrador admitted this will cause some pain throughout the economy, as people learn to walk to a bus stop, or find neighborhood abarrotes, which will receive priority funding over the failing auto industry, and the fuel-wasting so-called “big box stores” that are a feature of U.S. life. To protect vulnerable workers and their families, Lopez Obrador and Cardenas both are expected to recommend encouraging people to join unions, develop family assistance networks and organize. “If,” as Lopez Obrador says, “those pendejos don’t want to listen, then the people must – non-violently – hold them accountable. Hijo de madre! We’re going to have to teach those gringos how to take over a city.”
Cardenas, whose father successfully nationalized the oil industry in Mexico, will be “Energy Czar” under the plan. Venezuelan oil consultants, joined by Bolivian food distribution specialists and Ecuadorian military planners are included in the recovery plan. Bolivia and Ecuador, having experience in writing constitutions to protect the resources and people of their countries from predatory financiers will also dispatch advisors to the United States as it attempts to dig itself out of a seemingly hopeless situation.
(Note to the clueless — not a bad idea, but this is satire. In reality, the former Indian Finance Minister Yaswant Sinha did tell the International Monetary Fund that, ” I think the time has come. After the crisis here … the U.S. should accept some monitoring by the IMF.”)
We don’t need no stinkin’ golden parachute, but we do need to pay the stinkin’ electric bill, the internet connections and buy the occasional taco…
Wall Street not a crisis here?
Mexico may not be as badly hurt by the Wall Street meltdown as you might think. Thanks in large part to both higher crude oil prices and tax reforms, PEMEX’s balance sheet for January through August of this year shows a heathy 22 billion dollar surplus. Although continuing to import refined gasoline is a huge drain on profits (the prices rose 73 percent over the same period compared to last year: from 10 billion dollars to 73 billion dollars), as reported in Monday’s El Financiero.
The business paper reported the same day that Economy Secretary Gerardo Ruiz Mateos was certain that “internal controls” on the Mexican economy would prevent crisis in Mexico. The Secretary pointed to couter-cyclical spending programs (what used to be called “Keynesian economics”) and a pent-up demand for housing and a relatively healthy internal market for goods and services. However, Ruiz Mateos did say that “structural reforms” were needed in the energy sector.
In light of PEMEX’s healthier than expected balance sheet, however, the administration will be hard-pressed to sell the urgency of these reforms, which means we can exect a protracted debate on what these reforms will entail… something probably better than pushing through changes that would have exposed the Mexican company (and the Mexican economy) to risky U.S. investments.
Don’t ask (about the security budget), don’t tell (about torture)
This is disturbing:
Mexico City’s Human Rights Commission, known by the acronym CDHDF, called on the federal government Saturday to release a confidential United Nations report on torture in order to shed light on a crime that it says often goes unpunished.
A U.N. committee gathered evidence earlier this month on torture in prisons, migrant detention centers, and psychiatric wards. But the files cannot be opened without the government’s permission.
In the capital alone, the CDHDF has reported a total of 69 torture cases to authorities, but not a single city employee has been tried, the human rights agency said. “There is no clarity as to how investigative prosecutors define the crime of torture. We are in complete impunity,” commission official Alejandro Nuño Ruiz Velasco said.
He added that prosecutors have registered even more accusations of torture than the CDHDF, contributing to a backlog in investigations.
Torture is illegal in Mexico, but the Supreme Court has ruled that testimony obtained via torture can still be admissible as evidence.
(Nacha Cattan, The News )
Obviously, better police and prosecutors are needed (or better trained individuals, at any rate), but it’s hard to see how they’re going to come out of a budget with less funding for AFI agents and Public Ministers. There is however, a 50% increase in the “social communications” budget (the nice bureaucratic term for “propaganda) for the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, and for both the Secretaries of Public Security and Governance (“Interior Ministry”).
I guess selling torturers is a higher priority than hiring agents who can do their job without it.
‘Fraude Mexico 2006’ — just in time for the U.S. elections
Piecing together over 3,000 hours of amatuer video, some made from cell-phone downloads, together with his own professional footage, Mexican diretor Luis Mandoki’s Fraude Mexico 2006 is said by Los Angeles Times reviewer Agustin Gurza to be “overtly partisan” and “preach[ing] messages to viewers who are already inclined to believe.”
Gurza is up-front about his family’s PAN connections, and his review focuses on Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s seemingly quixotic quest to overturn the 2006 Presidential election… marked by illegal and negative campaign advertising, questionable vote counting (including dubious electorial software contracts). He admires the way Mandoki paints a portrait of AMLO — a former community organizer turned politician — as
… a humble, gray-haired Everyman carrying an epic burden on his sloping shoulders. In an interview that weaves through the complex narrative, López Obrador comes off as reflective, responsible and even spiritual, with an almost Ghandi-like belief in nonviolent protest. There’s a gentleness to his manner and a perpetual glint in the corner of his eye, conveying inner peace even in the depths of crisis.
Leaving aside the “what ifs” and the potential virtues or vices of a Lopez Obrador Administration (I lived under one for several years, and despite its faults, it functioned like a normal government), I admit I’m one of those “already inclined to believe” that Felipe Calderon’s election was dubious, and that there was fraud. One frustrating thing has been media coverage…
Mandoki claims the tight relationship between the government and the media made it difficult for him to produce and promote the film; even major distributors were too intimidated to touch it.
With little distribution within Mexico, and even less outside, maybe the best way to get ahold of the film is through the ten part “youtube” download. Perhaps most interesting to Mex File readers — especially those in the United States (about 60 percent of you) are the behind the scenes look at the Mexican political process and the way political confrontations work out in the country. I can’t provide subtitles, but I will post it an segment at a time over the next two weeks, with a synopsis and my own comments on the political/social processes being shown.
It’s not rocket science… or even military science
From Jornada de Jalisco comes the latest capture of organized gangsters. What’s interesting about the story is that it is just old-fashioned police work, not some military operation that brought down these guys.
Basically, for those who don’t read Spanish, the Jalisco State Police chased two bullet-proof SUVs (with Texas plates — stolen or from Texas it doesn’t say) down the highway, where the gangsters crossed into Guanajuanto State, and where they were surrounded, and 14 of them arrewted and taken to jail. A few escaped but that’s to be expected. The feds and the Army were involved in the final showdown, but once again, it shows that the way to catch gangsters is not to treat them as an army, but as common criminals.
The Guanajunto State Police recoved — besides the two Texas SUVs — fout AK-47s, three AR-15s, a .38 pistol, several bulletproof jackets, a grenada launcher (grenade launcher???) 1,031 bullets and 96,500 pesos in cash.
Here in Sinaloa, police happened to stumble upon a bit over 26 million dollars in cash during a routine patrol. In this case, the coppers were soldiers, but even so… it’s not military science involved here, but just normal police work that’s stopping the gangsters. And, in this case, no one caught the money guys — leading some to suggest the “discovery” was a payoff to the feds.
If the cost of doing business for the gangsters is high, I suppose this was in lieu of taxes, but what’s most important is that the successful police operations DO NOT REQUIRE special U.S. equipment or militarization of the police. It doesn’t require new police agencies, curtailment of civil rights, a whole series of new laws or a national security apparatus. It just requires policemen doing normal police stuff.
A more than fleeting thought
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva warned on Thursday that the resurrection of a U.S. naval fleet in Latin America may signal that Washington covets huge new oil reserves off Brazil’s coast.
The U.S. Navy is reestablishing the U.S. Fourth Fleet, which was decommissioned 58 years ago, to combat drug trafficking, provide disaster relief and help with peacekeeping missions in Latin America and the Caribbean.
But the return of the fleet has been met with widespread skepticism in Brazil and elsewhere in the region, where many see a U.S. military presence as a threat to sovereignty.
Mexican military analysts have raised the same concerns, which I wrote about here (31 August 2008)… and, though it’s been a few years, the U.S. Navy has attacked Mexico under the rubric of “peace-keeping” before: when Woodrow Wilson invaded Mexico in his pyjamas.
U.S. landings in Greneda and Panama in recent years, and continued intervention in Latin America since the 1820s are not easily forgotten. And — given that Latin American nations as a whole are seeking better ties to Asia and Europe, this is not just, as U.S.-centric sites like Bloggings By Boz assume, “playing to the base,” but a very real concern to military planners and observers throughout Latin America.
Boz assures me that the U.S. has benign intentions. That may be, but it doesn’t explain Southern Command’s General James T. Hill’s testimony before the House Armed Services Committee in March 2004 in which he defined “populism” in Latin America as a threat to the United States, nor very real concerns with the Fourth Fleet’s command by a Navy SEAL with a background in counter-insurgency and irregular warfare. Nor, for that matter, do Latin American nations have any reason to trust the U.S. government, when announced “humanitarian missions” have either failed to materialize (like those promised last May), or have been subverted for use as intelligence-gathering operations. The bally-hooed — but deeply unpopular — “Plan Merida” as originally proposed would have exposed Mexican national security data to the United States, and does not directly assist Mexican law enforcement, but props up U.S. companies.
Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina are the only countries on the Atlantic with decent sized navies. All have been buying military equipment from countries other than the United States, and I expect all will be beefing up their naval capacity and making major acquisitions in the next few years to counter the perceived threat. Mexico and Venezuela both have purchased Russian jets recently and the Brazilians have their own arms industry. Given recent Brazilian oil field discoveries, that country’s navy is conducing war games to test naval preparedness.
If the Brazilian President is speaking to his “base”… he’s also speaking to base commanders and you’d have to include military planners throughout the hemisphere.
Corporate responsibility
Estimated cost of the border fence: 4 to 8 BILLION Dollars
Estimated cost over-runs: 3.5 MILLION DOLLARS per MILE.
Having the largest cement company in the country tell Homeland Sercurity to screw itself: Priceless!
Cemex, the largest concrete company in the United States, won’t be providing any of its concrete to build the controversial 18-foot border wall.
…
During a House Homeland Security Committee meeting today, Stana explained to the committee that the cement must be brought in from Houston or as far away as Colorado. He didn’t say why Cemex wouldn’t provide the concrete, and phone calls to the company’s offices in Monterrey and Houston were not returned.
“The price of concrete has gone up tremendously,” he told the committee.”Cemex won’t sell to the fencing projects in the United States.”
¡VIVA el mercado libre! Cemex is one of the few Mexico companies to have a significant market in the United States.
By the way, CEMEX is considered a particularly well-run company, giving a good return on their investments, and an excellent long term investment. After you make your investment in the Mex Files, go over to IncaKolaNews for the financial details on CEMEX (and subscribe to Otto’s NOBS (“NO B.S.” stock analysis service for the best information on Latin American investment and commodities markets).
mexfiles.net 