David Agren is TPPF’s Senior Fellow on Mexico Policy. He’s a Canadian freelance journalist reporting and writing on Mexico, Mexican politics, the Catholic church, culture, crime, immigration and Latin American crises.
Journalist Hector de Mauleón dropped a bombshell in his Sept. 19 column, revealing leaked diplomatic cables alleging the campaign of incoming Tamaulipas governor Américo Villarreal received funding from the Cartel del Noreste—which dominates the Nuevo Laredo crime plaza. Villarreal won the June 5 gubernatorial contest for the ruling MORENA party, taking 50.27% of the vote...
Mexico’s president is pressuring the high court to declare automatic pre-trial detention constitutional, arguing public safety depends on it. Critics say the practice covers for sloppy investigations. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his functionaries have been jawboning the supreme court to uphold the practice of automatic pre-trial detention for a long list of crimes—resorting...
Drug cartels deployed terror in four states, targeting bystanders, blocking highways and burning vehicles and businesses. But the president accuses the media and his ‘adversaries’ of exaggerating. Swaths of Mexico burned last week as cartel thugs unleashed waves of narco-violence across five states—acts many in the country called “terrorism,” but the populist president described as...
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador dropped a bombshell at his Monday press conference, announcing he would sign a decree putting the National Guard under Defence Secretariat (SEDENA) command—even though the constitution states the militarized police force shall operate under civilian leadership. AMLO, as the president is known, previously said he would send a constitutional...
Two elderly Jesuits were murdered in their parish sheltering a person being pursued by a gunman. Catholic leaders are urging a new security strategy, but Mexico’s president won’t back down on his “hugs, not bullets” policies. For more on Mexico, read new reporting from TPPF Senior Fellow for Mexico Policy David Agren here.
Supporters waved flags and snapped selfies as they waited for the MORENA party’s final rally to start in Reynosa – the scruffy border city of maquiladoras opposite McAllen, Texas. Music blared two hours later as the rally for MORENA’s gubernatorial candidate Américo Villarreal still hadn’t started. Such tardiness can be common in Mexican political rallies as...
Migrants being sent back into Mexico over the Hidalgo International Bridge from McAllen to Reynosa paused to lace their sneakers and restart smartphones. The migrants floated across the Rio Grande River during a torrential downpour in the small hours of Tuesday morning, but were captured by Border Patrol agents and returned to Mexico within seven...
“Shoot them! Shoot them!” drug cartel thugs shouted as they chased Mexican soldiers out of Nueva Italia, a weigh station amid the lime groves of Tierra Caliente in western Michoacán state. The scenes of soldiers fleeing thugs scandalized Mexico – going viral on social media and offering a rude reminder of the increasing brazenness of...
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) took a rare foreign trip, traveling for the first time as president to Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Belize and Cuba from May 5 to May 8. (He traveled twice previously to Washington, meeting Presidents Trump and Biden, and once to address the United Nations Security Council in New York.) He...