President Andrés Manuel López Obrador Brings Back Mexico's Nationalization of the Economy

This never ends well for Mexico, and especially not for U.S. taxpayers, who always get stuck with the bill when the U.S. government rushes in to bail out our southern neighbor every time its economy crashes. 

At the Wall Sweet Journal, "Mexico Takes Aim at Private Companies, Threatening Decades of Economic Growth":

Populist president seeks to reclaim state control over oil-and-gas, electricity sectors; ‘It’s a closing off of Mexico’.

MONTERREY, Mexico—For the past 20 years, a 1,100-megawatt power plant owned by Spain’s Iberdrola SA outside Mexico’s industrial capital has kept the lights on for scores of companies such as brewing giant Heineken NV, despite winter freezes, a hurricane and the occasional brush fire.

But since January, half the gas-fired plant has been forcibly shut down by Mexico’s government, which argues that private energy companies have plundered Mexico like Spanish conquistadors of old. The electricity shutdown forced dozens of firms in Monterrey to return to the inefficient and more costly state-run utility for their power.

In September, a fuel-import terminal owned by global investment firm KKR & Co. was closed at gunpoint by Mexico’s energy regulator, months after it closed two other such terminals owned by U.S. companies. Last year, the government took over operating control of the biggest oil find in recent Mexican history, stripping it from a U.S. company that made the discovery. It is also trying to revoke the operating license of Latin America’s largest wind farm, majority owned by Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp., an example of how the government’s policies are hobbling Mexico’s transition to renewable energy.

Going after private companies might seem like something from the playbook of Socialist Venezuela rather than Mexico, which in recent decades has transformed itself into one of the world’s most globalized nations, signing free-trade deals with more than 40 countries and using manufacturing exports to become the U.S.’s second largest trading partner. Along the way, it lifted millions of its citizens out of poverty.

But Mexico’s populist leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who took office in 2018, is shifting the country to a 1970s industrial policy focused on the domestic market, natural resources such as oil and greater state intervention, from backing state-run energy giants to using the army for major public-works projects.

“It’s a closing off of Mexico,” says Gabriela Siller, an economist at Mexico’s Tecnológico de Monterrey.

The change is especially stark in Mexico’s crucial energy sector, where the government has launched a broad effort to stop new private investment and restore the dominant position of former government monopolies in both oil and gas and electricity—effectively reversing a 2013 constitutional overhaul that opened both markets to private firms.

The moves will cost Mexico billions of dollars in forgone investment; raise domestic energy prices; limit the growth of oil and electricity output; and damage the competitiveness of Mexican companies and hundreds of multinationals that operate here, according to the U.S. government, private companies and economists. It also risks prompting more migration by job-seeking Mexicans to the U.S.

The president says, without offering evidence, that past governments were paid off by multinationals to allow them to enter the market and destroy the state oil giant Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, and the state-run utility, Federal Electricity Commission, or CFE, leaving Mexico’s energy security at risk and consumers at the mercy of profiteers. He also argues that Mexico’s turn to an open economy left too many poor people behind.

“They had a plan to close all the CFE plants and leave everything to the private sector, to such a degree that half our country’s electricity is now made by private companies,” the president said at a news conference.

The CFE has a monopoly on residential power, which it subsidizes heavily. But it lost hundreds of industrial clients over the past decade as firms opted for cheaper electricity provided by private firms. The CFE usually doesn’t subsidize electricity for large corporate clients, and its prices can be up to 30% to 50% higher than those of private power producers. Some privately produced renewable energy is a third of the price of the CFE’s power, according to Mexico’s renewable energy association.

In many ways, the decommissioned electricity plant outside Monterrey is a metaphor for Mexico’s stalled economy and a glimpse of the country’s potential economic future.

From 2019 through 2021, the first full three years of Mr. López Obrador’s presidency, Mexico’s economy shrank an average of 1.14% a year, according to government data. While the U.S. regained its prepandemic level of economic output by mid-2020, Mexico is among the few countries in the hemisphere, along with the leftist dictatorship of Venezuela, that hasn’t yet recovered, according to estimates from the International Monetary Fund.

The Mexican economy is now lagging that of the U.S. and Canada in a sustained way for the first time since shortly after the mid-1990s, when all three countries banded together in a free-trade deal then called the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.

Next year, Indonesia is set to overtake Mexico as the world’s 15th-biggest economy, according to IMF estimates.

At the same time, migration from Mexico has accelerated to the U.S. for the first time since the early 2000s. In fiscal year 2021, U.S. apprehensions of Mexican migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border more than doubled over the previous year to almost 655,600. That figure is set to rise in 2022, U.S. government data show.

Mexico’s average electricity prices for companies are already about 40% higher than the U.S., according to Mexican business chamber Concamin, putting the country at a disadvantage for manufacturing. But economists say Mr. López Obrador’s policies will make matters far worse.

Since Mr. López Obrador took power, the government has halted new auctions for oil-and-gas exploration by private firms, new mining concessions and new investments for private electricity generation, including solar and wind farms that can produce electricity at roughly a third the CFE’s average cost, according to figures from Mexico’s energy regulator.

Last year, the government passed a law forcing the national electric grid to give priority to electricity produced by the CFE, even though its power is more costly and polluting than that of private firms. The laws retroactively affected an estimated $22 billion in investment by firms such as Iberdrola. Energy regulators have also tied up oil-and-gas firms from Shell to BP to prevent them from opening up new filling stations to compete with state oil giant Pemex, the companies said.

The law forcing the grid to use the CFE’s electricity first could raise Mexico’s electricity costs by up to 52%, or some $5.5 billion a year, and boost CO2 emissions by up to 73 million tons a year, a 65% jump from current emissions, according to a recent study by the U.S. government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That would prevent Mexico from meeting its carbon reduction goals under the Paris Climate Agreements, say environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council. Mexico’s Environment Ministry declined to comment.

Felipe Calderón, Mexico’s president from 2006 to 2012, tweeted last October, “What Mexicans need is more clean energy…and not more polluting and expensive energy from the CFE. The government’s changes seek to stop renewable energy from private firms and force us all to pay for old fossil-fuel energy.”

Thanks to more than 200 lawsuits against the new dispatch rules, a judge last year ordered the government to temporarily block their implementation. The government is appealing the order and has vowed to start implementing the changes despite it. Mexico has halted auctions for new renewable-energy investments. Three such auctions between 2015 and 2017 were so successful they doubled the country’s renewable energy capacity to 15 gigawatts, according to the wind industry association. During the 2017 auction, Mexico set a then-world record low price for wind power per megawatt hour and close to a record in solar, making both forms of energy produced here far cheaper than electricity made by fossil fuels and among the cheapest sources of energy in the world.

With no more private investment in wind or solar farms, the country’s renewable energy capacity will stall. Mexico’s state utility is currently building five natural-gas fired power plants and doesn’t plan on opening its first solar farm until 2027. It has no plans for wind farms.

“If Mexico can’t create a legal framework to promote renewable energy, then General Motors isn’t going to get rid of its zero carbon plans. Unfortunately, we just won’t consider Mexico as an investment choice,” Francisco Garza, the president of GM in Mexico, recently told a meeting of financial executives.

Foreign direct investment during Mr. López Obrador’s first three years averaged $31.4 billion a year versus $35.7 billion a year during his predecessor’s six-year term, according to central bank figures. Meanwhile, for the first time since NAFTA came into effect, Mexico saw a net outflow of investment in publicly traded stocks and bonds for two consecutive years.

The government’s policies are causing the country to miss out on a historic chance to attract more U.S. companies that are trying to diversify their supply chains away from China and face growing labor shortages at home, economists say.

“The Mexican government needs to do some soul searching about why investment has been so weak,” said Alberto Ramos, chief economist for Latin America at Goldman Sachs. “It’s not just the pandemic. I think it’s the overall business environment, and it’s a pity because there are great opportunities Mexico could be taken advantage of.”

KKR said it planned to sue the Mexican government for $667 million in damages linked to the takeover of its fuel terminal. Houston-based Talos Energy said it would pursue international arbitration over the government’s decision to seize operating control of its Zama field, which shares oil with a neighboring field under Pemex’s control.

Mexico’s government said it is in talks with Talos, KKR and other U.S. firms to resolve the issues.

The three closed fuel terminals all supply gasoline to private oil companies that are competing with state oil firm Pemex to sell gasoline, part of the 2013 overhaul in Mexico that ended Pemex’s monopoly...

Paul Gillingham, Unrevolutionary Mexico

See Paul Gillingham, Unrevolutionary Mexico: The Birth of a Strange Dictatorship.

Nicaragua Descends Into Police State (VIDEO)

Daniel Ortega is a communist totalitarian with a long history. I call for regime change. Topple the motherfucker.

At the New York Times, "Nicaragua Descends Into Autocratic Rule as Ortega Crushes Dissent":

MANAGUA, Nicaragua — Daniel Ortega became a hero in Nicaragua for helping overthrow a notorious dictator. Now, 40 years later, he has become the kind of authoritarian leader he once fought against.

After methodically choking off competition and dissent, Mr. Ortega has all but ensured his victory in presidential elections on Sunday, representing a turn toward an openly dictatorial model that could set an example for other leaders across Latin America.

He detained the credible challengers who planned to run against him, shut down opposition parties, banned large campaign events and closed voting stations en masse. He even jailed some of the elderly Sandinistas who fought with him to depose the dictator, Anastasio Somoza.

“This isn’t an election, this is a farce,” said Berta Valle, the wife of one of the jailed opposition leaders. “No one will elect anyone, because the only candidate is Daniel Ortega.”

Mr. Ortega’s path to a fourth consecutive term in office and near-total control of Nicaragua has ushered in a new era of repression and terror, analysts said. His claim to victory would deliver another blow to President Biden’s agenda in the region, where his administration has failed to slow an anti-democratic slide and a mass exodus of desperate people toward the United States.

A record number of Nicaraguans have been intercepted crossing the Southwest border of the United States this year since Mr. Ortega began crushing his opposition. And more than 80,000 Nicaraguans are living as refugees in neighboring Costa Rica.

“This is a turning point toward authoritarianism in the region,” said José Miguel Vivanco, head of the Americas region for Human Rights Watch, who called Mr. Ortega’s crackdown “a slow-motion horror movie.”

“He is not even trying to preserve some sort of facade of democratic rule,” Mr. Vivanco said of the Nicaraguan leader. “He is in a flagrant, open manner, just deciding to treat the election as a performance.”

The commission that monitors elections has been entrusted to Ortega loyalists, and there have been no public debates among the contest’s five remaining candidates, all of whom are little-known members of parties aligned with his Sandinista government.

The electoral authority said early on Monday that, with nearly half of the votes counted, Mr. Ortega had won about three quarters of them. It did not give results for congressional elections.

Once polls opened early on Sunday morning, some polling stations had lines as Nicaraguans turned out to cast their ballots. But as the day progressed, many of the stations were largely empty. The streets of the capital, Managua, were also quiet, with little to show that a significant election was underway.

The night before, at least four people from opposition organizations were arrested and their houses raided by the police.

“These elections are, thank God, a sign, a commitment by the vast majority of Nicaraguans to vote for peace,” Mr. Ortega said in a national television broadcast on Sunday. “We are burying war and giving life to peace.”

Mr. Ortega first came to power after helping lead the revolution that overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1979. More than a decade later, he was ousted by Nicaraguan voters, in what was considered the nation’s first democratic election.

That lesson about the risks of democratic rule appears to have shaped the rest of Mr. Ortega’s political life. He took office again in 2007, after getting a rival party to agree to a legal change that allowed a candidate to win an election with just 35 percent of the vote. He then spent years undermining the institutions holding together the country’s fragile democracy.

He made it clear that he would not tolerate dissent in 2018, when he sent the police to violently smother protests against the government, leading to hundreds of deaths and accusations by human rights groups of crimes against humanity.

But the sudden sweep of arrests preceding the elections, which sent seven political candidates and more than 150 others to jail, transformed the country into what many activists described as a police state, where even mild expressions of dissent are muted by fear.

A sportswriter was recently imprisoned for a series of posts critical of the government on Twitter and Facebook, under a new law that mandates up to five years in jail for anyone who says anything that “endangers economic stability” or “public order.”

After the detentions began, the United States placed new sanctions on Nicaraguan officials and the Organization of American States condemned the government...

 

Haiti on Brink of Anarchy

Things are not going well down there. 

At WSJ, "Haiti on Brink of Anarchy Amid Hunger, Gang Violence and Power Vacuum: After president’s murder, Haitians see U.S. calls for elections and restoring democratic order as a pipe dream."

'Astonishing': Cuban Protesters Take to the Streets (VIDEO)

Freedom protests. 

Whenever protests break out like this --- anywhere in the world --- demonstrators always wave the American flag while calling for freedom. The U.S. remains the beacon of liberty for billions of people the world over, and radical, anti-American leftists can't stand that.

At the New York Times, "Cubans Denounce ‘Misery’ in Biggest Protests in Decades":

MIAMI — Shouting “Freedom” and other anti-government slogans, thousands of Cubans took to the streets in cities around the country on Sunday to protest food and medicine shortages, in a remarkable eruption of discontent not seen in nearly 30 years.

Thousands of people marched through San Antonio de los Baños, southwest of Havana, with videos streaming live on Facebook for nearly an hour before they suddenly disappeared. As the afternoon wore on, other videos appeared from demonstrations elsewhere, including Palma Soriano, in the country’s southeast. Hundreds of people also gathered in Havana, where a heavy police presence preceded their arrival.

“The people are dying of hunger!” one woman shouted during a protest filmed in the province of Artemisa, in the island’s west. “Our children are dying of hunger!”

One clip circulating on Twitter showed protesters overturning a police car in Cardenas, 90 miles east of Havana. Another video showed people looting from one of the much-detested government-run stores, which sell wildly overpriced items in currencies most Cubans do not possess.

In a country known for repressive crackdowns on dissent, the rallies were widely viewed as astonishing. Activists and analysts called it the first time that so many people had openly protested against the Communist government since the so-called Maleconazo uprising, which exploded in the summer of 1994 into a huge wave of Cubans leaving the country by sea.

Carolina Barrero, a Cuban activist, went even further. “It is the most massive popular demonstration to protest the government that we have experienced in Cuba since ’59,” she said by text message, referring to the year Fidel Castro took power. She called the public outpouring on Sunday “spontaneous, frontal and forceful.”

“What has happened is enormous,” she added.

The protests were set off by a dire economic crisis in Cuba, where the coronavirus pandemic has cut off crucial tourism dollars. People now spend hours in line each day to buy basic food items. Many have been unable to work because restaurants and other businesses have remained on lockdown for months.

The desperate conditions have triggered an uptick in migration by both land and sea.

Since the start of the fiscal year last October, the U.S. Coast Guard has intercepted more than 512 Cubans at sea, compared with 49 for the entire previous year. On Saturday, the Coast Guard suspended the search for nine Cuban migrants whose vessel overturned at sea off Key West, Fla.

The Cuban government attributes its longstanding economic problems to the American trade embargo, which cuts off its access to financing and imports. But the pandemic has worsened conditions, and in Matanzas, east of Havana, some patients and their families have resorted to posting videos on YouTube of furious people screaming about the lack of medicine and doctors.

The Cuban Ministry of Health website says the nation of 11 million now has about 32,000 active cases of Covid-19. It reported 6,923 daily cases and 47 deaths on Sunday, breaking its prior record, set just Friday. Only about 15 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, the government said.

The protest movement gained momentum after a number of celebrities started tweeting with the hashtag #SOSCuba...

Wow! Tucker's Complete Opening Segment from Last Night's 'Tucker Carlson Tonight'! (VIDEO)

Well, I shouldn't be surprised. 

Fox News has been promoting Tucker as if he's the new reigning king of the American mass media, which, well, he most definitely is (at least in television news programming, as previously noted here). 

So, while I am surprised to see Fox News indeed upload his entire opening segment to YouTube, it's pretty logical, after all, considering that Tucker's doing the real news reporting --- including traveling the Central America to interview Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele --- that the idiot lying leftist "mainstream" networks refuse to touch (for all the regular reasons), for doing so would just totally f*ck up their stupid ideological lies and memes with all things related to illegal immigration, Trump's very laudable (yet also flawed and imperfect) policies on border security, and the Biden regime's epically dishonest and incompetent handling of the crisis (which these White Hose ghouls constantly refuse to identify as such). 

I'm not watching any news this morning, as I'm trying to get caught up on grading, but I did want to post some content here to the blog, as blogging's going to be light for a couple of days, as I travel out of town with my wife and young son to visit relatives in Fresno/Clovis. I should have an update on that perhaps later today, or early tomorrow morning, and I'll post some Amazon links for reader shopping opportunities, and of whose reader purchases are greatly appreciated.

Watch and enjoy:

Troubling New Era in Mexico

At World Policy Review, "It’s a New and Troubling Era in Mexico Under AMLO":

The concern for many is less AMLO’s ability to follow through with his promises than his disregard for the very real progress Mexico has made in recent decades. https://t.co/wI9SQdCl5e

— WorldPoliticsReview (@WPReview) November 27, 2019

MEXICO CITY—Some welcomed the return of the left to the height of political power in Mexico nearly a year ago as a promising new chapter in the country’s history. Yet 12 months into Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s presidency, drug violence and attacks on freedom of speech have spiraled and the economy has stagnated, adding to the sense that Mexico is floundering. While all these challenges existed before AMLO—as he is better known in Mexico—took office, the bigger concern now is the way his government is seeking to address them.

There is no mistaking that this is a new era for Mexican politics. Gone are the globally minded, centrist administrations that swapped power in the years following Mexico’s transition from one-party rule to free elections in the 1990s. In their place is a self-styled champion of the people whose inward-looking economic vision harkens back to the country’s statist past. AMLO openly dismisses a role for experts and civil society in policymaking, calling them “neoliberal nostalgics,” while lacing his public rhetoric with an almost religious call of devotion to his presidency—all with the passionate approval of his unwavering political base.

“There is much about AMLO that is reminiscent of the populists that came through the Institutional Revolutionary Party in the latter half of the 20th century,” says Alberto Fernandez, a political analyst and columnist for the magazine Letras Libres in Mexico City, referring to Mexico’s former ruling party, the PRI. “But he’s also more individualistic than they were—he expects the public to believe in his personal moral vision rather than in the democratic institutions Mexico has been trying to build over the past two decades.”

Amid widespread dissatisfaction among voters heading into last year’s presidential election, AMLO won a landslide victory, vowing to reduce inequality, fight corruption and put an end to years of deadly drug violence. Like many Latin American populists, he put neoliberalism and corrupt, privileged elites at the center of his critique of the policy path Mexico has followed over the past two decades. He promised nothing less than the country’s “fourth transformation”—a brash reference to the seminal events in Mexican history, from its independence from Spain in 1810, to the War of Reform that led to separation of church and state in the mid-19th century, to the revolution of 1910 that ended decades of dictatorship and established a constitutional republic.

Yet his actual policy positions were always vague. Corruption would be “eradicated,” AMLO insisted, but he has left the previous administration’s plans for an independent anticorruption commission in limbo. Next year, he will slash the budgets for the attorney general’s office, the National Electoral Institute and the Supreme Court, institutions that, while flawed, have been key building blocks in Mexico’s democracy. The drug cartels would be fought with “hugs, not bullets,” AMLO declared, yet they continue to wreak havoc, with the recent massacre of a Mormon family of nine, including six children, in the state of Sonora drawing international headlines. With nearly 26,000 homicides documented by federal authorities as of October, 2019 looks likely to end as Mexico’s most violent year in recent memory.

In March, AMLO announced that the era of neoliberalism, the great scourge of the Latin American left, was over. Yet his budgeting plans have been far from progressive. He has drastically reduced spending on health and education, among other areas, in favor of costly infrastructure projects, including a new international airport and what many economists view as a dubious attempt to revive Mexico’s debt-ridden and unproductive state energy giant, Pemex. A number of international organizations have subsequently downgraded their forecasts for Mexico’s growth this year to as low as 0.2 percent amid a decline in oil output and slumping construction and service sectors—its worst year since the global financial crisis.

“There are three major issues with AMLO’s diagnosis of the economic challenges Mexico faces,” says Macario Schettino, an economist at the Technological Institute of Monterrey in Mexico City. “The idea of regaining energy sovereignty is misplaced and has paralyzed the country’s landmark energy reform of 2013. Secondly, redirecting public funds to Pemex and poorly designed direct cash transfer programs has seen government ministries lose up to 30 percent of their budgets. Thirdly, the business community is losing confidence, and we are seeing a significant reduction in private investment.”

AMLO has attempted to compensate for the economic slump and spiraling crime rates with token gestures to his base: frequent popular referendums on everything from infrastructure projects to indigenous rights bills, the reduction of salaries for bureaucrats, and the controversial offer of political asylum to ousted Bolivian President Evo Morales. With a current approval rating at 58 percent, he clearly maintains a close bond to many of his supporters, a phenomenon Fernandez attributes to dissatisfaction with prior governments, notably the scandal-ridden term of AMLO’s predecessor, Enrique Pena Nieto.

Pena Nieto and his party, the PRI, successfully pushed through a series of long-hoped-for institutional reforms early in his presidency, yet they ended up flailing because of political foot-dragging and poor implementation. His administration then became mired in a series of corruption and human rights scandals, which at least partly contributed to the desire for change that led AMLO to power.

“For many citizens, Pena Nieto’s term really destroyed any notion that the current political system was working for them,” Fernandez says. “AMLO came along with a very simplistic diagnosis of what was wrong with the country, and it appealed to many.”

Two decades after the formal end of one-party rule, Mexico’s democracy remains fragile, hamstrung by the weak rule of law. Slow but steady progress was being made in the form of increasingly competitive elections, newly independent institutions and a growing role for civil society in public policymaking. Perhaps the most concerning element of AMLO’s presidency so far is his disregard for these gains—and for democratic institutions as a whole.

AMLO says he plans to hold a popular referendum in 2022 to determine if he should continue as president through 2024, the official end of his term under the constitution. Yet his budget cuts to the National Electoral Institute, known as the INE, could also strip the body, which was founded in 1996, of its independence. The INE is responsible for both organizing and financing elections at all three levels of government, along with setting campaign funding limits and allocating public resources to political parties...

Keep reading.

Evo Morales Coup d'Etat in Bolivia? (VIDEO)

Following-up, "Latin America Primed to Explode."

Morales has stepped down. Not sure if it's an actually coup or just a regular mass protest bringing down the regime.

At the Washington Post, "After Morales' resignation, a question for Bolivia: Was this the democratic will, or a coup?":

"As South America’s poorest nation processed the fast-moving events of the day before, its citizens confronted a key question: Had democracy failed, or prevailed?" Upheaval in Bolivia and the apparent end of the Morales era, from @anthony_faiola https://t.co/1k3FXHEu5n

— Missy Ryan (@missy_ryan) November 11, 2019

Bolivians awoke Monday, leaderless and dazed, to the smoldering embers of the torched homes of socialists after the resignation of longtime president Evo Morales, the leftist icon driven from office amid accusations his party stole last month's election. As South America's poorest nation processed the fast-moving events of the day before, its citizens confronted a key question: Had democracy failed, or prevailed?

Morales, who transformed Bolivia during his nearly 14 years in office, called the pressure that forced him out on Sunday a "coup." Early in the day, the Organization of American States said it had found "clear manipulation" of the October 20 election. Violence that had simmered since the vote escalated. The heads of the armed forces and police withdrew their support, andthe opposition unfurled a wave of attacks on Morales' socialist allies.

By late Sunday, all four socialist officials in the constitutional chain of command - the president, the vice president and the heads of the senate and chamber of deputies - had resigned. What was left of congress was set to meet on Monday to pick an interim leader.

Carlos Mesa, the former president who finished second to Morales in the Oct. 20 vote, rejected the word "coup." He called it a "democratic popular action" to stop a government that was seeking to install itself as authoritarian power.

Mesa said Monday Bolivia's legislature should select a new president to lead until the country could hold new elections, required within 90 days. Mesa said Sunday that no one from Morales's Movement for Socialism (MAS) should be picked as interim leader, but he insisted Monday that MAS members should not fear persecution.

"The clear will of the democratic opposition is to build a new democratic government, respecting the constitution," he said.

Jeanine Añez, the fiercely anti-Morales second vice president of the senate, said Monday she would accept a caretaker presidency if offered. Some opposition officials rallied around her, arguing that constitutionally, the job should fall to her. My "only objective would be to call elections," she told reporters.

Yet Bolivia was confronting deep divisions and lingering violence - with the strong possibility of more. Overnight, with Morales' whereabouts unknown, opposition protesters looted and burned the homes of socialist politicians - including Morales. At least 20 MAS officials sought asylum in the Mexican Embassy. La Paz Mayor Luis Revilla Herrero said 64 buses had been burned since Sunday. Schools and businesses were closed Monday, and transportation was shut down.

Some in the opposition where clearly out of for vengeance against a government that had ruled South America's poorest country since 2006. Right-wing leader Luis Fernando Camacho called Sunday evening for two more days of protests and said he would present proposals for the prosecution of Morales, his former vice president, Alvaro Garcia Linares, and MAS legislators.

"Let's start judgments of the criminals of the government party, putting them in jail," he said in a video statement.

Two members of the electoral tribunal - its former president Maria Eugenia Choque and former vice president Antonio Costas - have already been detained. An election official in Santa Cruz, Sandra Kettels, was arrested Monday morning. The prosecutor's office hasannounced warrants against all electoral officials.

"A night of terror," the national newspaper La Razón declared. On Monday, angry Morales supporters set up barricades to block roads leading to the El Alto-La Paz airport, the Associated Press reported.

Morales claimed late Sunday that an arrest warrant had been issued against him. Vladimir Calderón, the head of the national police, denied Sunday that an arrest order had been issued. But Calderón resigned on Monday, adding to the confusion on the ground.

Morales and his opposition blamed each other for the violence...

More.

Latin America Primed to Explode

From Moisés Naím and Brian Winter, at Foreign Affairs, "Why Latin America Was Primed to Explode: Economic Malaise, More Than Foreign Meddling, Explains the Outpouring of Rage":

“If Latin America is to recapture the relative prosperity of the early years of the millennium, an ambitious reform agenda is necessary—one that goes beyond the standard measures popular among pro-business types, such as tax reform and trade deals.”https://t.co/IiR6ov2P9Q

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) November 4, 2019

In a world aflame with protest, Latin America stands out as a raging ten-alarm fire. From Bolivia to Ecuador, Haiti to Honduras, the closing months of 2019 have seen enormous, sometimes violent demonstrations prompted by a truly dizzying array of grievances, including electoral fraud, corruption, and rising fuel and public transportation prices. Even Chile, the region’s ostensible oasis of calm and prosperity, erupted in protests and riots that left 20 dead and forced President Sebastián Piñera to declare a state of emergency. It is now an open question whether any country in the region can be considered truly stable.

The rapid spread across social media of images of burning buildings and besieged riot police has inspired widespread talk of a conspiracy: specifically, that the protests throughout the hemisphere are being orchestrated from Venezuela and Cuba. These socialist dictatorships, the thinking goes, are hell-bent on distracting from their own domestic crises by destabilizing democracies in the region governed by center-right parties, such as Ecuador and Chile. Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro seemed to confirm the theory when he told an audience that “the plan is going exactly as we hoped,” with “the union of social movements, progressives, and revolutionaries . . . of all of Latin America and the Caribbean.”

Maduro has a long history of overstating his influence in the region, hoping to appear all-powerful in the eyes of his countrymen and the world. He has extra incentive to do so now, given Venezuela’s severe economic and humanitarian crisis and the ongoing threat to his rule from Juan Guaidó, who is recognized as the country’s legitimate president by dozens of governments, including the United States. Cuba is also facing hard economic times, owing in part to sanctions from the Trump administration. That said, numerous credible voices, including Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Faurie and Luis Almagro, the secretary-general of the Organization of American States, have denounced what they see as clear Venezuelan and Cuban interference in the region’s recent unrest. And at the peak of the rioting in Ecuador in early October, that country’s interior minister said that 17 people had been arrested at the airport, “most of them Venezuelans . . . carrying information about the protests.”

At this early stage, it is impossible to say how important foreign interference has been in igniting or sustaining the protests. According to the Chilean newspaper La Tercera, Chilean police have identified several Venezuelans and Cubans who participated in violent attacks in Santiago in mid-October, to cite one example. But the scale and unrelenting nature of the protests, which brought more than one million of Chile’s 18 million citizens into the streets on October 25, suggest that the root causes are large and structural. The focus on conspiracy theories, moreover, risks giving politicians and other elites a handy scapegoat.

Whether or not foreign agitators lit the sparks, much of Latin America was already primed to combust. After a commodity boom in the early years of this millennium raised expectations higher than ever, much of Latin America has entered a long period of disappointing growth. Against the backdrop of stagnating wages and rising costs of living, indignities such as inequality and corruption have become more difficult for many people to swallow. At the same time, Latin Americans have become some of the world’s most dedicated users of social media. They watched as protests erupted from Hong Kong to Beirut to Barcelona. Some doubtlessly wondered: Why not us, too?

HARD UP, FED UP

The protests now raging across much of Latin America originated from different sparks but are connected by a single common denominator: economic malaise. On average, Latin American and Caribbean economies will grow just 0.2 percent in 2019, the worst performance of any major region in the world, according to the International Monetary Fund. By contrast, emerging markets globally are expected to expand by 3.9 percent this year, building on several years of solid growth despite headwinds from the trade war between the United States and China.

To understand why Latin America’s economic slump has generated such outrage, one need only rewind to the beginning of this decade, when the region was outperforming the rest of the world...

More.

Supreme Courts Clears Pentagon Border Wall Funding (VIDEO)

At LAT, "Supreme Court rules for Trump in border wall funding dispute."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Attacks Trump's Comments as 'Racist'

This is the big news this afternoon, more politics of "racism." At the New York Times, via Memeorandum, "House Condemns Trump's Attack on Four Congresswomen as Racist."

And at NBC News, at Memeorandum, "House divided: Vote temporarily halted after Pelosi calls Trump comments ‘racist’ on the floor."

President Trump Stands By 'Go Back' Comments

This was the big story yesterday, at the New York Times, via Memeorandum, "Trump Tells Freshman Congresswomen to ‘Go Back’ to the Countries They Came From."

Great. I love it!

At the Los Angeles Times, "As Trump doubles down on racist comments, House to vote on condemning them":

You’re right, Mr. President - you don’t have a racist bone in your body.

You have a racist mind in your head, and a racist heart in your chest.

That’s why you violate the rights of children and tell the Congresswoman who represents your home borough, to “go back to my country.” https://t.co/adlCUO7r0v

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 16, 2019

Donald Trump is lashing out at me, @AOC, @RashidaTlaib, & @AyannaPressley because he wants to divide our country. We will not allow his latest attacks distract us from working to ensure a brighter future for all. https://t.co/wQhSPwgipk

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) July 16, 2019

Reporting from Washington —  President Trump delivered some of the most incendiary comments of his presidency on Monday, signaling that he intends to build his reelection bid as much around divisive racial and cultural issues as on low unemployment and economic growth.
The rhetoric sparked unusual pushback from several Republicans, and led to a dramatic clash in which four first-year House Democrats — all women of color — denounced Trump’s language as “xenophobic,” “bigoted” and unworthy of a sitting president.

Earlier, Trump had vilified the four elected members of Congress as “people who hate our country.”

“They hate it, I think, with a passion,” he told reporters.

The House is planning to condemn Trump’s comments as “racist” in a resolution to be voted upon as soon as Tuesday. The four-page resolution praises immigrants and condemns Trump’s comments, which have “legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color.”

Trump was asked Monday if he was concerned that white nationalists had found common cause with him after he had urged progressive Democrats to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

“It doesn’t concern me because many people agree with me,” Trump said. “And all I’m saying is if they want to leave, they can leave.”

Trump questioned the patriotism of the four lawmakers — all U.S. citizens and three born in the United States — at an event intended to highlight American-made products.

His rhetoric trampled over the economic populism his aides had sought to convey with the visual display of motorcycles and military equipment, providing new evidence that Trump’s “America First” agenda is as much about identity politics as it is about trade.

Trump views his efforts to fan racial and ethnic tensions as a political positive for his reelection campaign, even as others worry about the long-term damage to a country that has long struggled to reconcile its commitment to pluralism with its historical racism.

Overall, Trump’s taunts to the four — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — served to unify Democrats just as they were facing one of their most serious fractures since taking control of the House in the 2018 election.

Pressley was born in Cincinnati, Ocasio-Cortez in New York and Tlaib in Detroit. Omar was born in Somalia and came to the United States in 1997 as a refugee, later becoming a U.S. citizen.

But it also elevated the four progressives in the public eye, potentially causing more problems for Democratic leadership.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) has been at odds with the four over the direction of the House majority, including a recent border spending bill. For weeks, progressives viewed Pelosi as pandering to more politically vulnerable moderates in the caucus.

But the four focused only on Trump Monday in a 20-minute news conference at the Capitol.

“This is the agenda of white nationalists,” said Omar, who accused Trump of tweeting to distract Americans from his policies. “We can continue to enable this president and report on the bile of garbage that comes out of his mouth or hold him accountable for his crimes.”

The president can’t defend his policies, “so what he does is attack us personally and that is what this is all about,” Ocasio-Cortez agreed. “He can’t look a child in the face and look all Americans in the face to justify why this country is throwing [them] in cages,” referring to migrant detention camps on the Southwest border.

“Despite the occupant of the White House’s attempt to marginalize us and silence us, please know we are more than four people,” Pressley said. “We ran on a mandate to represent those … left behind.”

Elected Republican officials were largely silent on Sunday, but several condemned Trump’s language on Monday, collectively forming some of the most significant pushback the president has seen from fellow Republicans.

“I am confident that every Member of Congress is a committed American,” tweeted Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio). Trump’s tweets “were racist and he should apologize. We must work as a country to rise above hate, not enable it.”

Some of the president’s sometime-critics — including Republicans Rep. Will Hurd of Texas and Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — spoke out.

So did Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who called Trump’s comments “destructive, demeaning, and disunifying” in a tweet. He added, “People can disagree over politics and policy, but telling American citizens to go back to where they came from is over the line.”

But unexpected critics arose, too.

Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) said Trump “was wrong to suggest that four left-wing congresswomen should go back to where they came from. Three of the four were born in America and the citizenship of all four is as valid as mine.”

Some Republicans supported Trump, however, suggesting that his mark on GOP politics would probably continue even after he leaves office.

“There’s no question that the members of Congress that @realDonaldTrump called out have absolutely said anti-American and anti-Semitic things. I’ll pay for their tickets out of this country if they just tell me where they’d rather be,” tweeted Rep. Ralph Abraham (R-La.)...

President Trump to Deny Asylum to Illegals at Mexican Border

Good.

At LAT, "Trump moves to eliminate nearly all asylum claims at U.S. southern border":

ICYMI: For months, CBP leadership has spoken about the current border security & humanitarian crisis at the border. They’ve testified before Congress. They’ve been interviewed by the press. Months later, the influx of illegal crossings continues to overwhelm CBP resources. pic.twitter.com/9hA3noSRMJ

— CBP (@CBP) July 12, 2019

This veggie tale didn't have a happy ending for some attempted smugglers: #CBP officers at the Otay Mesa port of entry discover more than 3,300lbs of marijuana mixed in with a cargo load of broccoli following a K9 alert. Details: https://t.co/GL1qkkM1Ab pic.twitter.com/WbqsTwJRaQ

— CBP (@CBP) July 12, 2019

Reporting from Washington —  The Trump administration moved Monday to effectively end asylum for any migrant who arrives at the U.S.-Mexico border, an enormous shift in U.S. immigration policy that could block hundreds of thousands of people from seeking protection in the U.S. — and is certain to draw legal challenges.
The new rule, published in the Federal Register and set to take effect Tuesday, would bar asylum claims for nearly all migrants from any country. It would do so by prohibiting claims from anyone who has passed through another country en route to the U.S., which essentially would cover anyone other than Mexican residents.

Only in rare cases, such as when a migrant applies for asylum elsewhere and is denied, would a person be eligible to apply for protection in the U.S.

The rule would, in effect, nearly wipe out U.S. asylum law, which establishes a legal right to claim protection for anyone who arrives at the U.S. border and can make a case that they face torture or persecution at home. The law applies regardless of how a migrant reaches the border.

The law currently provides a major exception in cases in which the U.S. has negotiated a “safe third country” agreement with another government. Under those agreements, such as the one the U.S. has with Canada, migrants must apply in the first safe country they reach.

The new proposal would short-circuit that, effectively requiring migrants to apply in any country they land in, whether the U.S. formally considers that country safe or not.

The new rule was issued by the Justice and Homeland Security departments, which administer the asylum system, and it was written to take effect immediately when it’s formally published on Tuesday. It would apply only to those arriving to the U.S., not migrants already in the country.

The sweeping change drew an immediate threat of a legal fight.

“This rule is inconsistent with both domestic and international law, and we intend to sue immediately to block it,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s national Immigrants’ Rights Project, said.

“If allowed to stand, it would effectively end asylum at the southern border and could not be more inconsistent with our country’s commitment to protecting those in danger.”

The rule would most directly affect Central American families and unaccompanied minors, who account for most of a recent surge in migrants arriving at the border. But it applies to any nationality, including the large numbers of Haitians, Cubans and Africans who transit South and Central America and Mexico in order to claim asylum at the border.

“With limited exceptions, an alien who enters or attempts to enter the United States across the southern border after failing to apply for protection in a third country outside the alien’s country of citizenship, nationality, or last lawful habitual residence through which the alien transited en route to the United States is ineligible for asylum,” the rule states.

The rule would place a major burden on Mexico, which has already been inundated with a record number of asylum requests. Mexico’s Commission for Aid to Migrants projects that it will receive 80,000 asylum requests this year, up from 29,648 last year and 2,137 five years ago.

Last month, Mexico agreed to ramp up its immigration enforcement, and in exchange, Trump agreed to hold off on imposing tariffs on Mexican imports for 45 days. Many in Mexico reacted angrily on Monday, saying Trump had reneged on that agreement and had unilaterally imposed a policy that would hurt Mexico.

At a news conference, Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said Mexico disagrees with the new rule, but said he did not see it as a violation of the June immigration deal because Mexico does not have a safe third country agreement with the U.S.

“Our country has made it very clear that we will not enter into any phase of negotiation on a safe third party agreement without the express authority of [the Mexican] Congress,” he said.

Ebrard avoided answering a question about what will happen to migrants currently waiting in Mexico for their chance to apply for asylum in the U.S. Those migrants who have already been screened by U.S. officials and are waiting in Mexico until their court hearings under the administration’s Remain in Mexico plan will be able to complete the asylum process in the U.S., he said.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan said the rule was necessary despite a recent $4.6-billion bill to address humanitarian challenges at the border, and would deter migrants crossing through Mexico “on a dangerous journey.”

“The truth is that it will not be enough without targeted changes to the legal framework of our immigration system,” McAleenan said in a statement Monday.

President Trump Recognizes Venezuelan Oppostion Leader

The scale of the protests is absolutely stunning.

Even veteran die-hard Trump-haters are praising him for backing the opposition leader in Venezuela, including former Mexican President Vicente Fox.

At the Los Angeles Times, "As protesters fill streets of Venezuela, Trump recognizes opposition leader as rightful president":

.@AOC look at brave Venezuelans rising up against socialism!! AMERICAN Freedom lovers will RISE up against YOU & your bad ideas too! Your mentor @SenSanders SAID American Dream could be found in Venezuela, not USA. Redistribution & socialism never works. #FreeEnterprise #BeLIBRE pic.twitter.com/spEO9YYDe7

— Rachel Campos-Duffy (@RCamposDuffy) January 23, 2019

As masses of Venezuelans turned out to protest their government, the Trump administration took the unusual and provocative step Wednesday of recognizing the leader of Venezuela’s political opposition as the country's legitimate president.

In Caracas, the leader, a young and charismatic engineer named Juan Guaido, declared he was assuming the mantle of acting president — and braced for reaction from President Nicolas Maduro and his security forces.

And react he did: Maduro announced he was breaking diplomatic ties, already strained, with Washington and giving U.S. personnel 72 hours to abandon the country. But Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo said late Wednesday that the U.S had no plans to withdraw personnel.

“Anyone can declare himself president, but it’s the Venezuelan people who elect him, not the gringo government,” Maduro declared to his supporters rallying outside the presidential palace. He swiftly branded Guaido a “puppet” of U.S. “imperialism.”

The dramatic escalation came as the Trump administration seeks ways to ramp up pressure on Maduro’s socialist government, which it accuses of widespread human rights abuse, drug trafficking and a host of other crimes. Already, Washington has blacklisted 70 senior Venezuelan officials and entities and put sanctions on some of its export industries.

Venezuela has teetered on the verge of collapse for some time, mired in social and economic chaos that has depleted supplies of food and medicine and sent millions of Venezuelans fleeing as refugees. Roughly 80% of the people here now live in poverty.

In a statement, President Trump said he was recognizing Guaido as the interim president of Venezuela because he is the head of “the only legitimate branch of government duly elected by the Venezuelan people,” a reference to the country’s National Assembly, Venezuela's legislative body that Maduro has sidelined and replaced with his own legislature stacked with his supporters.

The sequence of events represented a rare and potentially dangerous dive into international diplomacy unusual for this administration. It delivered a diplomatic blow to Maduro, but a much-needed boost to the long-suffering, largely ineffective opposition movement.

The movement was in need of new energy after Maduro’s violent suppression in 2017 of nationwide marches that left protesters dispirited and leaderless. An estimated 165 people died, 15,000 were injured and at least 4,800 arrested.

Wednesday’s march, which occurred on the anniversary of the 1958 overthrow of dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez, was seen as a test of Guaido’s strength of leadership and ability to summon the masses to the street, a test he seems to have passed.

“Today, on Jan. 23, in my status as National Assembly president before all powerful God, and my colleagues, I swear to formally assume the duties of national executive to achieve the end of usurpation, [form] a transitional government and [hold] free elections,” Guaido told tens of thousands of Venezuelans who crowded Caracas’ downtown streets.

“I am not afraid, [rather] I fear for the people who are [living in] bad times,” Guaido proclaimed...

More.

Brazil's Primal Scream for Freedom

From Mary Anastasia O'Grady, at WSJ, "Brazil's Primal Scream":

‘Socialism just didn’t work out around here.’ Brazil wants to try something new, writes @MaryAnastasiaOG https://t.co/TQ6IhZ1aDH

— MaryAnastasiaO'Grady (@MaryAnastasiaOG) January 7, 2019

In the days after Jair Bolsonaro won the October runoff contest to become president-elect of Brazil, I received some notable mail from supporters offended by the negative media coverage of their choice for a new chief executive.

A letter from a man in São Paulo, who described himself as “a gay person,” read: For the “first time in my life I voted [with conviction] . . . on both the first and the second round. I woke up 6AM on two cold Sundays happily doing it. I voted for Bolsonaro emotionally and with gratitude in my heart.”

Behind the emotion there was reason. This is “the first time a government [will provide] freedom of market and freedom of choice to us. . . . By that I mean understanding that’s what people want and realizing that’s what will drive the economic direction in this new administration.”

On Tuesday the center-right Mr. Bolsonaro became Brazil’s 36th president. As I read inauguration coverage here in the south of the country I wondered if the new president grasps the soaring expectations he has created. Brazil has let go a primal scream for freedom.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s critics claim that his “right wing” views, shaped by his experience in the military, will put Brazil’s liberal democracy at risk. In the lead-up to the vote, this media hysteria reached a fevered pitch.

It hasn’t diminished. But it has lost its force, in part because it has exposed the bias of the chattering classes, at home and abroad. Brazilians rightly ask where these champions of democracy were when the Workers’ Party governments of former Presidents Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva and Dilma Rousseff were financing the Cuban military dictatorship and its satellite Venezuela.

Brazil’s institutions have matured in the 30-plus years since the end of its own military government. This has been a democratic process, driven by civil society’s thirst for pluralism, tolerance and self-government.

The judiciary and federal law enforcement are increasingly independent. Proof of progress is the federal investigation dubbed Operation Car Wash, which exposed the corruption of a range of powerful business executives and high-ranking politicians in a landmark bribery case. So blind was Lady Justice that even the popular Mr. da Silva couldn’t escape responsibility for his role in the scheme. He’s now in jail.

The same institutions are more than likely to check a power-hungry president on the right. It won’t take as long either. The establishment fawned over Lula. Mr. Bolsonaro will be on a short leash.

The legitimate concern is whether the new president can deliver on his promises to better protect human life and to shrink a monster state that devours dreams.

The São Paulo letter-writer put it bluntly: “Socialism just didn’t work out around here.” Another letter came from a man in Europe who had emigrated seven years ago because Brazil was a dead end.

Still more.

Migrants in Tijuana Regret the Caravan

Heh, Trump's policies are working.

At the Daily Beast, "Migrants in Tijuana Regret the Caravan: ‘I’m Done With the United States’."

After being gassed by the U.S. and held in a camp by Mexico, hope is running out for some who left Honduras with dreams of a better life in America.

Hope is running out for some of the migrants who left Honduras with dreams of a better life in America https://t.co/2Jc22qvk42

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) November 28, 2018

President Trump Slams 'Migrant Caravan' Ahead of Midterm Elections (VIDEO)

I swear I can't believe leftists and Democrats made immigration an campaign issue before the elections?!!

This is President Trump's wheelhouse. The illegal alien invasion is going to infuriate the Republican base. I can't say about California, where we're practically a lost cause, but if you look at Texas or some states in the Midwest, it's not going to play over well.

And even in California's GOP-held House districts, not all of our diverse populations are for open borders. Again, my hunch is Dems are making a big mistake, and if it's truly Soros money that's financed leftists operatives in Honduras, I'll practically pop my eyeballs lol.

At Politico, "Trump has whipped up a frenzy on the migrant caravan. Here are the facts."

Donald Trump’s remarks in recent days about a caravan of Central American migrants heading toward the United States have stirred up a political frenzy — in the process distorting reality and ignoring basic factshttps://t.co/IPYP88KUb7

— POLITICO (@politico) October 23, 2018

Well see who's "ignoring basic facts" on election day. My money's on the White House.

'Migrant Caravan' Breaks Border Fence at Guatamala-Mexico Checkpoint (VIDEO)

Here's the video, via Associated Press, "Migrants force through fence at Mexican border: On Friday, the migrant caravan of at least 3,000 broke down gates at the Guatemalan border with Mexico and streamed toward a bridge to Mexico."

And here's Laura Ingraham with her opening "angle," at Fox News:

AMLO the Populist

Third time's a charm for Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO).

He ran in 2006 and 2012, and this year he triumphed --- in a landslide. And he's a populist. A leftist populist, but still. It freaks elitist media types out if you're for the common man. It's better if you're a Bernie-style populist rather than a Trumper. But it's still an issue either way.

At LAT, "With Mexico presidential election, another step in global populism — but this time from the left":

With Mexico presidential election, another step in global populism — but this time from the left https://t.co/Qe2Nfnhmc7 pic.twitter.com/PQT7NtigPd

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) July 2, 2018

The victory of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Sunday’s presidential election in Mexico is yet another advance for the global march of populism, an ideology that feeds on both fear and hope.

In Mexico, however, populism comes with a twist: Lopez Obrador emerges from a leftist tradition in a sea of right-wing tendencies.

From the election in 2016 in the United States of Donald Trump to the rising leaders in Hungary, Italy and other U.S. allies, populism is posing new challenges to modern democracy.

An often anti-intellectual or xenophobic movement, populism capitalizes on existential worries among middle- and working-class populations who see their jobs being lost to technology or to lower-paid workers.

It can offer unrealistic expectations and often stokes people’s fears of immigrants and outsiders, criminals and terrorists, while railing against an ill-defined traditional elite portrayed as callously distant from the concerns of ordinary citizens.

Those touchstones are clearly part of a Trump playbook. Lopez Obrador also appeals to the common man, but his brand of populism does not employ the same level of negativity or tap into racist or nativist beliefs. It remains to be seen how it will evolve.

The underlying call to action in such a climate is to take a sledgehammer to the system, to “throw the bums out,” or, memorably, to drain the swamp.

Like Trump, Lopez Obrador benefited from a strong current of outrage where many voters felt disenfranchised, left out or overlooked.

His campaign rhetoric did not vary much from his earlier runs for president in 2006 and in 2012. He railed against Mexico's elite and the neo-liberal economic policies embraced by Mexico's leaders, but which many feel have left the working class behind.

What was different this time was the mood of the electorate.

“Mexicans are very angry,” said Genaro Lozano, a professor of political science and international relations at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City.

It’s not difficult to understand why. Violence is at a modern high and fetid corruption infects seemingly every level of the established, sclerotic government. Around half of Mexico’s population lives in poverty, and the country ranks near the bottom of developed nations for social mobility, the chance to get ahead...

RTWT.

'Operation Finale' Trailer (VIDEO)

Looks like a very high caliber (MGM) production, including Ben Kingsley starring as Adolf Eichman.

From the promotional blurb:

Mossad agent Peter Malkin embarks on a covert mission to Argentina in 1960 to track down Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi officer who masterminded the transportation logistics that brought millions of innocent Jews to their deaths in concentration camps.