MEXICO | Politics. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a left-wing candidate for the presidency next year, started an international tour in Washington on 11 October by calling for a change in the emphasis in the relationship between the US and Mexico. He called for more development cooperation and less emphasis on military aid, intelligence and weapons. López Obrador claimed that neoliberalism, poor economic management and corruption had caused more than 50,000 deaths in Mexico since President Felipe Calderón took office in December 2006. López Obrador, less controversially, pointed out that Mexico was the biggest exporter of labour in the world, yet still had an unemployment rate of 21% (including underemployment) and was a country where two-thirds (67%) of those employed earned less than US$13 a day.
López Obrador’s policy suggestions were: promoting rural development so that Mexico ceased to become a net importer of food; reforesting more than 1m hectares in southern Mexico, and building five new oil refineries. This would alter Mexico’s traditional strategy of exporting crude oil and importing more expensive refined products. Mexico currently has six oil refineries.
MEXICO | California. The Democrat governor of California, Jerry Brown, has ratified a law, AB131, which will allow undocumented migrants to apply for state grants and scholarships to attend university. This proposal is the second part of the California Dream Act to become law. In July undocumented migrants with places at university were allowed to apply for private student loans to continue their studies.
Governor Brown has also outlawed the E-Verify programme, which would have compelled municipalities to check the immigration status of all the people they hired. Governor Brown has also made it more difficult for the authorities to impound vehicles driven by undocumented migrants who do not have a driver’s licence.
