Mexico To Use SEZs To Boost Economy Of South

Tax News: Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has introduced draft legislation for the creation of special economic zones (SEZs) in the southern states of the country.

The proposed SEZs would be set up in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the ports of Chiapas and Lázaro Cárdenas. These three areas are located in the states of Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Michoacán, respectively. Read more.

Peña must recognize the human rights crisis: NGOs

Proceso: In response to the federal government’s downgrading of the preliminary report of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), civil society organizations demanded that President Enrique Peña Nieto recognize the human rights crisis in the country, and invited him to take into serious consideration the conclusions and recommendations issued by the experts.

In a statement, dozens of organizations expressed regret for "the media’s damage control logic" encouraged by the Peña Government through the Undersecretary for Human Rights of the Ministry of Interior, Roberto Campa. Hours after the IACHR released the first results of its on-site visit, Campos said the report "does not reflect the reality of the country", because it was the product of "meetings and interviews" in six states for five days.

#Yo Soy 132 Garners International Support

#YoSoy132 New York in Action. 

Americas Program: Mexico City - Mexico's student-led resistance movement, #Yo Soy 132, has been gathering global support since May of this year. The movement that started just four months ago in Mexico has become a leading force for democracy, and against what it considers to be the "imposition" of presumed president-elect, Enrique Peña Nieto.

Just after the group’s inception the #YoSoy132 movement began forming groups, or “cells”, beyond Mexico´s borders. Mexican youth and their supporters have organized actions of international solidarity in Argentina, Barcelona and Paris and dozens of other cities.The protests against the return of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), election fraud, and biases in elections reporting by the mainstream Mexican media, now find their way into newspapers on several continents.

National Independent Poll (Encuesta Nacional Independiente)

 Citizen’s Front in Defense of an Effective and Free Vote presented a poll done by the company Berumen and Associates,  whose results throw a technical draw between Enrique Peña Nieto and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, candidates to the presidency of the republic under the PRI-Green Party and PRD-PT-Citizens' Movement coalitions, respectively, followed by Josefina Vázquez Mota, from the PAN, in a distant third place.

Commissioned by the Observatorio Universitario Electoral (Electoral College Observatory), composed mainly by academics of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Metropolitan Autonomous University), the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and El Colegio de México (The College of Mexico), the poll establishes the following data regarding voting intention:  EPN, 30.9%; AMLO, 31.8%, and JV, 20.7%. 

In the event, John M. Ackerman gave a context presentation, followed by Amílcar Sandoval who read a rebuttal to a statement by IFE published during the weekend defending its role. He affirmed that the electoral umpire presents severe deficiencies in fulfilling its role, citing as an example the topic of polls where the Institute behaves as a mere registrar office, receiving reports on the methodologies without bringing them under analysis.

Edmundo Berumen (general director of the polling company) followed, offering various methodological details on the exercise of registering voters’ preferences: a sample designed under a strictly probabilistic approach to be applied in 600 electoral sections of the national territory. A total of 3 thousand 480 completed interviews were collected, raised between 30 May and 6 June, respecting the implementation of the sample design up until the household level, with up to three visits per household and without a substitution scheme, among other characteristics. 


According to Berumen, the majority of the polls thus far released in this electoral process do not extend over more than 200 electoral sections nor do they respect the probabilistic approach.

According to Ackerman, the poll shows that the ongoing process has turned into an election between two, as recently pointed out by Reforma’s poll.

(This post has been corrected: EPN: 30.9%, AMLO: 31.8% and JVM: 20.7%--still representing a technical tie. However, we have calls in to clear up confusion that arose last night as to whether these are the final or preliminary results. We will keep you posted.)