By Kathleen Bohné
Below you will find an excerpt from the July 25 edition of “La Semana” newsletter. To read more and subscribe, please visit www.themexpatriate.com
When I wrote last week that “serious deliberation” and “effective public diplomacy” might be lacking in the near term of the US-Mexico relationship, I didn’t expect my hypothesis to be confirmed so quickly.
On July 20, President López Obrador added cumbia to the morning press conference, playing the song “Uy qué miedo” by Chico Ché to express his sentiments towards the complaints brought by both the United States and Canada regarding possible violations of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA, or T-MEC in Spanish) in relation to the energy sector. “Oooo, how scary/Look at how I’m trembling,” sings Chico with a smirk, as AMLO grins. The next day, representatives from the U.S. and Canadian governments asked that Mexico take the issue “seriously” and noted that the potential economic impact on the country is “no laughing matter.”
Is AMLO right to shrug—or shimmy—off the significance of these complaints? Or is Mexico headed for a potential international trade disaster? Nothing is happening fast: this problem could be seen coming from miles away, and the outcome will take time to adjudicate. “The complaint brought by the US accuses Mexico of restricting market access, failing to protect investment and pushing policy changes that curb the use of clean energy from private producers,” summarizes an article in The Financial Times. Since the reform to the Ley de la Industria Eléctrica (Electrical Industry Law) was passed in March 2021, lawsuits have been filed by multinational companies that claim the law violates their contracts, partly by requiring that electricity generated by the CFE (Federal Electricity Commission) be prioritized over that generated at privately owned plants. “Mexico’s policies have largely cut off US and other investment in the country’s clean energy infrastructure,” claimed a statement by US trade representative Katherine Tai. The largest private generator of electricity in Mexico, Spanish multinational Iberdrola, was fined $466 million dollars in May by the CRE (Energy Regulatory Commission) for alleged “administrative irregularities”, and other foreign companies have been blocked in obtaining permits, even with projects already underway.
The next step is to begin talks with the Mexican government, and if no resolution is reached within 75 days, the parties will proceed to form a conflict resolution panel under the auspices of the treaty. This panel will have 150 days to deliberate and another 30 days to present its conclusions.
“The country that insisted on a system for dispute resolution was Mexico,” according to analyst Luis de la Calle. “It’s in Mexico’s interests to have an institutional mechanism, instead of getting in a street fight with the US.”
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“La Marea Verde” and the Outlook for Abortion Rights in Mexico
In the eruption that followed the first rumblings of the leaked majority US Supreme Court opinion, and then the overturning of Roe v. Wade on June 24, abortion rights came into focus not just in the US, but worldwide. For many Americans, the fragility of reproductive rights exposed by this decision has inspired angst, and also a renewed examination of the global context on this fraught issue. In the immediate aftermath, I noticed a frequently copied and pasted text appear on friends’ Facebook walls that heralded abortion rights in Mexico in comparison to the post-Roe US, which led with: “since 2021, abortion is no longer a crime in Mexico, although its legalization varies by state.” First, if decriminalization varies by state, can it also be true that abortion is no longer considered a crime? Is Mexico really now more progressive than the US, at least from a judicial perspective, on reproductive rights?
To answer these and other questions in the broader context of maternal health in Mexico, I discovered that (surprise!) the truth is not as simple, or as catchy, as a viral post. I was surprised by some of what I learned—for example, that most people serving prison sentences in Mexico today for abortion are men (I will explain)—but the reality on the ground in most of Mexico, even in the wake of the historic 2021 Supreme Court (SCJN) ruling that declared it unconstitutional to prosecute a woman for abortion within the first 12 weeks, is one of conflicting state penal codes, fear of being reported, and societal stigma in a country where majority public opinion is anti-abortion. “…Abortion is still regulated as a crime and since penal matters—in general terms—are part of local law, each of the penal codes in the 32 states legislates the issue differently,” explains a comprehensive report published by the feminist advocacy organization GIRE (Information Group on Reproductive Choice). They tell the stories of girls and women who have faced negligence from authorities when reporting rape and trying to exercise their legal right to a termination, have been reported by hospital staff to the police when seeking medical care for miscarriage or have been caught up in red tape requesting permission to terminate a high-risk pregnancy.
The movement for abortion rights in Mexico—which in recent years has been identified with “la marea verde” or the “green tide” across Latin America—launched in the 1980s, and its most significant victory in recent memory (before last year) was the decriminalization of abortion in Mexico City in 2007. This allowed for the establishment of four public abortion clinics, which have had a stellar safety record in performing 247,000 “legal pregnancy terminations”, or ILE, 89% of which are medical abortions (using pharmaceuticals). The number of abortions performed annually peaked in 2013, but has been steadily declining since–of course, most dramatically in 2020 due to COVID-19–confirming what has been observed in other countries: legalizing abortion appears to correlate with lower, not higher, abortion rates.
