Siselmo posted:

Usually, the more south you go the cheaper it gets. The rent I mentioned would give you a nice place in a not upper-class but otherwise pretty decent neighborhood in Colima or Villa de Álvarez. And some stuff is cheaper in Mexico. It depends on what. Fruits, veggies and most edible stuff I find them much cheaper over here and of better quality. Also, if you buy a lot of stuff second hand, then you can spend less than in Cali. Electronics and clothes of decent brand are no contest cheaper in Cali, though (I never buy new games here, just trade. And as plus-sized woman, the US has much more variety of plus size clothes of decent brands).

As papasyhotcakes said, in terms of gas prices, the oil crash made things worse, but the hikes in prices have been around waaaay before that.

On tax hikes, I don't know why they happened. AFAIK, they said it was to be more equal with the rest of the country. A lot of people here thought it was just another way for the government to milk more money. A few who are more conspiracy minded say it was planned between the US and Mexico in order to help the american economy near the border.

Also, keep in mind that in my area, the minimum wages are around 70 to 120 pesos a day. How the gently caress is someone expected to live with that I have no loving idea. Heck, once I get my degree in two and a half years, if I get a job with a weekly wage of ~$1500 I wouldn't complain.

OH YEAH! Almost forgot about the dollar! Before the 2008 crisis, the exchange rate was ~10.50 to 11 pesos for a dollar. During the crisis, it spiked a lot, reaching $15 at its worst (in exchange houses, it was around $14.70). Then, it sorta stabilized between $12.20 and $13.50. Now it has reached $15 again on banks and in exchange houses it's almost reaching it (today it was ~$14.70). For us at the border, not only is everything here getting more expensive, but also our money is worth less and less dollars, so even California is getting more expensive (and let's not forget the people that pay rent for their homes/businesses in dollars! because that totally is a thing).

FilthyImp posted:

Wait. That's the same president that's going to denationalize PEMEX right?

Because it seems that the oil prices thing will get much worse if that happens...

LGD posted:

How on earth do you see that further increasing pressure? An RPG-7 obviously isn't related to U.S. guns being re-routed to Mexico, and the dude in the other article looks a lot more like a genuine moron than a cartel smuggler, unless there has been an uptick in drug related crossbowings I'm unaware of.

Polidoro posted:

He didn't do poo poo. He spent most of his period self-promoting. People outside love him because he's "poor" and "legalized" weed when weed's been always legal to consume and the law that regulates production is a mess and still hasn't come into effect.

Also, I feel he used his image as a poor man to deflect a lot of shady poo poo that went down during his government. Every time you bring any instances of this up, you get shut down by the "but he's so poor/humble, he can't be involved in anything".

It also bothers me that for such a revolutionary as he's supposed to be, he always ended up doing what the US wanted like getting the Guantanamo prisoners which was such a big mess that the prison might not close after all. He used them and the Syrian refugees we got for self-promotion and now these people are becoming a problem.

And finally he left us with a dwindling economy and the biggest deficit in history right at the end of the commodities craze, and the education system is in the worst shape it's ever been when he said in his inaugural speech that the three most important words for his government would be "education, education, education". This last thing makes sense when you see he later claimed that his votes come mostly by ignorant people.

I could write more but have to go.

joepinetree posted:

90% of the stuff people say about Lula's sons is fake. People will spread rumors that they own pretty much every fast growing Brazilian company. They also love to gossip about how much they spent on a dinner, or clothes, or whatever. It is part of old class/northeasterner prejudices, where Alckmin's daughter taking a picture with the Kardashians is a cool think worth of fawning over, but did you know Lula's son spent 200 bucks on a bottle of wine? * faints *

This headline is emblematic of that. People in Brazil are all talking about the whatsapp ban. So Epoca finds the flimsiest excuse to come up with a headline to attack Lula. "Lula's son switches from whatsapp to telegram." In what world is his messaging app newsworthy, other than to feed the narrative?

Siselmo posted:

With the Panama Papers leak, among the list was guy involved in the "Casa Blanca" scandal here in Mexico. For anyone who doesn't know, here's a super brief summary from wiki


If more names are coming, I would totally not be surprised to see Slim, Azcárraga, Salinas and gently caress ton more shitheads popping up.

TheLovablePlutonis posted:

Can someone from Uruguay tell me why the hell everything is so expensive except for mate and legal weed?

Friendly Humour posted:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-37735267

What is the government's version of events?

According to the official report, the students were seized by corrupt municipal police officers who handed them over to members of a local drugs gang. The drugs gang mistook the students for members of a rival gang, killed them and burned their bodies at the dump before throwing their ashes into a nearby stream.

Why do the families not believe the official report?

They think officials have failed to investigate the role soldiers from a nearby barracks may have played in the students' disappearance. The government has refused to let the soldiers, who were in the area at the time of the disappearance, be questioned by anyone but government prosecutors. The families also point to the report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights which said that there was no evidence the bodies of the 43 were burned at the dump

Friendly Humour posted:

Um ok, but left or no left, why exactly did the parents reject the government investigation? Cuz I keep reading about "international investigations" that reject the official verdict, which seemed to be the stated reason. I don't think it's exactly healthy to reject them out of hand just because their case would be hopeless without political affliation. And regardless, if the federal government was indeed so seemingly incapable in handling the investigation as to make them culpable, aren't the people you call your "hard left" basically right? I mean, on a facts level?

Siselmo posted:

So, the gas prices went up by 20% in a single day. Other stuff like gas (the used for stoves and the like) also went up over %15, the predial (kinda like a property tax) went up by 50%, and many other stuff is going up like crazy here in Mexico.

This is turning insane. There's been a lot of protests and looting all over the country.

Gas stations, at least in my city, are running out, and Facebook has turned into a network of people asking which stations have gas. Right now I'm in winter vacation, but many primaria students go back to school next week, and many people are returning to work. Things are not looking good for people who use public transport too (In my city, there's been talks about raising bus fare from $10 to $13-$16, which is loving insane, and even more because people usually ride them 2 to 4 times a day. Fixed-route taxis are doing the same too, and their fares range from $10 to $20, so who knows how much they want to raise them).

The president and some other higher-ups from the government have made statements that boil down to "Energy Reform had nothing to do with it, it was all because of oil prices around the world (which I kinda get, but the whole thing has been handled horribly). We know it's super hard, but please ignore our $100K per month salary, all of the bonuses we gave to ourselves at the end of 2016 and deal with it".

Some guy, I forgot who, actually said the prices are not that bad because they are on par with Texas and California (in terms of price per liter). Except this year's minimum wage is 80.04 pesos. That's less than 4 dollars a day. A manufacturing worker over here makes between $900 to $1800 pesos a week depending on factory and shift. A liter of the cheapest type of gasoline (at least where I live) is over $14.

Freezer posted:

Totally agreeing with El chingon(heh). This has been my interpretation of the situation as well, they should have done gradual changes.

The way it played out, there was a lot of pent up inflationary pressure due to the peso diving, and this has given everyone the de-facto go ahead to hike prices by 20ish percent. Even tortilla and bread producers are hiking.

Add the Trump factor and this year has quite a bit of potential to be a shitshow in Mexico.

Badger of Basra posted:

I mean they're not wrong, are they? Aren't they still the most popular party

Siselmo posted:

To be fair, with the way other politicians/political parties are doing right now, he doesn't have to try very hard.

Plus, some of his followers are downright fanatics. Smear campaign aside, some people will call you a PRI/Televisa shill (or sheeple) if you even imply that you wouldn't vote for him/are not a supporter.

Pentaro posted:

We had one!

joepinetree posted:

People who want to understand Brazilian elites and the mutt complex have a good starting point in today's interview that the president of Andrade Gutierrez gave Folha. The first thing he talks about when explaining why he is disgusted by Dilma is her is "just look at her trying to speak French."

Guacamayo posted:

CROSS POSTING

This process could be seen online in the web page of the CNE. However at 5 pm, the webpage went down for about 20 min inexplicably. After it came back up, Lenin was ahead in the count. At the end of the day it was visible that Lenin, according to the info provided by the CNE, was going to be proclaimed the winner. CREO, the opposition party claimed that what had happened was impossible, and that it was looking into a lot of irregularities that had come up claiming that a lot of the actas that appeared up in the CNE webpage were forged and differed from the copies that CREO had in their posession.

GimmickMan posted:

I doubt I'm the first to do so in this thread but I'm going to recommend "The Open Veins of Latin America" to anyone who is (reasonably) confused at how could South America turn out so hosed up in comparison to [insert other place here].

Cup Runneth Over posted:

Zikan posted:

it’s looking more and more likely in the Honduran presidential election that the conservative party rigged the elections after finding out they were going to lose

https://twitter.com/jakobjohnston/status/943171121012183041

punk rebel ecks posted:

I mean reading up on it Bolivia has the same turbo charged left government then Venezuela has and is doing relatively well. It seems like there were a lot of factors at play, such as the corruption difference between the two countries, leadership, and having the entire economy depend on one single resource.

icantfindaname posted:

What do people think of AMLO in Mexico? I read this article on him and it was good

ArnieD posted:

OMG not to the POOR!!!

I'm not making GBS threads on you, just thought it sounded funny how is phrased as a negative to have social programs for the poor (unless you really meant it like that)

I agree with some of what you say, but I’ll probably vote for AMLO anyway. I can’t bring myself to vote for the other two or three candidates, and not voting will probably just make it easier for PRI to fix the elections, at least I want them to struggle a little to eliminate my vote.

By the way, what's the evidence that AMLO supports Maduro? I’m genuinely asking, I haven't really looked into it. All I know is that some collaborators said some positive things about Hugo Chavez and haven’t publicly denounced Maduro’s government… Even if they met with Venezuelan officials, jumping from there to AMLO will turn Mexico into Venezuela is ridiculous IMO, wouldn't he need the support of the army for that in the first place?

A lot of the fears and propaganda against AMLO I think is kind of stupid also, they talk like Mexico is Sweden and AMLO will come to destroy our beautiful society. Where do this people think they live? the country is in horrible shape.

Siselmo posted:

I did preparatoria in a very expensive school (I had a scholarship) and there was a sizable amount of students who were part of a PAN youth group. They are less "Anaya good, AMLO evil" and more creepy rich super religious young adults.

rgocs posted:

I knew there was somewhere I could vent in these dead gay forums.

I am slowly losing respect for some of my family members and friends due to stream of anti-AMLO "amarillista" crap they post. They support Anaya, but they can't seem to be able to post anything positive about him, it's all about pushing AMLO fear. Same stupid poo poo I recall when Calderón won ("AMLO es un peligro para México", etc), but now even pushing the Russians story

(Un?)Fortunately I'm living abroad and don't use FB often, so I can sort of tune out the stupid.

Dark_Tzitzimine posted:

And here are AMLO's 7 Economic Strategies

1. Increase Minimal Wage 15.6% per year

2. Universal pension for old people at the tune of 1500 MXN (roughly $70), this means an average of 78k millions of pesos (roughly $39k millions) per year. And Pensions for young people without work or study in two tiers 3600 MXN ($180) and 2400 MXN ($120), analysts calculate a budget of 109,490 MXN millions of pesos ($55 million) per year.

3. Freezing Combustible prices.

4. Reduce Border Tariffs

5. No raise in taxes

6. Keep the Autonomy of Banco de México

7. Keep NAFTA

https://expansion.mx/economia/2018/07/03/7-propuestas-economicas-que-implementara-amlo-como-presidente?internal_source=PLAYLIST

Dark_Tzitzimine posted:

I just learned that Obrador has designed Marcelo Ebrard as his Foreign Relations Secretary. Ebrard was also his successor as Mayor and one who was severely criticized by cutting corners in the construction of the most ambitious Subway Line, project that was a failure, constantly being out of service during its first year of service.

Rime posted:

A farewell to Brazil, country of broken dreams

Good article from the G&M Latin America bureau reflecting on the rapid decline during their five years in Brazil, and moving the office to Mexico.

Dark_Tzitzimine posted:

This weekend AMLO will do a National Query to decide if the construction of the New Mexican City Airport (NAICM in Spanish) continues or if his proposal of refitting an old Military Airbase goes ahead.

Every single study and specialist consulted agrees that the NAICM is the best option not only because is actually designed to tackle all the needs that will arise in the coming years but because there's been such an investment on it already that canceling it would be very bad for the country's finances. AMLO however, refuses to state a definitive posture about it and the query is quite frankly, very poorly planned, with few urns and localized at public plazas that will limit the assistance from the people.

There's also rampant rumors about the whole thing being pushed by one of AMLO's sponsor that lost the contract to the NAICM and is pretty much throwing a fit, demanding the whole thing to be canceled plus AMLO's team including infamous individuals known by their acts on PRI's electoral frauds over the past two decades.

Freezer posted:

I always found the concept of getting rid of the current airport in order to get NAICM going was kind of dumb (both aren't compatible to operate at the same time), when the second terminal is still new-ish. It would have modified the approach cone so that I didn't have airplanes going over my neighborhood 24/7, which would be a big plus for me but probably a big minus for some other chump.

Either way, didn't vote because I was out of town and don't care a whole lot about it, both option have big downsides. I just hope that this doesn't go the route of the Querétaro train, and at the end of the day we get nothing at all.

Dark_Tzitzimine posted:

Remember how one of AMLO's campaign promises was to remove the army from the streets?

Well, this Tuesday Morena will present a proposal to modify the Constitution to give the newly announced National Guard complete and permanent faculties to patrol the streets, stop felonies and even arrest people.


https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/11/morena-reforma-ejercito-vigilar-calles-detener-civiles/