Uncertainty surrounds critical youth vote ahead of Mexican midterm elections 2 minutes read
By Ines Amarelo
Mexico City, May 20 (EFE).- More than 25.6 million young people are eligible to vote in Mexico’s largest-ever midterm elections on June 6, a demographic group that supports greater equality for women and minority groups but is seen as a wildcard due to its cynicism about effecting change at the ballot box.
“I’ve realized after several years that it doesn’t matter who you vote for,” Iñaki, a 23-year-old who acknowledges his scant interest in politics, told Efe.
Even so, when asked about issues near and dear to his heart, he mentioned feminism, LGBT rights and the eradication of organized crime-related violence.
Photo: ECLAC.
The Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Alicia Bárcena, called today for overcoming the structural constraints of inequality that impair women’s economic, physical and political autonomy, and for building care societies to attain a more egalitarian, sustainable and resilient future, during a virtual keynote lecture organized by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
“The post-pandemic recovery must overcome the four structural constraints of gender inequality: socioeconomic inequality and poverty; the sexual division of labor; the concentration of power; and patriarchal cultural patterns,” Alicia Bárcena affirmed in a presentation she made in the framework of the “Post-2030: Women Leaders for a Sustainable Future” series, organized by UNAM’s University Coordination for Sustainability, in collaboration with that educational institution’s General Directorate for Community Affairs.
7 Min Read
MEXICO CITY (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - On a sunny morning at Mexico City’s main wholesale market, traders in aprons rushed metal handcarts of fresh produce between the stores distributing more than a third of the country’s fruit and vegetables.
This sprawling food supply hub is also key to the capital’s strategy to become carbon-neutral, as the designated site for a new biodiesel plant, a bio-digester to produce gas from waste, and one of the world’s largest urban solar power projects.
“We can’t be using fossil fuels,” said banana merchant Juan Manuel Portillo, 56, in his office in the Central de Abasto market. “We need to change people’s way of thinking.”
Tycoon Slim’s Business in Spotlight After Mexico Train Collapse By Daina Beth Solomon and Cassandra Garrison | May 21, 2021
MEXICO CITY Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim’s construction arm Grupo Carso faces scrutiny from accident investigators for the possible role it played in the building of a metro railway line that collapsed this month, killing 26 people.
While no officials have blamed Carso or any of the other companies involved in the construction of the line for the accident, the Mexico City attorney general’s office said the probe it is leading would encompass everything from design and construction of the metro’s Line 12, the materials used, and cost overruns.
In Colombia, a successful jaguar conservation program has a whiff of coffee
In the first such initiative in Colombia, and one of the first in South America, just over 93,500 hectares (231,000 acres) have been prioritized for jaguar conservation through a zoning plan.
Following a rise in conflicts between humans and the big cats in Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in 2013, a management plan was put in place and priority areas for jaguar conservation were recognized by local authorities.
Coffee growers, whose farms overlap onto jaguar habitat, were also engaged in conservation through a certification scheme.
Under the Jaguar Friendly label, for which they can sell their coffee at a premium, the farmers allocate a hectare of protected forest as jaguar corridor for every hectare of coffee they cultivate.