Mexico & Nafta - July 2011 (ISSN 1741-444X)

US ambassador: On 8 June US President Barack Obama formally nominated Earl Anthony Wayne, currently the country’s deputy ambassador in Afghanistan, to become the next US ambassador to Mexico. The formal nomination suggests that the Mexican government, which was consulted about Wayne’s nomination at the end of May, has no objection. The US Senate must approve Wayne’s nomination.

Remittances: The inflow of remittances from expatriates rose 4.7% year-on-year in April 2011 to reach US$1.87bn. Remittance inflows, from expatriates based mostly in the US, have now risen for seven months consecutively, according to the Banco de México.

The increase is slightly odd, because the construction and housing industries, which are big sources of jobs for Mexicans in the US, are still in trouble. It  appears that the number of people remitting has increased: the size of the average transaction in April was up 2% year-on-year at US$331, but the number of transactions was up by 2.6% at 5.7m. Easter, which fell in April this year but in March in 2010, may have been a factor in the increased number of transactions. For the first four months of 2011 the total inflow of remittances was up 5.3% at US$6.97bn.

Charitable giving: A study by Johns Hopkins University in the US, cited by Jorge Castañeda in his new book, Mañana o Pasado: El Misterio de los Mexicanos, found that Mexico comes plumb last in the ranking of countries by charitable giving. Mexicans give the equivalent of only 0.04% of the country’s GDP to charity. Castañeda, a prominent intellectual and a former foreign minister under the government led by Vicente Fox (2000 -2006) argues that this figure shows that Mexicans are less community-minded and more individualist than most Latin Americans.

• On 28 June the federal government of Mexico filed an application to delay the execution of Leal García before the US Supreme Court. The Mexican government is arguing that the Supreme Court should not allow the rights of the state of Texas to override Leal García’s constitutional rights. The Mexican government argues that the Supreme Court should at least suspend the execution until the fate of the Leahy proposal in congress is clear.