Skip to main content
Support
Article

Latin America: Mexican stand-off - Mexico Institute in the News

Duncan Wood

“After 12 years of gridlock, you now have a way of negotiating between the parties that enables legislative progress,” says Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington. “It has become the central negotiating mechanism for Mexican politics today.”

Financial Times

A series of cross-party appointments into his cabinet created the first bridges between Mr Peña Nieto’s centrist Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI) and the opposition. Then came the Pact for Mexico, a manifesto laying out a reform timetable on everything from social security to energy, signed by all the party leaders.

“After 12 years of gridlock, you now have a way of negotiating between the parties that enables legislative progress,” says Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington. “It has become the central negotiating mechanism for Mexican politics today.”

One of the pact’s first initiatives was to speed passage of a bill that makes it impossible for companies holding public concessions – such as América Móvil’s – to delay regulations and fines by using court injunctions. The bill, which still requires approval in the senate, strips companies of the main weapon they have used to deflect government sanctions.

Read more...

About the Author

Duncan Wood

Duncan Wood

Vice President for Strategy & New Initiatives; Senior Advisor to the Mexico Institute
Read More

Mexico Institute

The Mexico Institute seeks to improve understanding, communication, and cooperation between Mexico and the United States by promoting original research, encouraging public discussion, and proposing policy options for enhancing the bilateral relationship. A binational Advisory Board, chaired by Luis Téllez and Earl Anthony Wayne, oversees the work of the Mexico Institute.   Read more