Climate change made US and Mexico heatwave 35 times more likely

A billboard shows the temperature on 5 June in Phoenix, Arizona

Human-induced climate change made recent extreme heat in the US south-west, Mexico and Central America around 35 times more likely, scientists say.

The World Weather Attribution (WWA) group studied excess heat between May and early June, when the US heatwave was concentrated in south-west states including California, Nevada and Arizona.

Extreme temperatures in Mexico also claimed lives during the period.

Such attribution studies take some time to complete, so it is too soon for scientists to say how much of a role climate change is playing in the current heatwave stretching from the centre of the US through to the north-east and into Canada.

In their new report, the scientists said such a heatwave was now four times more likely than it was in the year 2000, driven by planet-warming emissions.

Many extreme weather events including heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense as a result of climate change, experts say.

“The results of our study should be taken as another warning that our climate is heating to dangerous levels,” said Izidine Pinto, Researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.

“Potentially deadly and record-breaking temperatures are occurring more and more frequently in the US, Mexico and Central America due to climate change.

“As long as humans fill the atmosphere with fossil fuel emissions, the heat will only get worse – vulnerable people will continue to die and the cost of living will continue to increase.”

The WWA study focused on a region including the US south-west and Mexico, as well as Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras which also saw dangerously high temperatures.

The scientists said that the hottest five-day stretch across the region in June was made about 1.4C warmer by climate change.

“Every fraction of a degree of warming exposes more people to dangerous heat,” said Karina Izquierdo, Urban Advisor for the Latin American and Caribbean region at Red Cross Climate Centre.

“The additional 1.4C of heat caused by climate change would have been the difference between life and death for many people during May and June.”

Mexican officials have linked the heatwave to the deaths of scores of people. It has also been blamed for the deaths of howler monkeys in the southern state of Tabasco.

The scientists underlined the danger from high night-time temperatures – a severe threat to health as the body does not have time to rest and recover.

The WWA group conducts rapid-attribution studies on weather events around the world to look at the role climate change has played in their severity.

The scientists examine the events, comparing them against models of what would have likely occurred in a world not subjected to human-induced global warming.

Ancient Mayan vase purchased by US woman for $4 returned to Mexico

Mexico has regained a lost ancient Maya vase because of a US woman who bought the artefact for less than $5 at a thrift store.

Anne Lee Dozier recently received an expression of gratitude from the Mexican embassy in her home town of Washington DC for her role in reuniting the 1,200-to 1,800-year-old vase with its motherland.

“A valuable witness of our Maya history returns home … thanks to the generosity of Anne Lee Dozier,” Mexico’s ambassador to the US, Esteban Moctezuma Barragán, wrote on X. “This historic jewel will be reintegrated within the collection of [Mexico’s National Museum of Anthropology and History] to preserve our rich cultural heritage.”

As she recounted to National Public Radio in an article published on Friday that summarized the unusual saga, Dozier bought the vase in question in about 2019 at the 2A Thrift Store in Clinton, Maryland, where it was on a clearance shelf by the checkout register.Dozier perceived the vase to be old – but no more than three decades old, as she put it to NPR. Dozier, a human rights advocate with Christian Solidarity Worldwide, took an interest in the pottery because she had worked with Indigenous communities in Mexico, and to Dozier it seemed the piece had some tie to the country.

“I thought it would be just a nice little thing to take home and put on the shelf and to remind me of Mexico,” Dozier – who paid $4 for the vase – said to NPR.

Dozier then traveled to Mexico City in January on a work trip, visited the national anthropology museum and saw other Maya vases displayed there that bore a striking resemblance to the one she had at home, according to NPR. She wasn’t entirely convinced she had an authentic Maya vase at home, but she reported her thrift store find to a museum official, who in turn recommended that she call the Mexican embassy.

Ultimately, Dozier sent in pictures of the vase along with a description of its dimensions. The national anthropology museum replied that she indeed had an authentic relic – one that Mexico wanted back.

“I got an email saying, ‘Congratulations – it’s real and we would like it back,’” Dozier said.

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Anne Lee Dozier, middle, stands next to Mexico’s ambassador to the US, Esteban Moctezuma Barragán, right, at a ceremony during which Dozier returned an ancient Maya vase to Mexico. Photograph: Courtesy of Mexico’s ambassador to the US Esteban Moctezuma Barragán

Barragan said on X that the vase dated back to between AD200 and 800. As NPR noted, historians generally considered that to be the height of the Maya civilization, which declined after drought, infighting and eventually European conquest, among other factors.

Details about exactly how the vase ended up at a thrift store in Maryland were not immediately clear. Nonetheless, Mexico’s cultural institute in Washington DC marked its recovery of the vase in a ceremony on Monday.

Dozier, in an interview with the local CBS affiliate WUSA after the ceremony, joked that she was thrilled to eliminate the possibility that one of her three young sons would accidentally wreck the vase at their family home.

Yet she also made it a point to tell the station that she was glad the vase was destined “to go back to its rightful place and to where it belongs”.

“I am thrilled to have played a part in its repatriation story,” Dozier said. “Giving it back feels so much better than it would if I put it [up for sale online] and I got a bunch of money.”

She said: “It’s really important to recognize that some of these things, especially with such historical and cultural value to an entire country and people – you can’t really put a number on that.”

 

Prospect of low-priced Chinese EVs reaching US from Mexico poses threat to automakers

 It’s a scenario that terrifies America’s auto industry.

Chinese carmakers set up shop in Mexico to exploit North American trade rules. Once in place, they send ultra-low-priced electric vehicles streaming into the United States.

 

As the Chinese EVs go on sale across the country, America’s homegrown EVs — costing an average of $55,000, roughly double the price of their Chinese counterparts — struggle to compete. Factories close. Workers lose jobs across America’s industrial heartland.

Ultimately, it could all become a painful replay of how government-subsidized Chinese competition devastated American industries from steel to solar equipment over the past quarter-century. This time, it would be electric vehicles, which America’s automakers envision as the core of their business in the coming decades.

“Time and again, we have seen the Chinese government dump highly subsidized goods into markets for the purpose of undermining domestic manufacturing,’’ Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, wrote in an April letter to President Joe Biden that called for an outright ban on Chinese electric vehicles in the U.S. “We cannot let the same occur when it comes to EVs.’’

Low-priced Chinese EVs pose a potentially “extinction-level event’’ for America’s auto industry, the Alliance for American Manufacturing has warned.

The trade deal that Beijing could potentially exploit — the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement — was negotiated by the Trump administration and enacted in 2020. Its rules could let Chinese autos assembled in Mexico enter the United States, either duty-free or at a nominal 2.5% tariff rate. Either way, China could sell its EVs well below typical U.S. prices.

To defuse the threat, the U.S. does have options. Customs officials could rule that Chinese EVs don’t qualify for the low-duty or duty-free benefits of being assembled in Mexico. U.S. policymakers could also pressure Mexico to keep Chinese vehicles out of that country. Or they could bar Chinese EVs from the U.S. on the grounds that they would threaten America’s national security.

For his part, Donald Trump told Time magazine in April: “I will tariff them at 100%. Because I’m not going to allow them to steal the rest of our business.’’

Whatever steps the U.S. government might take, though, would likely face legal challenges from companies that want to import the Chinese EVs.

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The threat from Beijing is emerging just as U.S. automakers face slowing EV sales even while investing billions to produce them in a high-priced bet that Americans will embrace battery-powered autos in the coming decades. Comparatively high prices, despite federal tax incentives for buyers, have weakened EV sales in the United States. So has public anxiety about a scarcity of charging stations, potentially made worse by rising thefts of cables at charging stations.

Optimists suggest that an influx of ultra-low-priced Chinese EVs could accelerate U.S. electric vehicle purchases, speed up investment in charging stations and force down prices.

“It would be cheaper just to let the Chinese cars come in, forget all the tariffs and subsidies, let the market figure it out,’’ said Christine McDaniel, a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center who was a trade official in the George W. Bush administration. “Yes, it would be disruptive. But EVs would get on the road in the U.S. a lot faster.”

At stake is an enormously consequential question: Who stands to dominate the manufacture and sale of zero-emissions electric vehicles?

China has so far taken a daunting lead. It accounted for nearly 62% of the 10.4 million battery-powered EVs that were produced worldwide last year. The United States, at No. 2, made about 1 million — less than 10% of the total, according to the consulting and analysis firm GlobalData.

In achieving technological breakthroughs while holding down costs, Chinese automakers have made remarkable strides. China’s BYD last year introduced a small EV called the Seagull that sells for just $12,000 in China ($21,000 for a version sold in some Latin American countries). Considered a marvel of engineering efficiency, its lightweight design allows the Seagull to go farther per charge on a smaller battery. BYD has said it’s considering building a factory in Mexico — but only for the Mexican market.

U.S. policymakers and auto companies are less than reassured.

“Just look at China — look at how big their market share is in EVs,’’ John Lawler, Ford Motor’s chief financial officer, said at this month’s Deutsche Bank Global Auto Industry Conference. “Those are significant competitive threats we need to deal with. They have a development process that is much faster — 24 months.’’ (By contrast, U.S. vehicles have typically undergone development for four to five years, though that’s been reduced to three years or less for EVs.)

Critics note that BYD and other Chinese EV makers have achieved their cost efficiencies thanks to heavy government subsidies. Beijing spent 953 billion Chinese renminbi (more than $130 billion at current exchange rates) on EVs and other green vehicles from 2009 through 2021, according to researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“It’s not competition,’’ Biden asserted last month. “It’s cheating.’’

Last month, Biden drastically raised the tariff on Chinese EVs, from the 27.5% established under Trump to 102.5%. It’s meant to price even the bargain-priced BYD Seagull out of the U.S. market. (Europeans are worried, too: The European Union says it plans to impose tariffs of up to 38.1% on Chinese EVs for four months starting in July.)

The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, though, potentially lets vehicles assembled in Mexico — even if made by European or Asian automakers — enter the U.S. at a much lower tariff or none at all. If made-in-Mexico cars met the USMCA’s requirements, they could enter the United States duty-free. At least 75% of a car and its parts would have to come from North America. And at least 40% of it must originate in places where workers earn at least $16 an hour.

Still, for a Chinese EV maker like BYD, qualifying for duty-free treatment under the USMCA might be difficult even if it tried to source parts in North America.

“Even North American automakers have a challenging time reaching those thresholds,” said Daniel Ujczo, senior counsel at the Thompson Hine law firm in Columbus, Ohio.

But there’s an easier way that Chinese EV makers could use Mexico to try to dodge Biden’s killer 102.5% import tax: They would have to pay only 2.5% — the tax imposed on most cars imported to the United States — if they could show that assembling their EVs in Mexico involved a “substantial transformation’’ that essentially turned them from Chinese into Mexican cars.

U.S. officials could reject the notion that a substantial transformation occurred during the assembly process. But the U.S. would struggle to prevail if that decision were challenged in the U.S. Court of International Trade, “given the substantial changes that typically take place in automotive assembly factories,’’ David Gantz, a trade lawyer and a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, has written.

Still, Gantz said by email: “My takeaway is that using one or more of the available trade and national security mechanisms available to the U.S. government, the U.S. will be successful in excluding Mexican/Chinese EVs.’’

The “most effective and quickest’’ way to keep out Chinese EVs, Gantz argues, would be to block them on national security grounds. Today’s EVs, after all, are loaded with cameras, sensors and other technological gizmos that could collect images from the autos’ surroundings and sensitive personal information from drivers. And China isn’t merely an economic competitor. It’s a geopolitical adversary — and potentially a military one, too.

“U.S. fears regarding possible use of connected vehicles to spy on military installations or powerplants are not irrational,’’ Gantz wrote.

Biden has even warned that the EVs “could be remotely accessed or disabled.’’ In February, he ordered his Commerce Department to investigate the technology in Chinese “smart cars,’ ‘ a potential prelude to blocking Chinese EVs on national security grounds.

McDaniel of the Mercatus Center argues that the United States has significant leeway to do what it wants — especially given Mexico’s dependence on the U.S., its No. 1 export market.

“You could imagine a scenario where the U.S. tells Mexico: ‘Don’t even think about allowing this (Chinese EV) investment into Mexico,’ ” she said. ” ‘We will not allow those cars into the U.S.’ ’’

“What’s stopping the White House,” McDaniel said, “whether it’s right now or the next administration, from just releasing a new document, an executive order, saying, ‘We will no longer recognize products from our USMCA partners if they have more than X percent content from foreign entities of concern, including China’ “?

The U.S. has additional leverage because the USMCA comes up for review in 2026. If it seeks to alter the agreement — perhaps adding a provision to ban or limit Chinese EVs from Mexico — but fails to prevail after negotiating with Canada and Mexico, it could let the USMCA expire.

McDaniel noted that the World Trade Organization, which was established to enforce global trade rules, has become largely toothless. The WTO’s Appellate Body — its supreme court — effectively stopped functioning in December 2019 because the U.S. blocked the appointment of new judges to the panel. Trade cases now go unresolved indefinitely.

“We’re not in a WTO world anymore,’’ McDaniel said. “It’s ‘might makes right’ — that’s the sort of world we’re in.’’

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Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum chooses former foreign minister as economy chief

Mexico’s president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum chose an economy minister seen as business friendly to join her cabinet as she tried to calm investors unnerved by her resounding electoral victory earlier this month. At a brief event on Thursday, Sheinbaum named six cabinet members, emphasising their subject-matter expertise or relevant experience for their roles.

Marcelo Ebrard, a former foreign minister and Sheinbaum’s main rival for the presidential nomination earlier this year, was named to run the economy ministry, which is charged with promoting industry, trade and attracting foreign investment. Ebrard represented Mexico in negotiations during the US presidency of Donald Trump over policies to keep out migrants and a revamp of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“We live in a more protectionist, to some extent more unstable world and the mandate is to navigate the choppy waters,” Ebrard said on Tuesday at the event in a museum in the capital’s historic centre.

“Mexico has a lot of conditions in its favour today in the world.”

Sheinbaum has not yet named her choices for other influential cabinet posts, including the interior ministry, security and energy. Mexico is seen as one of the potential beneficiaries as companies seek to build factories closer to the US, amid rising tensions between Washington and China over trade. Foreign investment has been solid but is not yet booming, and it will be Ebrard’s responsibility to try to capture more of the opportunity.

That will be complicated by a gaping budget deficit, a state-led energy policy and a Sheinbaum-backed plan to overhaul the judiciary by firing some 1,600 judges and replacing them with elected ones.

The peso strengthened 0.6 per cent against the dollar after the cabinet announcement. It is still more than 7 per cent weaker than before the election over worries that the proposed changes and other reforms would remove crucial checks and balances. Sheinbaum opted for continuity by confirming that Rogelio Ramírez de la O would stay on in the finance role.

Foreign minister Alicia Bárcena will also join the new cabinet in charge of the environment ministry. But throughout the campaign the former climate academic and her team also underlined some differences between herself and her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in her style and background.

The ruling Morena party’s coalition is just two senate seats shy of having a supermajority in both houses of congress in September, which would allow them to push through a set of radical reforms proposed by López Obrador. Sheinbaum campaigned on a promise to build the “second floor” of her mentor López Obrador’s political movement, and investors and analysts are trying to decipher how much influence he will have in the new government.

Some of her appointments were close allies, such as Ernestina Godoy, the former state attorney from Mexico City, as her top legal adviser. Sheinbaum’s transition team head and former diplomat Juan Ramón de la Fuente will be the next foreign minister. 

López Obrador gave his cabinet members limited room for manoeuvre. By contrast, political experts expect Sheinbaum to cede more control to her team. “They are all profiles aligned with their posts,” said political analyst Blanca Heredia. “It looks like we’re going to have people with a voice and presence, unlike in the current administration.”

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US restarting avocado, mango checks in Mexico after week-long pause

U.S. health safety inspectors are gradually restarting inspections of avocados and mangos in Mexico needed to export the farm commodities to the United States, the U.S. ambassador said in a statement on Friday.

Ambassador Ken Salazar stressed that more work needs to be done to ensure the safety of inspectors, after a security incident in Michoacan state last weekend caused U.S. authorities to pause the safety checks.

“It’s still necessary to make progress to guarantee the safety (of the health safety inspectors) before we can achieve full functioning,” said Salazar, pointing to recent aggressions they faced.The ambassador did not go into further detail, but he did express optimism more progress can be made at meetings scheduled for next Monday with government and private sector representatives.

Avocados, in particular, are a top Mexican farm export to its northern neighbor worth billions of dollars each year, as demand for the fruit has steadily grown.

Mexico’s top-producing Michoacan state, where the security incident took place, has for years dealt with extortion rackets perpetrated by powerful organized crime groups that has sought to profit from the lucrative trade.

 

U.S. Citizens Migrating to Mexico in Record Numbers

By:BanderasNews

Mexico City – Data from the Mexican government reveals a significant increase in U.S. citizens migrating to Mexico. Compared to the first four months of 2023, twice as many Americans (625) relocated to Mexico between January and April 2024.

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This trend aligns with a broader surge observed since 2019. Permanent residency permits issued to U.S. residents jumped by 69.9% between 2019 and 2022, reaching the highest level since 2013 (20,374 permits).

Most US citizens who obtained a new residence card during this period chose to live in three territories: Mexico City (3,518 people), Jalisco (3,427) and Quintana Roo (2,411). These three areas represent 48.92% of the total.

A 2023 Yahoo Finance report estimates that 1.6 million Americans currently reside in Mexico. Factors driving this migration include lower living costs, healthcare expenses, and rent, along with ample job opportunities. This southward migration mirrors the well-documented northward migration of individuals seeking better opportunities or asylum in the United States.

√While Mexico has always been a popular vacation destination for Americans, tourism boomed in 2023 with 36.71 million visitors from the US traveling to Mexico. One year prior, in 2022, the number of U.S. citizens traveling to Mexico was around 33.54 million – an increase of 17% over the previous year.Interestingly, a 2019 Washington Post report suggests that the number of U.S. residents migrating to Mexico has quadrupled since 1990.

Notably, this surge includes U.S.-born children of Mexican parents who returned to their country of origin.Mexico’s Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, acknowledged this trend in a 2019 interview, describing it as a “very important cultural phenomenon.”

USDA suspends avocado inspections in Mexican state over security fears

The USDA’s avocado inspections in Michoacan are suspended until security issues are resolved, the AP reported. Mexico makes up 89 percent of U.S. avocado imports.

In recent years, avocados have been considered one of America’s favorite fruits. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) told Reuters news agency that the decision followed a security incident involving its staff and said that inspection programs “will remain paused until the security situation is reviewed and protocols and safeguards are in place.

”The shipments already in transit would not be affected, and checks in other states are not affected, a U.S. government spokesperson, who could not be named due to agency policy, told the AP.Mexico is the world’s largest producer of avocados — a staple in the diets of many Americans who love it on their toast, or made into guacamole, particularly during the Super Bowl. The United States imported a record 2.78 billion pounds of fresh avocados in 2023, with 89 percent of those imports coming from Mexico, according to the USDA.

Michoacan Gov. Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla told reporters Monday that he has been in constant contact with U.S. officials to provide guarantees for the exports.🥘

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No further details about the security incident that prompted the decision were immediately available.

However, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico issued a security alert for the Mexican state on Friday that read: “Due to recent security incidents in Aranza, Michoacan, the U.S. government reminds U.S. citizens not to travel to the state of Michoacan.

”U.S. government employees in the area had been advised to shelter in place, it added.

The State Department warns against travel to Michoacan “due to crime and kidnapping” — the same level of travel warning for five other Mexican states, including Sinaloa and Zacatecas.

The United States briefly suspended avocado imports from Michoacan in 2022 after a U.S. plant safety inspector received a threatening letter, prompting concerns of potential price rises. At the time, Michoacan was the only Mexican state to supply the fruit to the United States, but neighboring Jalisco has since begun its own exports to the north.

For decades until the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, avocados from Mexico were banned from entering the United States out of concern that weevils, scabs and other pests could infect U.S. suppliers, as The Washington Post reported in 2022. USDA inspectors now ensure that fruits are pest-free before import.

In recent years, avocados have been considered one of America’s favorite fruits, and a preoccupation for many during U.S.-Mexico border disputes. In 2019, President Donald Trump’s threat to close the border with Mexico sparked widespread anxiety, media coverage and memes over the prospect of an avocado shortage.

A water war is looming between Mexico and the US. Neither side will win

Tensions are rising in a border dispute between the United States and Mexico. But this conflict is not about migration; it’s about water.Under an 80-year-old treaty, the United States and Mexico share waters from the Colorado River and the Rio Grande, respectively. But in the grip of severe drought and searing temperatures, Mexico has fallen far behind in deliveries, putting the country’s ability to meet its obligations in serious doubt.

Some politicians say they cannot give what they do not have. It’s a tough argument to swallow for farmers in South Texas, also struggling with a dearth of rain. They say the lack of water from Mexico is propelling them into crisis, leaving the future of farming in the balance. Some Texas leaders have called on the Biden administration to withhold aid from Mexico until it makes good on the shortfall.

Both countries are staring down the prospect of another long, hot summer and many are pinning hopes on a storm to swell Mexico’s drought-stricken rivers. Yet experts say the pray-for-rain approach is a risky, short-term strategy in the face of a knotty long-term problem.The conflict underscores the immense difficulties of navigating how to share shrinking water resources in a hotter, drier world.

A river in decline

Under a 1944 treaty, Mexico is required to send 1.75 million acre-feet of water to the US every five years from the Rio Grande, and the US to send 1.5 million acre-feet of water to Mexico from the Colorado River each year.

One acre-foot is enough water to flood one acre of land a foot deep. It adds up to an enormous amount of water exchanged between the two countries: around 490 billion gallons from the US annually and 570 billion from Mexico each five year period.

Mexico is falling far behind in its obligations, said Maria Elena Giner, the US commissioner of the International Boundary and Water Commission, the bi-national body that oversees the treaty.

“We’ve only gotten about a year’s worth of water and we’re already well into our fourth year,” she told CNN. The current cycle ends in October 2025.

The Rio Grande — called the Río Bravo in Mexico — is one of North America’s longest rivers and flows roughly 1,900 miles from Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, weaving through three US and five Mexican states before ending its journey in the Gulf of Mexico.

Years of over-extraction to serve farmers and booming populations, along with climate change-fueled heat and drought, have taken a toll.

As heat drives snowpack loss in the mountains, the river’s flows are falling, said Alfonso Cortez Lara, a director at the College of the Northern Border.Roughly 200 miles of the Rio Grande, stretching from Fort Quitmen to Presidio, Texas, is known as the “forgotten reach,” where the riverbed is often bone-dry through the year. It is brought back to life further downstream by waters from the Rio Conchos in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, the Rio Grande’s largest tributary.

The river’s unpredictability is the reason Mexico’s commitments are based on five-year — rather than annual — cycles, Giner said.

“There’ll be times of deficits and surplus.

”Shortfalls in one five-year cycle can be rolled over but have to be made up in the next, although the treaty has no enforcement mechanism.

During the first few decades of the treaty, all went well. But from the early 1990s, “something changed,” said Giner. There was less water coming into the river.Just like the Colorado River deal between southwest US states, the Mexico-US treaty calculated water availability based on data from the first half of the 20th century. It foresaw short-term droughts, but not multi-year megadroughts.

Mexico ended two five-year cycles in deficit, from 1992 to 2002. “This is where the first time we really had these heightened political tensions between the two (countries) regarding water,” said Vianey Rueda, a researcher at the University of Michigan who specializes in the 1944 water treaty.

Now, nearing another five year cycle, Mexico is facing a similar situation. Only this time it’s more intense, Rueda said. “The water delivery system has stayed the same, but the water crisis has worsened.

”A confluence of factors has fed into this crisis.Demand for water shot up as development along the Rio Grande soared. The North American Free Trade Agreement, which went into effect in 1994, led to an explosion of farms and ​​maquiladoras (factories) in Mexico, many growing and making products destined for US and Canadian markets. Both sides of the border urbanized and populations increased.Underlying everything, the steady drumbeat of the climate crisis fuels more frequent and more prolonged heat and drought. “You have treaties that were meant for a stable climate, but now are trying to be enforced in a climate that is not stable,” Rueda said.

Pain in both countries

The water from Mexico goes to the Falcon and Amistad Reservoirs which straddle the border and provide water to homes as well and farms. Both reservoirs have slumped to historically low levels — in mid-June, Amistad was at less than 26% capacity and Falcon was at only 9.9%.

“Farmers in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas are either out of water or running out of water quickly,” said Brian Jones, a farmer who grows irrigated cotton, corn, sorghum and soybeans in Hidalgo County, Texas, and a board member of the Texas Farm Bureau.Video

Low water deliveries from Mexico, combined with a dearth of rain in the region, are threatening the state’s citrus industry, Jones told CNN, but the situation is even worse for sugar.

“The sugar industry is lost to Texas and will never return,” he said.

The state’s only sugar mill, which employed more than 500 full-time and seasonal workers, shut in February after more than 50 years of operation.

The mill’s owners, the Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers, blamed Mexico. “For over 30 years, farmers in South Texas have been battling with Mexico’s failure to comply with the provisions of the 1944 Water Treaty,” it said in a news release announcing the closure.

Some state leaders have demanded punitive measures. “Mexico’s lack of timely water deliveries puts all Texas agriculture at risk,” Texas Rep. Monica De La Cruz, a Republican, said in February, calling on the Biden administration to “hold Mexico’s feet to the fire.

”De La Cruz, who also has the support of Ted Cruz and John Cornyn — both Republicans representing Texas in the US Senate — added language to the House of Representatives’ 2025 budget bill that would withhold aid for Mexico until it agrees to deliver on the water treaty. The bill cleared a procedural hurdle on Wednesday, although it’s uncertain whether it could amass enough votes to pass through Congress.

The pain of water scarcity is not one way. South of the border, people are also suffering.Mexico is enduring its most expansive and severe drought since 2011, affecting nearly 90% of the country. Water has become an increasingly fraught topic, with fears cities — including Mexico City — could be barreling toward a “day zero,” on which water runs dry.

The situation is particularly dire in northern Mexico. “The impact is reflected in very low levels of many of the dams in northern Mexico and even in the groundwater levels,” said Victor Magaña Rueda, a climate scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

The entire state of Chihuahua has been in drought since February, with data from the end of May showing nearly 40% is in “exceptional drought,” the most severe designation.
“Not a single drop of rain has fallen in more than eight months,” said Salvador Alcántar, a congressman in Chihuahua. “Climate change is here to stay, we have to learn to deal with it.” River water and groundwater supplies are fast diminishing and farmers have been suffering for years, he told CNN.

Tensions reached a boiling point in 2020 after the Mexican government decided to release water from one of Chihuahua’s dams to fulfill its water sharing obligations. Farmers protested in a confrontation that turned deadly when a woman was shot by the National Guard.

Again Chihuahua is struggling. “If there is no water, what can we realistically be expected to pay with? No-one can be forced to give away what they don’t have,” Alcántar said.

A conflict with no winners

The difficulty of reshaping 80-year-old water-sharing agreements is that they’ve created reliance.

People come to depend on water rights to develop industry, grow agriculture and build towns, said Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. “And once you have that reliance, it becomes extremely painful to change,” she told CNN.A full renegotiation of the treaty is unlikely. Instead, amendments are agreed between the countries through a “minute” process. Minutes can encompass issues from data-sharing to water delivery changes.

Discussions for a new minute aimed at making Mexico’s water deliveries more reliable stalled at the end of last year, as Mexico focused on elections. Now that they’re over, with climate scientist Claudia Sheinbaum set to take office in October, negotiations are ramping up again, said Giner. “We’ve asked Mexico for a plan on how they’re going to meet their deficit right now.

”Some hopes lie in a tropical storm or active hurricane season. But it’s hard to predict when and where storms will hit and rain will land. To rely only on storms to reduce water scarcity would make Mexico “totally exposed to what nature decides about our water future,” UNAM’s Magnaña Rueda said.

In the short term, “if there’s no water to distribute, there’s nothing we can do,” Giner said, but she remains positive. She is pushing for tools to build drought resilience and promote water conservation and efficiency.

Sheinbaum, the president-elect, has committed to prioritizing water issues. But the US could also have a new president when the current five-year cycle ends in 2025, which could further complicate relations.

Ultimately, there needs to be a recognition that water sharing agreements must adapt to a changing climate, Rueda said.Instead of seeing water as a zero-sum game, where one party’s gain is contingent on the other’s loss, both sides should realize they are “suffering the same thing because of climate change,” she said.“Then you start eliminating that zero-sum game, you start saying we’re both losing essentially. Nobody’s actually winning.”

Thousands of dead fish pile up on dried out lagoon in drought-hit Mexico

Thousands of dead fish have blanketed the surface of a lagoon in Mexico’s northern state of Chihuahua, with local officials blaming an intense drought.The fish deaths at the Bustillos Lagoon, by the town of Anahuac in Chihuahua, came during long dry spells and as temperatures have climbed above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). The lagoon’s water levels are dangerously low, officials said.

There was much less water in the lagoon for the fish to live in, and the remaining water was of poor quality, according to Irma de la Pena, head of the Ecology Department in the city of Cuauhtemoc.“When the amount of water decreases, the pollutants become more concentrated and therefore they also affect the species that live here,” De la Pena said.Mass fish deaths in the area have happened in previous years when the lagoon dried up, stranding fish.

Other animals, including cows, have also been affected by the extreme heat and drought in the region. Livestock, including cows and donkeys, have also perished as dams run low and farmers struggle to secure water.

Heat and drought have become so severe that many people who rely on agriculture have packed up and left.“It’s very abandoned because since it doesn’t rain … they no longer dare to continue living here,” said Jesus Maria Palacios, a raiser of livestock in Cuauhtemoc.

At the lagoon, local authorities are racing to cover the dead fish with quicklime, concerned their rapid decomposition under the baking sun could endanger public health by attracting insects and spreading disease. They are asking local organizations to help.

“What we need is support, especially with the potential we have for a health issue,” said Saul Sausameda, president of the Anahuac community.

Historic Mexico City castle is depicted flying the Targaryen flag, and officials aren’t amused

Mexico’s historic Chapultepec Castle has been depicted flying the black Targaryen flag, and officials in Mexico aren’t amused.

The plot of the “House of the Dragon,” a “Game of Thrones” prequel, apparently involves countries taking sides in a civil war for control of the fictitious Iron Throne.

The producers of the HBO series posted a video Monday of the 19th-century Mexico City hilltop castle showing the black Targaryen flag hanging over the battlements. The flag, representing queen Rhaenyra, predictably has a dragon on it.Mexican officials issued a statement Monday saying it wasn’t true and threatening to sue.

But it’s not because they support Laenor Velaryon.Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History said the flags were generated by technology, and had never really hung at the site. “Game of Thrones” social media accounts posted similar images of other world landmarks, including New York City bridges.

The institute, which is the legal guardian of Mexico’s historic buildings and artifacts, was hopping mad that the historical site had been used in the ad campaign, and said they would take legal action.

“The reproduction of images of this site for use in promoting this series has not been authorized,” said the statement by the institute, known as the INAH. “For this reason, the INAH legal department will take all necessary legal measures, because this constitutes an improper use of images of a historical site.

”HBO did not respond to messages seeking comment.It is unclear whether Mexico can win the legal battle against artificial intelligence and computer-generated images. The institute did not claim authorship rights of the original video. The site is open to the public, so anyone could have filmed it.

During the 1846-48 Mexican-American War, the castle was the site of the 1847 battle of Chapultepec, when Mexicans defending the heights where the castle stands died rather than surrender to U.S. troops.