REPOST: Peña Nieto pone en marcha ampliación del programa de pensiones a ancianos

Esta noticia de CNN México habla del programa que dará más provisiones a los ancianos.

crédito de la imagen: CNN Mexico

GUADALAJARA, Jalisco (CNNMéxico) — Los mexicanos de 65 años o más podrán recibir una pensión mensual de 525 pesos a partir del segundo bimestre de este año, con lo que el gobierno de Enrique Peña Nieto amplía el Programa 70 y Más que se aplicó en el sexenio pasado.

El apoyo se entregará solo a quienes no estén inscritos en ningún régimen de seguridad social o de pensiones, anunció este jueves el presidente Peña Nieto, militante del Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). 

“(Este programa) es un acto de justicia social, un acto de reconocimiento al trabajo y contribución que han hecho los adultos mayores y que en esta etapa de su vida necesitan y merecen justo reconocimiento y justo apoyo para que puedan tener en esta vida, en esta etapa de mejores condiciones”, dijo el mandatario federal.

La ampliación del programa, ahora denominado 65 y Más, permitirá apoyar a 2.2 millones de mexicanos, con quienes la cobertura para adultos mayores llegará a 5.6 millones, de acuerdo con cifras oficiales.

El gobierno federal cuenta con un presupuesto aprobado de 26,000 millones de pesos en 2013 para la cobertura en apoyo a los ancianos del país, lo cual representa un incremento de 7,000 millones de pesos respecto a 2012, informó la Presidencia en su sitio web. 

En México hay 3.5 millones de personas de 65 años y más en condición de pobreza, de los cuales 800,000 están en pobreza extrema, indicó la titular de la secretaría de Desarrollo Social (Sedesol), Rosario Robres, quien citó cifras del Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social (Coneval).

“Vivimos una crisis de valores, solidaridad y respeto hacia los adultos mayores. (…) México es un país en deuda con sus adultos mayores”, agregó Robles.

Los mexicanos que cubran los requisitos para afiliarse al programa podrán inscribirse en las ventanillas de atención de Sedesol a partir de este 11 de marzo, informó esa instancia de gobierno.

Tanto Peña Nieto como Robles insistieron en que el programa es más que un apoyo monetario para los ancianos del país.

La secretaria de Estado dijo que también se integrará una red social con promotores que capacitarán a los adultos mayores “con técnicas integradoras en salud, autoestima y participación ciudadana”.

En el acto realizado en Guadalajara, Jalisco, en el occidente del país, Micaela Briseño, una anciana afiliada al programa de pensiones dijo que el apoyo económico "constituye un reconocimiento y una ayuda fundamental para satisfacer necesidades básicas" de los adultos mayores del país.

¿Una copia de la política social de la izquierda?

Peña Nieto anunció el 1 de diciembre que el programa de pensión a adultos mayores sería una de sus primeras acciones de gobierno.

Reducir la edad mínima de 70 a 65 años también fue una de sus promesas de campaña hecha el 28 de abril de 2012, cuando el excandidato presidencial de izquierda, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, lo criticó por “copiar sus programas de gobierno”.

La pensión a adultos mayores fue uno de los principales programas de gobierno durante la gestión de López Obrador durante como jefe de Gobierno del Distrito Federal (2000-2005).

En la Ciudad de México, los adultos mayores de 68 años reciben desde hace más de una década una pensión alimentaria mensual de 934 pesos.

En 2003, la Asamblea Legislativa local convirtió este programa social en ley con lo que cualquier adulto que cumpla con la edad estipulada, sin importar condición social o si recibe ingresos, puede acceder a la pensión.

Aprenda mas de los programas del presidente Enrique Peña Nieto en este enlace.

REPOST: How Mexico got back in the game

Esteemed New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is betting on Mexico as the dark horse of future economic dominance. He even places the Latin American country ahead of China and India in the runnings:

IN India, people ask you about China, and, in China, people ask you about India: Which country will become the more dominant economic power in the 21st century? I now have the answer: Mexico.

Impossible, you say? Well, yes, Mexico with only about 110 million people could never rival China or India in total economic clout. But here’s what I’ve learned from this visit to Mexico’s industrial/innovation center in Monterrey. Everything you’ve read about Mexico is true: drug cartels, crime syndicates, government corruption and weak rule of law hobble the nation. But that’s half the story. The reality is that Mexico today is more like a crazy blend of the movies “No Country for Old Men” and “The Social Network.”

 Image credit: www.latitudfutbol.net

Something happened here. It’s as if Mexicans subconsciously decided that their drug-related violence is a condition to be lived with and combated but not something to define them any longer. Mexico has signed 44 free trade agreements — more than any country in the world — which, according to The Financial Times, is more than twice as many as China and four times more than Brazil. Mexico has also greatly increased the number of engineers and skilled laborers graduating from its schools. Put all that together with massive cheap natural gas finds, and rising wage and transportation costs in China, and it is no surprise that Mexico now is taking manufacturing market share back from Asia and attracting more global investment than ever in autos, aerospace and household goods.

“Today, Mexico exports more manufactured products than the rest of Latin America put together,” The Financial Times reported on Sept. 19, 2012. “Chrysler, for example, is usingMexico as a base to supply some of its Fiat 500s to the Chinese market.” What struck me most here in Monterrey, though, is the number of tech start-ups that are emerging from Mexico’s young population — 50 percent of the country is under 29 — thanks to cheap, open source innovation tools and cloud computing.

“Mexico did not waste its crisis,” remarked Patrick Kane Zambrano, director of the Center for Citizen Integration, referring to the fact that when Mexican companies lost out to China in the 1990s, they had no choice but to get more productive. Zambrano’s Web site embodies the youthful zest here for using technology to both innovate and stimulate social activism. The center aggregates Twitter messages from citizens about everything from broken streetlights to “situations of risk” and plots them in real-time on a phone app map of Monterrey that warns residents what streets to avoid, alerts the police to shootings and counts in days or hours how quickly public officials fix the problems.

“It sets pressure points to force change,” the center’s president, Bernardo Bichara, told me. “Once a citizen feels he is not powerless, he can aspire for more change. ... First, the Web democratized commerce, and then it democratized media, and now it is democratizing democracy.”

If Secretary of State John Kerry is looking for a new agenda, he might want to focus on forging closer integration with Mexico rather than beating his head against the rocks of Israel, Palestine, Afghanistan or Syria. Better integration of Mexico’s manufacturing and innovation prowess into America’s is a win-win. It makes U.S. companies more profitable and competitive, so they can expand at home and abroad, and it gives Mexicans a reason to stay home and reduces violence. We do $1.5 billion a day in trade with Mexico, and have been spending $300 million a day in Afghanistan. Not smart.

We need a more nuanced view of Mexico. While touring the Center for Agrobiotechnology at Monterrey Tech, Mexico’s M.I.T., its director, Guy Cardineau, an American scientist from Arizona, remarked to me that, in 2011, “my son-in-law returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan and we talked about having him come down and visit for Christmas. But he told me the U.S. military said he couldn’t come because of the [State Department] travel advisory here. I thought that was very ironic.”

Especially when U.S. companies are expanding here, which is one reason Mexico grew last year at 3.9 percent, and foreign direct investment in Monterrey hit record highs.

“Twenty years ago, most Mexican companies were not global,” explained Blanca Treviño, the president and founder of Softtek, one of Mexico’s leading I.T. service providers. They focused on the domestic market and cheap labor for the U.S. “Today, we understand that we have to compete globally” and that means “becoming efficient. We have a [software] development center in Wuxi, China. But we are more efficient now in doing the same business from our center in Aguascalientes, [Mexico], than we are from our center in Wuxi.”

Mexico still has huge governance problems to fix, but what’s interesting is that, after 15 years of political paralysis, Mexico’s three major political parties have just signed “a grand bargain,” a k a “Pact for Mexico,” under the new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, to work together to fight the big energy, telecom and teacher monopolies that have held Mexico back. If they succeed, maybe Mexico will teach us something about democracy. Mexicans have started to wonder about America lately, said Bichara from the Center for Citizen Integration. “We always thought we should have our parties behave like the United States’ — no longer. We always thought we should have the government work like the United States’ — no longer.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 24, 2013

An earlier version of this column misstated the amount the United States has been spending in Afghanistan. It is $300 million a day, not $1 billion a day.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on February 24, 2013, on page SR11 of the New York edition with the headline: How Mexico Got Back in the Game.

The administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto is conscious of Mexico's promising future. In his website, he highlights different sectors where the country could perform as an international superpower, the coming 2014 World Cup included.

El turismo es la mina de oro de un país

Origen de imagen: commons.wikimedia.org

Era Mark Foley quien dijo “La industria de los viajes y el turismo es la sangre de muchos estados en todo el país - incluyendo Florida, California, Nueva York y Nevada, para nombrar unos pocos.” y esta verdad es aplicable no solamente a los Estados Unidos, sino también a todas partes, todos los países, del mundo. Por eso, es importante dar atención a esta industria para que los países puedan promover sus propios sitios turísticos.

Origen de imagen: commons.wikimedia.org

En México, el presidente Enrique Peña Nieto pone atención a la industria de turismo y viajes. En los años pasados, “el turismo nacional e internacional pasó de 162 millones de turistas en 2006, a un estimado de 201 millones al cierre de 2012, lo que representó un aumento de 24.5%”, según el artículo de Noticieros Televisa. Aquí, claramente, uno puede realizar que una gran suma de porcentaje de los ingresos del país viene de esta industria. Si no van a aumentar el presupuesto para viajes y estos sitios turísticos, los países van a perder mucho dinero. El turismo es la mina de oro de un país. Aunque hay otras industrias, otros departamentos, que contribuyen a la riqueza de un país, la tierra depende en gran medida a la industria de turismo y viajes para aumentar los ingresos. En otros países, también se dan cuenta de esta verdad.

Origen de imagen: commons.wikimedia.org

Este enlace puede proporcionar más información a este tema.

Before hispanicization: The grandiose cultures of Mesoamerica

Image source: wikimedia.org

If more evidence are needed on the sophistication of Mayan and Aztec cultures, archaeologists and anthropologists need not be bothered for further artifacts. What is in want of plumping as a cold, harsh truth is that Hispanic conquerors in the mold of Hernan Cortes could not have done Montezuma’s elite empire more favor. Prior to the conquistadores’ arrival in 1519 at the shores of Tenochtitlan, then the biggest empire in the New World, Aztec emperor Montezuma was leading a civilized people with complex societal structures, an elaborate cosmology, and even their own system of writing.

Cortes’ band of conquistadores razed Tenochtitlan to the ground and succeeded in subjugating its peoples. The work of historian Hugh Thomas (1993) bears witness to this episode of a clash of civilizations, his 1000-page narrative hand-stitching vast archaeological evidence and written records on the lot of the Aztecs and the arrival of Cortes’ fleet. The Conquest of Mexico has been critically proclaimed an important book for several reasons, most compelling of all is the dismantling of myths about Western powers’ “civilizing missions.”


Image source: mesoamericas.com

A fascinating facet of the book is also the emotional confrontation between two men who could not be more different from each other, afflicted with their respective pride for their proper civilizations. The Aztecs ritually sacrificed humans, and the Spanish had no qualms about unleashing relatively more brutal forms of extinguishing human life, such as through warfare. Thomas’ scenes boil with the mutual admiration of two figureheads, a revelation that makes greedy violence the logical outcome of this piece of history.

As Mexico comfortably settles into its modern life under the presidency of Enrique Pena Nieto, its indigenous peoples remains a subject of fascination for historians and other social scientists. Discover more about Mexican peoples through this blog.


Image source: lib.uci.edu