2021 in Mexican politics and government

• January 1
  • The minimum wage is increased 15% to MXN $123.22 generally and MXN $185.56 along the northern border.[1]
  • Single-use plastics are banned in Mexico City (CDMX).[2]
• January 2
  • Governor Carlos Mendoza Davis  PAN of Baja California Sur vetoes the 2021 state budget.[3]
  • The farm lobby blasts Andrés Manuel López Obrador′s (AMLO) decision to ban genetically modified corn, and organic farmers praise it as a move that should protect smaller farmers.[4]
• January 4 – President López Obrador offers political asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is in the United Kingdom pending extradition to the United States for trial on espionage charges.[5]
• January 5 – Tatiana Clouthier Carrillo becomes Secretary of Economy (SE) nearly a month after being named to the post.[6]
• January 11 – The Instituto Nacional Electoral (National Electoral Institute, INE) rules that AMLO′S daily press conferences (Mañaneras) are political propaganda and have to end on April 4 when campaigning begins. Exceptions can be made in cases of public health (including the pandemic), education, and civil protection.[7]
• January 12
  • Restaurant owners in Mexico City the State of Mexico hold cacerolazos (protest involving the beating of kitchen utensils) against the closure of restaurants. 13,500 restaurants In Mexico City[8] and 10,000 in the State of Mexico[9] have closed since the beginning of the pandemic. Restaurants and similar establishments are believed to be where virus spread occurs most readily.[10]
  • Juan Antonio Acosta Cano, deputy in Congress of Guanajuato ( PAN) and precandidate for muncipal president of Santa Cruz de Juventino Rosas) is assassinated.[11]
• January 13 – AMLO announes plans to eliminate private prisons. The government pays an average MXN$3,500 (USD$177) per day for each prisoner.[12]
• January 14 – AMLO promises to protect free speech against blockage by social media outlets.[13]
• January 15 – INE approves the electoral coalitions Va Por México ( PAN  PRI PRD) and Juntos hacemos historia ( MRN PT PVEM).[14]
• January 16 – Facebook puts a warning on a post when Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iñiguez (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Guadalajara, 1994-2011) lies about the COVID-19 vaccines.[15]
• January 18
  • Ricardo Anaya ( PAN) announces his candidacy for president in 2024.[16]
  • Foreign Policy reported that former ambassador Roberta S. Jacobson would be in charge of Mexico–United States border affairs at the National Security Council under President Joe Biden.[17]
• January 20
  • AMLO calls upon President Joe Biden to quickly resolve migration issues for Mexicans living in the United States, including the granting of dual nationality.[18]
  • Christopher Landau ends his term as United States Ambassador to Mexico.[19]
• January 22
  • U.S. President Joe Biden makes his first two official telephone calls to foreign leaders to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Biden and López Obrador discuss immigration, COVID-19, and other topics.[20]
  • Twitter blocks several accounts related to the Fourth Transformation because they broke rules related to spam.[21]
• January 24 – President López Obrador announces he has a mild case of COVID-19. Interior Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero will take over for him in his daily news conferences.[22]
• January 25 – Deputy Gerardo Fernández Noroña ( PT) apologizes to Adriana Dávila Fernández ( PAN) for suggesting a comment he made in 2019 suggesting she had links to organized crime.[23]
• January 26
  • Environmental groups led by the Global Alliance for Alternatives to Incineration (GAIA) demand that Mexico comply with the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal in relation to the importation of dangerous plastic waste. SEMARNAT reported the importation of 8,312,812 tons of plastic waste between 2013 and August 2020 (90% from the United States), and a 29% increase of imports from January to August 2020.[24]
  • Senator Lilly Téllez ( PAN) criticizes the government for its acquisition of 24 million doses of Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine from Russia.[25] The Russian embassy refuted charges that the vaccine is of poor quality, and Morena MRN demanded an apology.[26]
• January 29 – Authorities removed 150 empty tents from the Zócalo of Mexico City that had been installed as a protest in November 2020. Ten people were injured.[27]
• January 31 – Hundreds, mostly women, march to demand justice for Mariana Sánchez Dávalos, a young doctor whose body was recently found in Nueva Palestina, Ocosingo, Chiapas. Marches took place in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, San Cristóbal de las Casas, and Tapachula.[28]

• February 3
  • The National Electoral Institute (INE) issues a statement saying that it is not prudent to postpone the June 6, 2021 Mexican legislative election and doing so could even trigger a constitutional crisis by delaying the LXV Legislature of the Mexican Congress.[29]
  • INE approves a pilot program allowing some inmates held in preventitive prison to vote in the June 6 elections.[30]
• February 6 – Leopoldo Maldonado Gutiérrez, director of Artículo 19, an organization dedicated to freedom of expression,[31] denounces the publication of a modified cartoon by Rafael Pineda, ″Rapé″, in the official government Twitter account as ″manipulation of information″. ″Rapé″ noted that he had not authorized the publication of the altered image, which showed President López Obrador as a baseball player hitting a home run by defeating the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The tweet was taken down.[32]
• February 9 – In response to a petition by Enrique Krauze, Héctor Aguilar Camín, José Woldenberg, and other intellectuals that infrastructure projects be put on hold to pay for COVID-19 vaccines, AMLO noted that Mwxico has already appropriated MXN $32 billion for that purpose; combined with healthy finances, this is more than sufficient.[33]

See Banking and finance below.

On December 14, 2020, the government introduced proposed changes to allow the Bank of Mexico (Banxico) to make it capture U.S. dollars in cash. Cynically called the Ley Monreal, because of its support by Senator Ricardo Monreal MRN, critics worry it wil lead to an increase in money laundering and decrease the bank's autonomy.[35][36] Further, Gabriel Casillas, president of the Comité de Estudios Económicos del Instituto Mexicano de Ejecutivos de Finanzas ("Committee of Economic Studies of the Mexican Institute of Finance Executives″, IMEF) says the primary beneficiary of the law will be Banco Azteca, owned by billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego.[37] This is because Banco Azteca receives large quantities of dollars sent to families by Mexican expatriots living in the United States, but the bank does not have formal ties with an American banking institution.[38]

Debate on the bill was postponed until January 2021.[39] On January 21 President Lopez Obrador announced that he opposed a provision supported by Banco Azteca that would make it easier for banks to sell excess U.S. dollars to Banixco, although he said that the problem of excessive fees charged for sending money from the United to familities in Mexico persists.[40]

After the Supreme Court (SCJN) ruled in 2018 that prohibition of cannabis (marijuana) was unconstitional, the legislature was given until December 15, 2020 to approve a new law.[41] The Senate approved a law regulating cultivation, distribution, production, sale, and use of marijuana on November 19, 2020,[42] but the Chamber of Deputies was unable to reach an agreement and the deadline was extended to February 2021.[43]

Javier Molina, analyst of the investment firm eToro, notes that legalization of recreational marijuana will increase tax collection, but Alfredo Neme, representative of the National Cannabis Council (CCN), warns that the bill was written will be a boon for large pharmacutical companies and leaves out public-private associations. New Frontier, an organization that analyzes legal marijuana markets estimates the Mexican market at 2.3 million consumers with a value of USD $3.2 billion (MXN $65.4 billion). Neme said there is a potential investment of USD $6 to $10 billion in investment from 40 companies, which would also boost the creation of formal jobs.[44]

The July 2021 Mexican legislative election promises to be a battle between  PAN,  PRI, and PRD[45] on one hand vs. MRN and PANAL[46] on the other.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has proposed referendums on his progresss since 2018 and on criminal trials of his predecesors Enrique Peña Nieto, Felipe Calderón, Vicente Fox, Ernesto Zedillo, and Carlos Salinas de Gortari.