• CONFIDENCE: Foreign and domestic investors do not see the most recent violent events in Mexico -including the killing of 9 US citizens in Northern Mexico- as an issue of widespread concern, Alfonso Romo, chief of staff for Mexico’s President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador told reporters Thursday.
• EVIDENCE: Despite the Government’s assertions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in 2018 that the uptick in crime in Mexico of recent years hinders investment for small firms; official data shows that security measures and direct losses due to crime accounted for 0.7% of GDP in 2015.
• VIOLENCE: “Investors and fund (managers) whom I have met both domestic and foreign…don’t see this (the LeBaron killings) as a widespread thing but as a sad event, the same as (the gun battles in) Culiacán”, said Romo, who until joining the López Obrador Administration was a businessman.
• TOUGH WEEKS: Along with this week’s murders, the López Obrador faced in October one of the most high-profile violent events since arriving in power in 2018: the botched operation to capture the son of drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán in Culiacán, in the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa.
