EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – The President of Mexico says he wants to raise the minimum wage in his country by 15% in 2021, to make up for a decades-long slide in people’s purchasing power.
“We’re holding a dialogue over increasing the minimum wage, the (Minimum Wage) Commission is working on that. We can’t rush anything, but it’s fair and necessary that we raise the minimum wage as much as possible,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said during his Thursday press briefing in Mexico City.
The current minimum wage in Mexico is $6.11 per day; the proposal would raise it to $7 a day. The minimum wage in cities that border the United States is $9.33.
Lopez Obrador said his administration in early 2019 and 2020 raised wages by 16% and 20%, respectively, but that his country still ranks 81st worldwide in wages.
He blames that on the policies of previous pro-business administrations. “The idea is to recover the purchasing power that we lost in four decades,” he said.
Reports: Slain Juarez lawyer represented leader of ‘Aztecas’ drug gang
An attorney murdered this week in Juarez was the lawyer of record for a jailed “Aztecas” gang leader, a newspaper reported.
Miguel Ángel Almanza Álvarez, 35, was shot 12 times with a .40-caliber weapon inside his car Tuesday morning at an intersection on his way to court, El Diario reported. He is the seventh attorney to die a violent death in Juarez since 2019, according to the newspaper.
Almanza was a criminal defense attorney whose clients included Rene Gerardo Garza Santana, a.k.a. “300,” the newspaper reported. Chihuahua state authorities said his work may have cost the lawyer his life.
“We are reviewing, very closely, the cases the lawyer handled to see if that could’ve been the cause he became the victim of this aggression,” State Attorney General Cesar Augusto Peniche said in a teleconference.
Garza Santana was the leader of a faction of the “Aztecas” and worked closely with the La Linea cartel, according to El Diario.
