More Jobs for Mexican Doctors/Summit of the Americas

More jobs for Mexican doctors. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that next week he will announce new vacancies for Mexican doctors and specialists, so those who are unemployed can apply. In addition, López Obrador stressed that he does not seek to privilege Cuban doctors, for which he will guarantee the immediate hiring of Mexican doctors with good salaries. “On Tuesday we are going to announce all the vacancies that we have available in the country, especially where more doctors are needed. The call for these positions will also open on Tuesday. It is not that we do not have jobs for Mexican doctors. The Social Security and ISSSTE make calls for specialists and doctors every year and even so there are still some vacancies.”This week, López Obrador announced the hiring of Cuban doctors to work in Mexico´s marginalized areas , saying the country has a shortage of general practitioners. Nevertheless, doctors and medical associations argue that there are plenty of doctors available, but many are competing for scarce jobs in the medical field. Furthermore, they say that the government does not possess reliable parameters to confirm this alleged shortage of doctors.

Disappeared in Mexico. López Obrador stressed that the government is reinforcing its mechanisms and actions to search for disappeared people in Mexico, in addition to helping relatives and providing information at all times. “We are looking for people like never before. No previous government had dealt with disappeared persons as we do now. The entire Ministry of the Interior is dedicated to the search for clandestine graves because we must not forget that there was a war against drug trafficking, which increases these cases. We are seeking to find more people and give social justice.”

According to a UN report, from 1964 to date, 100,000 people have disappeared in Mexico, of which 25 percent are women. The UN highlighted that 97 percent of the registered cases occurred after 2006, when former President Felipe Calderón declared war on drug trafficking. Meanwhile, the rest of the cases correspond to the dirty war in Mexico between 1965-1990, where many people disappeared due to political ideologies. Yesterday, the UN called on the Mexican authorities to find the disappeared persons and fight against impunity, as in only 35 cases have the perpetrators been held accountable.

AMLO's attendance to the Summit of the Americas will be discussed. López Obrador announced that today he will talk via zoom with one of the organizers of the Summit of the Americas since the US senator who was going to come to Mexico tested positive for COVID-19. López Obrador assured that during this meeting he will defend his position of inviting all the countries of the continent to the Summit despite their political differences. “We are seeing what will happen with the summit. Today there is a call with the senator. We were going to see each other in person but he got COVID-19, so we are going to do it by phone at 11:30 am. I will defend that all countries need to be invited.”

López Obrador recently announced that he would not attend the Summit of the Americas if representatives from Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba were not invited.  Last week, the US ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, said that former senator Christopher Dodd, appointed as special advisor to the IX Summit of the Americas, would travel to Mexico to understand and address some of the issues for which López Obrador does not want to attend the summit. Dodd previously said that since Mexico is one of the key countries in the region, his leadership is needed at the summit. Experts warned that this meeting could generate more tensions between the two countries if Mexico refuses to attend the Summit.