US lawmakers press Mexico over Vulcan expropriation

Members of the US Home of Representatives from each events offered this Wednesday a invoice to sanction ships that use ports “stolen” from firms in that nation.

Particularly, the legislators are attempting to stop ships that use the port of Punta Venado in Quintana Roo from having the ability to unload or be repaired in that nation, if they’re topic to expropriation by Mexico.

The aim of the initiative is to stress the federal government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to reverse its plans to take management of a limestone quarry and the port, each owned by the corporate Vulcan Supplies, explains Bloomberg.

It was in 2022 that López Obrador indicated that the quarry of the Sac-Tun firm, previously Calica and a subsidiary of Vulcan, may very well be expropriated so as to use its land for the development of a leisure park. Whereas the maritime terminal of Puerto Venado would develop into non-public for cruise ships and ferries.

Then final yr, the Ministry of Setting and Pure Sources indicated that the greater than two thousand hectares of Vulcan may very well be declared a pure space.

On Monday, one other group of US congressmen despatched a letter to Mexican Overseas Minister Alicia Bárcena asking her to take motion relating to what they thought of “the Mexican authorities’s mistreatment of Vulcan Supplies Firm.”

Within the letter they recalled that final week marked two years for the reason that Mexican authorities closed, they mentioned, illegally, the deep-water port of Punta Venado.

“President López Obrador’s conduct threatening Vulcan’s authorized operations in Mexico has been constantly unacceptable and illegitimate below Mexican and worldwide legislation,” wrote Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt. She added that “key infrastructure initiatives in Alabama and all through the Southeastern United States stay in jeopardy as a result of lawlessness of this Mexican presidential administration.”

Whereas Republican Senator from Tennessee Invoice Hagerty famous: “I strongly condemn the actions taken by President López Obrador to illegally seize the authorized property of Vulcan Supplies Firm, which has operated in Mexico for the reason that Nineteen Eighties.”