{"id":7670,"date":"2022-03-21T08:20:38","date_gmt":"2022-03-21T12:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=7670"},"modified":"2022-03-22T08:36:22","modified_gmt":"2022-03-22T12:36:22","slug":"mexican-president-revels-in-new-airport-questions-remain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=7670","title":{"rendered":"Mexican President Revels in New Airport; Questions Remain"},"content":{"rendered":"
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador stands during his daily, morning press conference at the inauguration event for the Felipe Angeles International Airport (AIFA), north of Mexico City, Monday, March 21, 2022. (AP Photo\/Marco Ugarte)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mexican President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador inaugurated a new Mexico City airport on Monday, one of his four hallmark building projects.<\/p>\n

The government pulled out all the fanfare it could muster, including releasing a documentary on the project showing an army general talking to a statue.<\/p>\n

The terminal was built by the army, on an army airbase, and named after an army general.<\/p>\n

But the new terminal will handle only about 16 flights per day, in part because it is so far from the city and rail links and expressways have yet to be completed. On Monday only about 2,000 passengers used the new terminal, a far cry from the 2.4 million the government hopes to attract by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

Only one \u201cinternational\u201d flight will use the airport, a flight to Caracas, Venezuela, operated by a Venezuelan carrier that is under U.S. sanctions.<\/p>\n

L\u00f3pez Obrador conceded that new terminal is more popular among cargo flights than passenger jets.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is just a question of the airlines increasing their flights,\u201d the president said. \u201cIn the case of cargo traffice there has been more progress, the (old) Mexico City airport is saturated in cargo, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new Felipe Angeles Mexico City airport reflects the contrasts and contradictions of L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n

There is government austerity \u2014 his main campaign promise is fully on display in the rather bare-bones terminal \u2014 as well as his customary outsized reliance on the Mexican army.<\/p>\n

A documentary on the building of the terminal features an army general speaking to and saluting a huge statue of Gen. Felipe Angeles, who fought alongside Pancho Villa in Mexico\u2019s 1910-1917 Revolution and was later executed.<\/p>\n

But there are also widely ridiculed government claims about how long it will take passengers to get to the new terminal, located 27 miles (43 kilometers) from the city center, and repeated complaints by the president that there is a conspiracy in the press to besmirch his new airport.<\/p>\n

The president sees the new airport as a symbol of his twilight battle against privilege, conservativism and ostentation, things he despises.<\/p>\n

L\u00f3pez Obrador found an easy target in the vastly expensive, architecturally daring project started by his predecessor to build a huge, flashy new airport in a swamp on the city\u2019s eastern edge, much closer to the city\u2019s center.<\/p>\n

L\u00f3pez Obrador decided to cancel that and build the new airport on firmer soil to the north. It is projected to cost $4 billion, which L\u00f3pez Obrador claims represents a cost savings compared to the swampy site, which might have required billions in maintenance because of the waterlogged soil.<\/p>\n

The new airport will run in tandem with Mexico City\u2019s existing airport, whose two, saturated terminals had been scheduled for closure under the earlier plan.<\/p>\n

It is one of four keystone projects he is racing to finish before his term ends in 2024 \u2014 the airport, an oil refinery, a tourist train in the Yucatan Peninsula and a train linking Gulf coast and Pacific seaports \u2014 reflecting his vision that his is not just a normal, six-year presidential term. Mexico does not allow reelection.<\/p>\n

He sees himself as leading a historic, irreversible \u201ctransformation\u201d of Mexico, and he has turned to building projects \u2014 and the army \u2014 to guard that legacy. The army will actually own and operate some of the projects after they\u2019re finished.<\/p>\n

But the rush to complete the projects has drawn criticism. The new airport was inaugurated before road and rail links were completed, and the government has announced it will force any carriers who want to schedule new flights to Mexico City to use the new airport, rather than the older, closer airport.<\/p>\n

When his Maya Train tourist project ran into problems \u2014 engineers found they couldn\u2019t build an elevated stretch along the Caribbean coast because it would mean closing down the region\u2019s only highway \u2014 they simply began running the line through the low jungle.<\/p>\n

No comprehensive environmental impact statement or feasibility plan was ever drawn up for the project. Nobody knows how many tourists will really use it.<\/p>\n

In a bid to boost the new terminal, the government changed the rules that usually require passengers to show up two hours before a domestic flight, and three hours before an international flight. At the Felipe Angeles terminal, they will only be required to show up one or two hours before those flights.<\/p>\n

– AP News<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mexican President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador inaugurated a new Mexico City airport on Monday, one of his four hallmark building projects. The government pulled out all the fanfare it could muster, including releasing a documentary on the project showing an army general talking to a statue. The terminal was built by the army, on an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":7672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/storage.googleapis.com\/afs-prod\/media\/e8a6c2dd835649f9a1f0eeaf8d8a3929\/1000.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"Auto Draft","footnotes":""},"categories":[185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy-infrastructure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7670"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7690,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7670\/revisions\/7690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}