The Mexican government announced Thursday, August 10 the launch of a new airline, Mexicana de Aviación, which will be controlled by the army. The result of the takeover of the former private company Mexicana, bankrupt for thirteen years, and whose employees had never been compensated. Some criticize a new favor granted by the president to the military, which acquired under the mandate of Andrés Manuel López Obrador economic weight and unprecedented influence.
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With our correspondent in Mexico, Emmanuelle Steels
Mexicana will fly again: the airline, which went bankrupt in 2010, was bought by the Mexican state for 815 million pesos [environ 43 millions d’euros]. Mexicana will have ten aircraft, namely Boeing 737-800s, and will cover 20 national destinations.
The government entrusted the management of the new Mexicana de Aviación to the army, in charge of making it a competitive low-cost company. To do this, the Mexican army will take advantage of certain infrastructures that it already controls, such as the new airport in Mexico City, inaugurated a year ago and still very little frequented, but also the airport which is under construction in Tulum, the resort on the Caribbean Sea.
The granting of an airline to the army is indicative of the favors granted by President López Obrador to the military, which acquired under his mandate economic weight and unprecedented influence. The agreement reached around Mexicana de Aviación further reinforces a little more this influence.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador delivered to the military the control of numerous infrastructures, a dozen civil airports, seaports, the customs agency, as well as the site of the Maya train, a tourist railway of 1,500 kilometers which will cross the south-east of Mexico under the leadership of the military.
Some worry that the military will be driving priority projects, amassing considerable economic and political power that will be impossible to take away from it in the future, some warn.