Members of the United States House of Representatives from both parties presented this Wednesday a bill to sanction ships that use ports “stolen” from companies in that country.
Specifically, the legislators are trying to prevent ships that use the port of Punta Venado in Quintana Roo from being able to unload or be repaired in that country, if they are subject to expropriation by Mexico.
The purpose of the initiative is to pressure the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to reverse its plans to take control of a limestone quarry and the port, both owned by the company Vulcan Materials, explains Bloomberg.
It was in 2022 that López Obrador indicated that the quarry of the Sac-Tun company, formerly Calica and a subsidiary of Vulcan, could be expropriated in order to use its land for the construction of a recreational park. While the maritime terminal of Puerto Venado would become private for cruise ships and ferries.
Then last year, the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources indicated that the more than two thousand hectares of Vulcan could be declared a natural area.
On Monday, another group of US congressmen sent a letter to Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena asking her to take action regarding what they considered “the Mexican government’s mistreatment of Vulcan Materials Company.”
In the letter they recalled that last week marked two years since the Mexican government closed, they said, illegally, the deep-water port of Punta Venado.
“President López Obrador’s conduct threatening Vulcan’s legal operations in Mexico has been consistently unacceptable and illegitimate under Mexican and international law,” wrote Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt. She added that “key infrastructure projects in Alabama and throughout the Southeastern United States remain in jeopardy due to the lawlessness of this Mexican presidential administration.”
While Republican Senator from Tennessee Bill Hagerty noted: “I strongly condemn the actions taken by President López Obrador to illegally seize the legal assets of Vulcan Materials Company, which has operated in Mexico since the 1980s.”
Source: jornada
