Construction of Mexican Airport Provokes Backlash
Aerial view of the former Lake of Texcoco, current construction area of the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (Creative Commons).
The Mexican Congress authorized a third annual increase in budget for the unfinished Felipe Ángeles International Airport, prompting a public backlash against President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's funding allocation in the midst of the most severe economic downturn of the last 90 years.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) praised Mexico’s airport project, calling it “the most important airport being built in the world” on February 10. Construction began on Felipe Ángeles International Airport after the Mexican government canceled another airport´s construction, the New International Airport of Mexico City, a project started in 2014 by the administration of former president Enrique Peña Nieto.
Felipe Ángeles started as a $3.44 billion project, and its opening date was estimated to be June 2021. The Budget Committee of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies has approved every request from the federal government to increase funding for the airport. By 2019, the amount had been increased by 45 percent, and by 2020 it had been raised by 128 percent. When the 2021 Federal Budget was completed, the increase from the previous year soared by 297 percent. Almost two years ago, the end date was moved to 2022.
AMLO’s praise for the project provoked strong criticism. Since the project was announced, aviation authorities have questioned the feasibility of having three major airports operating in the same airspace. For the opening flight to take place, the Secretary of Communications and Transportation (SCT) had to stop the air traffic directed to the Benito Juárez Airport in Mexico City and the Adolfo López Mateos Airport in Toluca, State of Mexico. Columnists and businessmen argue that the insistence on the construction of this airport in the middle of a pandemic, and the various irregularities probed by the Supreme Audit Institution of Mexico (ASF), reflect the current budget power of the Mexican federal government.
The controversy intensified in social networks because AMLO’s inauguration of the new runways was attended by the three powers of the federation: Minister President of the Supreme Court Arturo Saldívar, President of the Senate of Mexico Eduardo Ramírez, and Vice President of the Chamber of Deputies Dolores Padierna, as well as the governors of Hidalgo, State of Mexico and Mexico City. Some not only see these actions as a breach of the balance of powers but as a symbolic display by the president of his power over government revenue.
The opposition parties announced their intention to run together in the next midterm elections in 2021 to wrest the majority from MORENA, AMLO’s party, and act as a counterweight to the unilateral management of the budget that has occurred in the last three years. Not only will the budget power of AMLO be on the ballot, but the completion of the Felipe Ángeles airport and the future of Mexican infrastructure.