CTA President Penpa Tsering Makes Second Official Visit to Mexico

CTA President Penpa Tsering gives a lecture at the University of Guadalajara in Mexico on 27 October 2025. Photo: tibet.net

Penpa Tsering, President of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), has completed his second official visit to Mexico. During his trip to Mexico City and Guadalajara, he held meetings with parliamentarians, academic institutions, and local Tibet support organizations.

Political and Academic Meetings

Tsering met with members of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, including Corina Villegas Guarneros and Monica Herrera Villavicencio, as well as legislators from the state congresses of Jalisco and Nayarit. On 27 October, he gave a lecture at the University of Guadalajara, and earlier he spoke to students and faculty at El Colegio de Mexico and ITESO University.

The CTA President also held meetings with the indigenous Wixarika community and representatives of Casa Tibet Mexico and Casa Tibet Guadalajara.

Ecological Warning About the Tibetan Plateau

During his speeches, Tsering emphasized the status of the Tibetan Plateau as the “Third Pole” — the area contains the third-largest ice reserve in the world after the Arctic and Antarctica. The plateau’s glaciers feed several of the world’s largest rivers on which more than 1.5 billion people in South and Southeast Asia depend for their water supply.

According to Tsering, China’s large-scale exploitation of Tibet’s natural resources poses serious ecological risks, not only for Asia but for the entire world. The Tibetan Plateau is warming nearly three times faster than the rest of the world and loses an estimated eight billion tons of ice per year from melting glaciers.

China is accelerating the extraction of copper, gold, and lithium in Tibet through state-owned enterprises, while also damming major rivers for hydropower. These activities lead to landslides, floods, pollution, and unstable water flows downstream.

Assimilation Policies Through Boarding Schools

Tsering also discussed China’s boarding school policy, which according to UN experts subjects approximately one million Tibetan children to forced cultural, religious, and linguistic assimilation. The Tibet Action Institute estimates that 78 percent of Tibetan children between the ages of 6 and 18 are in boarding schools, some from as young as four years old.

In 2024 and 2025, Chinese authorities forced more than 1,700 young monks from Kirti Monastery and two monasteries in Dzoge County to leave monastic life and enroll in state boarding schools. The curriculum in these schools minimizes instruction in Tibetan in favor of Mandarin and emphasizes party loyalty.

Follow-Up Visit to Washington

After completing his Mexico visit, Tsering traveled to Washington D.C. for meetings on Capitol Hill, where he advocated for continued American support for Tibetan programs and initiatives during the U.S. government shutdown.

The visit to Mexico took place against the backdrop of growing economic ties between Mexico and China, visible through the presence of Chinese brands such as Xiaomi and BYD at airports and in cities, and limited public awareness about the situation in Tibet under the repressive policies of the People’s Republic of China.