Lifting Corruption and Debt off the Back of the Mexican People

By Vijay Prashad  on December 7, 2018

Painting by: Antonio Berni

Andrés Manuel López Obrador – or AMLO – became the president of Mexico on December 1. The leader of the Morena (National Regeneration Movement) party, López Obrador comes to the presidency from the left. His inaugural address laid out clearly the two reasons why half of the Mexican population lives in poverty: the neo-liberal model of economic and political governance as well as the ‘most filthy public and private corruption’. López Obrador said he would not prosecute the administration of his predecessor because ‘there would not be enough courts or jails’ for the guilty. Over the past four decades, López Obrador emphasised, Mexico has followed a disastrous policy framework – neoliberalism – which has been a calamity for the country’s public life.

One hundred and thirty million Mexicans looked towards López Obrador for some leadership. Since the Third World Debt crisis of the early 1980s, states such as Mexico have been forced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and global financial markets to cannibalise their wealth. Mexico’s resources were gifted to gigantic international firms and to its own financial oligarchy (led by Carlos Slim Helú, one of the world’s richest men, whose wealth comes from the pillage of public resources, such as when the State delivered Telmex – Mexico’s communications monopoly – into his hands in 1990). It is worth recalling the years from the debt crisis to the fire-sale of Mexico’s public assets, which the World Bank called a ‘model’. The government sold more than eighty per cent of its 1,155 firms.

At that time, Alvaro Cepeda Neri wrote in La Jornada, ‘The booty of privatization has made multi-millionaires of thirteen families, while the rest of the population – some eighty million Mexicans – has been subjected to the same gradual impoverishment as though they have suffered through a war’. Plunder defines Mexico’s history, from the seizure by the United States of half of Mexico’s land in 1848 (including gold-rich California) and the deflation of Mexico’s potential by NAFTA from 1994. It is too much to ask of López Obrador’s government to solve all of Mexico’s problems in one term. The new government cannot change everything. But it can start to shift the direction of state policy.

Left-wing governments in the hemisphere, under immense pressure from the United States, gathered around López Obrador for his inauguration. There was Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Cuba’s Miguel Díaz Canel. Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro came despite immense pressure from Mexico’s right-wing and liberals to rescind his invitation. Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega did not come. The pressure from the United States is not trivial. US President Donald Trump’s administration has coined a phrase – troika of tyranny – to refer to Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

The United States is eager to pursue regime change in one or all of these states. Hybrid warfare is in the cards, which includes encouragement of civil rebellion and the use of social media to promote falsehoods of all kinds. Maduro received the cold shoulder both from the right and liberals, but he was welcomed by Mexico’s trade unions. The battle lines are thickly drawn.

South of Mexico City, in Buenos Aires, the Group of Twenty (G20) states met, chatted amongst themselves and then withdrew to their various intractable crises. The meeting was held at the Costa Salguero convention centre – tucked away from the loud and clear voices of the protestors. The protestors came because the economic collapse in Argentina has been steady and the Argentinian people point their fingers – like López Obrador – at the policy framework rather than at fate. When the people asked questions about the policy framework that fragmented their lives, the reply from the G20 leaders came written in tear gas. It is the language of the leadership of the G20. It is what López Obrador wants to avoid.

No real deal could come out of the G20 because the crisis of capitalism cannot be solved from within the framework of neo-liberalism. Only cosmetic changes can be made, only more can be asked of an already exhausted population around the planet.

López Obrador, who was warned by the IMF not to intervene in the plight of Pemex – Mexico’s state-owned oil company – or to intervene with the monopoly oil firms, has now told the oil companies that if they do not invest more in exploration and production he will not allow them to expand their operations in Mexico. There are obviously ramifications to the environment by increased oil production. But this is a global problem and not one that Mexico can solve by ending oil exploration by fiat. It needs revenues from somewhere to tackle the severe problems of poverty in Mexico.

https://www.thetricontinental.org/?utm_source=Tricontinental%20English&utm_campaign=df509e8f12-

Source: The Tricontinental