[President Andrés Manuel López Obrador rose to power on the
promise of massive redistribution. So far, he has nationalized lithium
stores and lifted the minimum wage by 20%. But to secure these reforms
he’ll need to transform the power structures of the Mexican state
and media.]
[[link removed]]

AMLO’S FOUR YEARS IN POWER HAVE BEEN A SUCCESS  
[[link removed]]


 

Kurt Hackbarth
January 3, 2023
Jacobin
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ President Andrés Manuel López Obrador rose to power on the
promise of massive redistribution. So far, he has nationalized lithium
stores and lifted the minimum wage by 20%. But to secure these reforms
he’ll need to transform the power structures of the Mexican state
and media. _

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico's president, fist raised,
greets attendees during a rally in Mexico City, Mexico, on November
27, 2022, Jeoffrey Guillemard / Bloomberg via Getty Images

 

On Sunday, November 27, an estimated 1.2 million people
[[link removed]]
inundated Mexico City to celebrate the four-year anniversary of the
inauguration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO).

Along the city’s Paseo de la Reforma avenue, a festive march
proceeded in seemingly unending waves. Drumming groups combined
complicated rhythms with synchronized movements. Brigades of
stilt-walkers swooped their capes and showed off their costumes.
Musical groups, such as the Santa Rosa Philharmonic Band from the Mixe
region of Oaxaca, regaled the public with melodies from across the
country. There was traditional and spontaneous dance, calls and
chants, university and union groups, and organized contingents by
state.

Toward the front, the president marched without security, jostled
among the push-and-pull of the crowd
[[link removed]].
At the end of the route, following a day of marching added to
overnight bus rides for many, the festival poured into the bars and
restaurants of the historic downtown like a politicized Oktoberfest. A
sweaty and sunburnt AMLO, for his part, went on to give an
hour-and-a-half speech [[link removed]]
outlining the achievements of his administration in terms of social
programs, energy sovereignty, infrastructure, health policy, and more.
Ever at the ready to coin a new phrase, he concluded by baptizing the
philosophy undergirding his movement as “Mexican humanism.”

Notably missing from the massive, sprawling event were the expressions
of hatred, racism, and classism
[[link removed]]
that had characterized a smaller opposition march two weeks before. In
a quick turn of linguistic recycling, the president’s supporters
took the most notable insults leveled at them from the prior gathering
— _naco _(tacky, lowlife), _indio _(Indian), and _pata rajada
_(literally “cracked foot,” a reference to the split-open soles of
shoeless peasants) — and appropriated them as their own in sign and
slogan.

The much-hyped “polarization” played up by the conservative press
had retreated to its trenches on social media, not to be found here
among this jubilant and peaceful crowd, which included many immigrants
who had risked returning from abroad just to attend.

The Year in Review

There is, indeed, ample cause for celebration. The Fourth
Transformation is rounding out its fourth year with some solid
numbers: economic growth is outrunning predictions
[[link removed]];
foreign direct investment is up
[[link removed]]
while external debt payments are down
[[link removed]];
the peso was the among the most appreciated currencies
[[link removed]]
against the dollar in 2022, confounding speculators who repeatedly bet
against it
[[link removed]]
over the summer; and unemployment is declining
[[link removed]],
despite rising interest rates. On the political front, the president
remains popular
[[link removed]]
and his party, MORENA, is in a strong position
[[link removed]]
in early polling for the 2024 presidential election.

Even the_ Economist_, easily the most hysterically anti-AMLO voice of
the Anglophone press, has been forced to concede Mexico’s strength
[[link removed]] among
OECD countries in a comparison of economic indicators for the year.

On the policy front, prominent victories this year included a 20
percent hike in the minimum wage
[[link removed]] —
continuing a series of annual jumps that are set to double the wage in
real terms by the end of AMLO’s six-year term — and a doubling of
mandatory paid vacation days from six to twelve (up to a maximum of
thirty-two days
[[link removed]],
depending on consecutive years of employment).

In April, Mexico nationalized its lithium stores
[[link removed]], which
are among the largest in the world. This was part of a one-two punch
in energy policy that saw AMLO’s Electric Industry Law, which
increases public control over the national grid, ruled constitutional
[[link removed]]
by the Supreme Court. That same month, AMLO handily won
[[link removed]]
the nation’s first-ever recall election, fulfilling a campaign
promise to submit to one halfway through his presidency.

Not surprisingly, the largest international headlines focused on
foreign affairs. In May, AMLO warned that he would refuse to attend
the Summit of the Americas
[[link removed]]
in Los Angeles unless every Latin American country was represented;
the resulting tizzy by State Department apparatchiks spilled over
several messy weeks until the Mexican president followed through with
his pledge to sit it out (at the same time, however, he continues to
push for a continent-wide integration
[[link removed]]
of Latin America with the United States and Canada, which could lock
the region into a straitjacket from which there would be no escape).

In an Independence Day speech in September, he took an independent
line on the war in Ukraine, criticizing the ineffectiveness of the
United Nations, and the suffering produced by both sanctions and arms
shipments. One cannot avoid the suspicion, he concluded, “that the
war is being stoked by the interests of the arms industry.”

And in December, AMLO held firm against the congressional coup against
Pedro Castillo in Peru, refusing to recognize the de facto regime of
Dina Boluarte while the United States and Europe were rushing to do so
[[link removed]].
On December 12, Mexico signed a four-country communiqué
[[link removed]]
— together with Argentina, Bolivia, and Colombia — decrying the
harassment to which Castillo had been subjected from the beginning of
his presidential term and calling on the popular vote that elected him
to be respected. On December 20, the Boluarte regime expelled the
Mexican ambassador
[[link removed]],
Pablo Monroy. The following day, Castillo’s wife and children
arrived in Mexico
[[link removed]],
the latest in a long tradition of political refugees to receive asylum
in Mexico.

#SiguesTuAMLO

In the hours after Castillo was jailed, a well-financed
[[link removed]] Twitter
hashtag cropped up in Mexico: _#SiguesTuAMLO_ (You’re Next, AMLO).
Inspired by both the events in Peru and the jail sentence delivered
against
[[link removed]]
the Argentinian vice president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner the day
before, the coup-loving Latin American right sought to seize the
moment by fomenting an artificial domino effect on social media.

AMLO is in no danger of being removed from office, and he openly
mocked the hashtag [[link removed]] at
his morning press conference the following day. But when soft coups
have become the weapon of choice by elites across the continent —
Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia, to list some of the highest-profile
examples over the last decade — the question must be asked: what
measures are being taken to prevent such a power grab in Mexico?

For despite the positive reforms, the essential power structure in
Mexico remains very similar to what it was in 2018. Although starved
of the public advertising budgets
[[link removed]]
that kept it in comfortable collusion with prior governments, the
corporate press oligarchy remains in firm control of radio,
television, and print media, keeping up a steady drumbeat against any
politician or public figure who deviates an inch from the orthodoxy. A
handful of multinational banks
[[link removed]] control the
nation’s deposits, loans, and pension funds, despite advances in a
public banking option [[link removed]]. The
Catholic Church, albeit less brazenly than in years past
[[link removed]], remains an important
power behind the scenes. Academia and official cultural circles are
dominated by conservatives masquerading as “holier-than-thou”
progressives.

Big business continues to control key natural resources in the form of
mining concessions and water rights
[[link removed]].
The vast majority of wrongdoers from previous administrations remain
unpunished. And the armed forces, for their part, have never been
stronger: awash in budgetary increases and a growing list of side
gigs, the military will soon be adding to its list a new commercial
airline
[[link removed]]
and administration of the new national park
[[link removed]]
at the Uxmal archeological site.

At times it seems that there is no new public project anywhere in the
country that the secretary of defense doesn’t have a hand in, one
way or another. And while AMLO insists that this is to ensure that
these projects don’t get privatized in the future, the extremely
reductive binomial of “privatization-or-military” is beginning to
wear thin — especially on top of the constitutional amendment passed
this year
[[link removed]]
to allow the armed forces to continue to perform policing functions
for four more years, until 2028. Arguably necessary in the face of the
dire state of policing and the potent firepower of cartels, it remains
a bitter pill to swallow.

Of course, four years is not enough to undo forty . . . or four
hundred. And it is undeniable that these years of struggle and
political triumph have propitiated an enviable politicization among
the public — a major feat in itself. But there appears to be an
illusory confidence in the followers of “Mexican humanism” that
the exercise of liberal freedoms and a dollop of redistribution will
be enough to dissolve deep-seated power structures. So great was this
optimism that one of AMLO’s key reforms in 2021 was the removal of
immunity from prosecution
[[link removed]]
for the president. Designed to hold the chief executive accountable
for corruption and crimes committed in office, the measure also opens
the door to their destitution on any kind of trumped-up charge.

In summary, then, it is worth asking what kind of a package AMLO will
be leaving to a future MORENA administration if his party goes on to
win, as it currently appears, in 2024. The president is an astute
political operator and a uniquely gifted communicator; his successor
may very well not be. And the jackals in constant prowl around the
National Palace will not simply be persuaded to go away. For all of
its popularity, the Fourth Transformation does not have the luxury of
saying “it can’t happen here.”

====

* President Andrés Manuel López Obrador; Mexico;
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]