Latin American Extractivism: Dependency, Resource Nationalism and Resistance in Broad Perspective

Rowman and Littlefield will be releasing my edited “Latin American Extractivism: Dependency, Resource Nationalism and Resistance in Broad Perspective” in a week or two. The book is an attempt to refute the thesis of those scholars (some on the left) who throw progressive Pink Tide governments (those of Lopez Obrador, Chávez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa) in the same sac as conservative and right-wing ones like Bolsonaro and Duque on issues of extractivism and the environment. It is true that progressive Latin American governments do not have a good track record when it comes to environment, overcoming resource dependence and in some cases indigenous rights. But you can’t compare them with genocidal and climate change deniers like Bolsonaro or even centrist governments. Distinctions need to be made and context provided. The below flyer provides information on a 25% discount for the purchase of the book in coming weeks.
 

The Multidimensional Impact of Neoliberalism on Mexico

The November issue of Latin American Perspectives that I edited deals with the legacy of the Mexican Revolution and how it was buried by neoliberal governments beginning in the mid-1980s and then revived by Andrés Manuel López Obrador. An article by Tommaso Gravante asks the intriguing question why the forced disappearance of 47 students of the teachers college at Ayotzanapa generated such national attention in contrast to other flagrant human rights abuses in the past. My own introduction poses the question first raised by Mexico’s outstanding intellectual Pablo González Casanova, should López Obrador emphasize anti-corruption over anti-neoliberalism or vice-versa. 

 

La Cobertura de Wikipedia sobre la Política Venezolana no Podría ser más Parcializada

Las páginas sobre la política venezolana de Wikipedia obviamente fueron escritas por partidarios de la oposición venezolana. Por ejemplo, su descripción del Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela, el partido fundado por Hugo Chávez, es lo siguiente: “Junto a los colectivos chavistas, ha sido descrito como el «brazo armado» de la administración de Nicolás Maduro usados como guerrilla urbana involucrados en el combate de actos criminales como la contrarrevolución.” La meta de Wikipedia, en sus propias palabras, es “presentar un resumen en forma neutral del conocimiento existente en una manera imparcial y acertada en un estilo sencillo basado solamente en los hechos.” Es una lástima que personas que apoyan la causa anti-Chavista se prestan a un esfuerzo que echa por tierra los objetivos tan nobles de esta enciclopedia libre.

 

THE CORPORATE MEDIA ON THE LIBERATION OF MEXICO’S EX-DEFENSE MINISTER SALVADOR CIENFUEGOS, KNOWN AS THE “GODFATHER”

Par for the course, the corporate media and U.S. think tank pundits focus in unison on the Mexican motives for seeking Cienfuegos’ liberation. Nothing what they say is credible about Attorney General William Barr’s motive to request that a federal judge in New York let Cienfuegos go. Pro-establishment pundits and journalists allege that Barr was satisfied that Mexico promised to cooperate with the U.S. in the anti-drug efforts and specifically the capture of a leading Mexican smuggler of methamphetamine. How laughable. If the U.S. Department of Justice and the DEA didn’t previously inform Mexico about the imminent arrest of Cienfuegos because they didn’t trust the Mexican government, why is it that they now are moved by Mexico’s promise to collaborate? Could it be that they fear that Cienfuegos would divulge information in a trial that was not to their liking? Could it be that the Mexican military blackmailed U.S. authorities by threatening to release information that would have been incriminating to those north of the border? Why doesn’t the media broach this subject? It would seem it is virtually taboo. After all, even in the case of Hollywood, in everything from the Godfather to the Casino, the U.S. mafia kingpins are portrayed as involved in everything from loansharking to prostitution and gambling but they stay away from drug dealing. They allegedly leave that to the Latinx gangsters.  

 

The New York Times Again Gets It Wrong On Venezuela

In an editorial today which purports to support a more sane foreign policy than that of the last four years, the New York Times calls President Nicolás Maduro a “tenacious dictator.” This narrative framed by the corporate media gets repeated time and time again. No respect for the specifics, and no attempt to present an alternative viewpoint. What about the political effects of crippling U.S.-imposed sanctions and an opposition that uses force supported by Washington to achieve regime change? What about the past presidential elections in Venezuela in which the only credible objections were irregularities but nothing worse than the voter suppression in U.S. elections. Even if you accept the accounts of most of those opposed to Maduro (which I don’t), Venezuelan elections can’t be compared to those of a narco president (as demonstrated in the U.S. courts, unlike Maduro) like Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras. Yet the NY Times made no mention of Hernández. While, as the NYT’s editorial points out, U.S. foreign policy may become more enlightened in some areas of the world (possibly with regard to Iran), the basic precepts will undoubtedly, unfortunately, remain the same.      

 

SEPTEMBER 11, TRUMP’S DOUBLE DISOURSE, AND FEIGNED OUTRAGE

Trump, like Bolsonaro, says he’s sorry about all those COVID-19 deaths, but that what the heck, we’re all going to die someday, so what’s the big deal. Did Trump say anything like that on September 11, 2001? Did Giuliani?

THE DEMOCRATS HAVE ALWAYS TRIED TO PLAY FOOTSIE WITH THE REPUBLICANS. Now the Democratic Party Leadership may let the Republicans take control of the Senate

The long-standing strategy of the Democratic leadership has been to go soft on the Republican Party in order to preclude the emergence of a strong leftist pole either in or outside of the Democratic Party. The Republicans hardly reciprocate. Both Obama and Biden have said time and time again “I can work across the aisle” and each time virtually get spit in the face by the Republicans. 

This stratagem has now come to light in statements by Republican ex-governor of Ohio turned Biden supporter John Kasich as well as Fox News that say the Republican control of the Senate will be a blessing in disguise for Biden. Fox’s Chris Wallace says “Republican controlled senate would give Biden excuse to pushback on progressives.”

Only the progressive wing of the Democratic Party a la Bernie Sanders and AOL favors a well-deserved hard-line approach to the Republicans. 

 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/chris-wallace-republican-controlled-senate-would-give-biden-excuse-to-pushback-on-progressives/vi-BB1aZmBN?ocid=msedgntp

SALIENT CHARACTERISTICS OF MEXICO’S NEOLIBERAL TURN AND ANDRES MANUEL LOPEZ OBRADOR’S CRITIQUE

 

Introductory essay to the November issue of Latin American Perspectives titled “The Multidimensional Impact of Neoliberalism on Mexico”

by Steve Ellner

Migration, human rights violation, gender inequality, environmental degradation and other phenomena discussed in this issue of Latin American Perspectives need to be placed in the broad context of globalization and neoliberalism in order to grasp their full significance. Nevertheless, an examination of the specificity of the Mexican case is also essential to appreciate the full scope of these developments. Most important, neoliberal rule in Mexico extended for a much longer period of time than in other Latin American nations. In many counties the heyday of neoliberalism began in the 1990s and ended with the advent of pro-leftist “Pink Tide” governments in the early years of the twenty-first century. In contrast, in Mexico neoliberalism dated back to the aftermath of the debt crisis of 1982 when president Miguel de la Madrid accepted formulas imposed by the International Monetary Fund, and continued under presidents Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994 ), Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000), Vicente Fox (2000-2006) Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) and Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018). Mexicans elected a progressive president Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2018 at a time when the rest of the Pink Tide had been removed from office or (as in the case of Venezuela) had suffered harsh setbacks and was on the defensive. The following introductory essay will discuss the full implications of the neoliberal policies of the 1982 to 2018 period and the concurrent abandonment of what was perceived to be the essence of the Mexican Revolution. These developments form the backdrop to the topics explored in this issue as well as the presidential triumph of López Obrador in 2018.

The tenacity of the legacy of the Mexican Revolution explains in large part the popular rejection of and resistance to the political establishment in twenty-first century Mexico, as documented by several articles in this issue. Two aspects of the legacy are particularly relevant. One was the Constitution of 1917 and specifically Article 27 which underpinned the justification of government control of mining and particularly the oil industry and expropriation of large estates. Subsequently, state control of strategic industries became a leftist banner throughout Latin America and only by the second half of the century did it gain wider acceptance in the continent. The second aspect of the legacy was the nationalization of the oil industry by president Lázaro Cárdenas in 1938, which resulted in the creation of the state oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX). Those who affirmed the symbolic importance of the presidency of Cárdenas viewed his actions as a continuation of the wars for independence initiated by Miguel Hidalgo in 1810 (Vázquez Mantecón, 2009: 195).

The Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), which remained in office until 2000, cultivated an image as the heir to the Mexican Revolution in order to enhance its legitimacy and compensate for its status as a perpetual ruling party without real competitors (Vázquez Mantecón, 2009: 197). The neoliberal policies enacted beginning in the 1980s, however, clashed with the Mexican revolution’s legacy of state interventionism in economic and social spheres. The failure to live up to the legacy generated a legitimacy crisis which intensified during the closing years of the twentieth century and the early years of the following one. In the case of Cárdenas, in the words of political scientist Verónica Vázquez Mantecón, his “heroic image increased in the context of the disillusionment and delegitimization of the government” (Vázquez Mantecón, 2009: 202). A leftist political current within PRI which morphed into the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) invoked the example of the Mexican Revolution and was befittingly led by Cárdenas’ son Cuahtémoc Cárdenas (Knight, 2009: 31-32). Upon breaking with the PRI, the dissident current began to view the figure of Lázaro Cárdenas as, in the words of Vázquez Mantecón, “the symbol of the ideals betrayed by the system” (Vázquez Mantecón, 2009: 186).

Carlos Salinas and his closest allies reacted to this challenge by questioning the “doctrinaire conceptions of nationalism” of the Cárdenas legacy. They argued that the model Cárdenas supported was valid for his era but needed to be modified in accordance with contemporary imperatives. This “essentially ahistorical ideology” clashed with PRI’s traditional reverence for the Mexican Revolution (O’Toole, 2010: 56-57).

The advent to power of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) with the election of Fox and then Calderón intensified the legitimacy crisis. PAN never shared the ideals of the Mexican Revolution as the party was founded in 1939 as a reaction against Cárdenas’ nationalization of the oil industry and land expropriation, which it considered to be a violation of the rights of private property (Vázquez Mantecón, 2009: 193-194). PAN also opposed the model of a strong central government embodied in the Constitution of 1917.

It was not surprising that PAN, being a party closely associated with the Catholic Church, rejected the legacy of the Mexican Revolution with its anti-clerical strain. Nevertheless, the attempt to undo the Mexican Revolution’s legacy went beyond religious controversy as it was driven by the neoliberal offensive which was spearheaded by the PRI and PAN leaderships. The conservative backlash against the legacy of the Mexican Revolution relied on coded words such as "paternalism" and “state control of the masses” to strengthen the case for privatization and the neoliberal model in general (Vázquez Mantecón, 2009: 203). An example of the omission of direct reference to the Mexican Revolution by those who defended neoliberal precepts are co-authored publications by Jorge Castañeda, Foreign Minister under the PAN government of Fox, and journalist Héctor Aguilar Camín, which claimed that Mexico was a “prisoner of its past” (cited by Ackerman, 2020: 328). The authors’ central thesis was laid out in the opening lines of an article in Foreign Affairs:    

Mexico has long been hostage to unchallengeable traditions: its nationalist approach to oil wealth, overly sensitive attitude toward sovereignty, entrenched labor monopolies, persistent corruption, and self-serving bureaucracy. Acquired over time, these attitudes and practices became cemented in the national soul and embedded in the habits of the government and society, sapping the country s potential (Aguilar Camín and Castañeda, 2012: 23).

The articles in this issue of Latin American Perspectives demonstrate the interconnectedness of the terrains that neoliberalism and globalization have pervaded. Tamar Diana Wilson shows that neoliberal policies and specifically privatization have exacerbated climate change in Mexico which in turn has triggered migration. Eugenia Bayona Escat’s article sheds light on the impact of globalization on tourism and gender roles. Sergio Rea and Rafael Plaza analyze environmental legislation in the context of neoliberal governments and its failure to open space for democratic citizen participation. Other articles explore the relationship between neoliberalism, on the one hand, and the exploitation of rural labor including forced labor as well as environmental degradation, on the other (Nemer Narchi, Sula Vanderplank, Jesús Medina-Rodríguez, and Enrique Alfaro); the relationship between globalization and gentrification and urban spatial regulation to the detriment of the poor (Jill Wigle); and violence in the context of neoliberalism (Michael Walonen and Tommaso Gravante). These phenomena, which became most pronounced in the neoliberal period beginning in the 1980s, contributed to the election of López Obrador as a staunchly anti-neoliberal candidate in 2018. As this introductory article shows, the revolt against neoliberalism culminating in 2018 can only be understood in the context of the legitimacy crisis that dated back to the outset of the neoliberal period in the 1980s. The article will center on two developments that most exemplified and contributed to the loss of legitimacy: the drawn-out process of the privatization of the oil industry and drug trafficking-induced violence. 

 

OIL POLICY AND THE LEADUP TO THE ELECTION OF LOPEZ OBRADOR 

The legacy of the Mexican Revolution, specifically the 1917 Constitution and Cárdenas’ nationalization in 1938, weighed heavily on the extended duration of the process of privatization of oil that spanned the entire neoliberal period. Some writers referred to the gradualness as the “silent plan of privatization” (Rousseau, 2017: 512: Proceso, 2008). Those most committed to neoliberalism blamed elites, and the PRI leadership in particular, for their “inertia” and failure to act decisively to bring about much needed changes to an industry that was poorly managed and ridden with corruption (Rousseau, 2017: 505; Wood, 2013: 70). Beginning with the de la Madrid government, modest steps were taken to decentralize and allow for private participation in the hydrocarbon industry. In 1995 the Zedillo government unsuccessfully attempted to sell off petrochemical complexes to private interests. 

Under the presidency of Fox (and then Calderón) PEMEX signed a large number of service contracts with private capital for various phases of the oil industry. Left-leaning congressman Jaime Cárdenas pejoratively called this modality “contractism” since short of privatization, foreign capital undertook important activity in the oil industry (Johansson Mondragón, 2014: 42). In contrast, neoliberal champions viewed these reforms as highly insufficient in that foreign capital was still unable to assume ownership of the oil that was exploited, at the same time that the central government exercised excessive control of PEMEX. These writers deplored the fact that under Fox, “in spite of the constant announcements of grandiose reforms… of the industry, little was accomplished” (Rousseau, 2017: 496). In effect, the hard-core neoliberals concurred with Castañeda and Aguilar Camín that Mexico was a “prisoner of its past” – the past being the Mexican Revolution – with regard to the ailing oil industry.     

Subsequently, however, neoliberal inroads transformed the oil industry. Neoliberal advocates took heart at the consolidation of the consensus among PAN and PRI leaders on oil policy beginning with the Calderón presidency. In 2008 PRI and PAN congresspeople voted in favor of Calderón’s proposed Energy Reform which led to arrangements whereby private capital’s remuneration was based on output under terms determined in the bidding process. The Reform also facilitated PEMEX’s autonomy thus limiting the central government’s ability to use the company as a cash cow. For conservatives, the PRIistas benefitted the most from the agreement since it allowed them to overcome “their negative image of intransigence by demonstrating their willingness to negotiate” (Rousseau, 2017: 519-520).   

In spite of Calderón’s reforms, PEMEX continued to have, according to one energy expert, “one of the most—if not the most—closed arrangements in the petroleum industry” in the world with regard to private investments (Melgar, 2012). Thus, for instance, hydrocarbons in their entirety still belonged to the Mexican state, while profits and risks were not shared. The Mexican oil industry’s state-centered structure contrasted with other hydrocarbon-producing nations in the region in the context of the neoliberal-inspired reforms of the 1990s. Indeed, Mexico’s resistance to radical neoliberal change in the oil industry clearly demonstrated the influence of the legacy of the Mexican Revolution and specifically the nationalization of 1938.

The election of Peña Nieto in 2012 promised to build on Calderón’s reforms in major ways. Just days after his inauguration, the nation’s three major parties (PRI, PAN and PRD) agreed to a “Pact for Mexico.” In the words of one political scientist, “Peña Nieto would utilize the Pact’s framework in order to move ahead” with the industry’s transformation (Rocha, 2013: 102). By December of the following year, Congress modified Article 27, which was considered the main impediment to oil privatization, thus allowing profits for private capital to be pegged to sales. As a result, the oil industry was all but privatized, even while PEMEX was not.  

Those like Castañeda and Aguilar Camín who favored neoliberbal-style reform for the oil industry hailed the developments under Peña Nieto as evidence of a “new national consensus” in favor of overcoming the limitations of the heritage of the Mexican Revolution. In an acknowledgement of Mexican exceptionalism, the authors wrote that “despite seeming normal for any other modern democracy,” the beliefs that underpinned the Pact “did not figure clearly in the Mexican public consciousness until very recently.” Among the “many reasons for optimism” was the emergence of “a new paradigm in Mexican minds and culture,” which included the rejection of “revolutionary nationalism” as well as the once-dominant “myths” about “the wisdom of nationalizing oil reserves” (Aguilar Camín and Castañeda, 2012: 23-24, 30)

Nevertheless, a consensus over oil policy hardly existed in Mexico. The exclusion of social movements and smaller parties from the signing of the Pact left it open to accusations of representing an imposition by the nation’s political elites (Rocha, 2013: 103). Furthermore, annual public opinion surveys conducted during the presidency of Calderón indicated that over three quarters of PRI voters opposed even the partial privatization of PEMEX, even though it was adamantly supported by neoliberals (Proceso, 2008; Gonzalez, 2019: 137). Mass mobilizations were held in opposition to Calderón’s Reform and Peña Nieto’s Pact (which led to López Obrador’s decision to leave the PRD and found the Movimiento Regeneración Nacional – MORENA).  At one of the protests in Mexico City’s central square, López Obrador declared that if the privatization of oil went through, he would denounce Peña Nieto for treason. He also told the New York Times that since the outset of neoliberalism, the Mexican government had “acted in a deliberate manner…to ruin Pemex” in order to pave the way for privatization (McKinley, 2008: A-15).

 

DRUG TRAFFICKING AND THE LEADUP TO THE ELECTION OF LOPEZ OBRADOR

The “Plan Mérida” of U.S.-Mexican Cooperation initiated in 2008, consisting of financial aid and training in the fight against organized crime, put the international spotlight on Mexican drug cartels. The horrific disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero in 2014 also focused international attention on the role of the cartels in the violation of human rights. However, as Gravante’s article in this issue demonstrates, the ascendancy of Mexican drug cartels dates back to the Dirty War against leftist insurgents in the 1970s. Following the death of Pablo Escobar in 1973, the Mexican drug lords became “dominant partners” (Boullosa and Wallace, 2015: 57) in the supply chain. During the same decade, the U.S.’s success in closing down the “French Connection” that brought in massive amounts of heroin from Turkey via Marseille, also contributed to the rising fortunes of Mexican cartels. As will be shown in the following paragraphs, the neoliberalism that was embraced by PRI and PAN in power beginning in the 1980s further stimulated the Mexican drug trade.

Neoliberalism, which drove oil policy for over three decades and led to the industry's privatization, contributed to various interrelated pernicious activities: drug trafficking, violation of human rights and corruption. Like the privatization of oil, these activities generated widespread discontent that paved the way for the presidential election of López Obrador in July 2018.

Just as with neoliberalism and privatization, the phenomena of drug trafficking, violation of human rights and corruption reflected the specificity of the Mexican case. Mexico alone among Latin American nations shares an extensive border with the world’s largest consumer of drugs. The nation was thus, in the words of Mexican political analyst Sergio Aguayo, “converted into a geopolitical corridor between much of the world and the United States.” Aguayo goes on to point to another unique set of Mexican characteristics that were conducive to increased drug trafficking as well as illegal parallel state structures that employ force. (1) He points out that in the latter years of the twentieth century, Mexico underwent a rapid change “from a closed, authoritarian, corrupt regime, to one that was more open, less authoritarian, but more corrupt” (Aguayo, 2016: 174). In another example of specificity, the flagrant violation of human rights contrasted with the southern cone nations in the 1960s-1970s and elsewhere in that it did not occur against the backdrop of a military coup, nor was it for the most part directed against leftist political organizations. The distinguishing characteristic of the violation of human rights in contemporary Mexico is that it occurs hand in hand with the war on drugs and government corruption (Paley, 2016: 140).

Indeed, the interconnectedness of neoliberalism, drug trafficking, violence, corruption and human rights violation manifested itself in many ways:

1. The neoliberal-narco tie-in (part a). The implementation of the neoliberal-inspired North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 increased the cross-border movement of goods, thus facilitating drug trafficking. In addition, as a consequence of NAFTA, maquiladora-produced merchandise (2) was largely exempted from tariffs and went through minimum inspection, resulting in the purchase of these plants by smugglers to use as fronts for the export of drugs (Boullosa and Wallace, 2015: 54).

2. The neoliberal-narco tie-in (part b). The elimination of subsidies and other programs for small-scale agriculture by neoliberal governments had a dual effect. In the first, place, some of the farmers switched to the production of marijuana and poppies. In the second place, others migrated to urban areas and swelled the ranks of the marginalized sectors from which the drug cartels recruited (Boullosa and Wallace, 2015: 53-54; Aviña, 2016: 146; see also Wilson’s article in this volume).

3. The drug cartels-globalization and neoliberal tie-in. The extorsion against small businesses by drug cartels in different areas paved the way for the penetration of multinational retail firms (Paley, 2014: 34-35; 2016: 143). In addition, their terrorizing of local communities drove many inhabitants to migrate, thus clearing the area for maquiladoras and “land grabbing foreign mining companies” and facilitating “the expansion of the capitalist system into new or previously inaccessible… spaces” (Paley, 2014: 15, 162; Aviña, 2016: 145).

4. The violence-neoliberal tie-in. Feminicide and other forms of violence associated with drug cartels served to intimidate and "discipline" the predominately feminine work force of the maquiladoras (Paley, 2016: 143). (3)

5. The violation of human rights-narco tie-in. The connection between the two was most vividly revealed in the case of Ayotzinapa, Guerrera in 2014 when 43 student protesters were allegedly kidnapped by local police and turned over to a crime syndicate associated with a major drug cartel and then murdered. The tie-in between anti-insurgency efforts and drug trafficking dated back to the Guerrero-base Dirty War of the 1970s involving two of its most ruthless generals, Mario Acosta Chaparro and Francisco Quirós Hermosillo. The former was jailed between 2000 and 2007 while the latter received a 16-year prison sentence, in both cases due to their involvement in drug trafficking. Well-documented studies point out that the same planes used by Acosta Chaparro and Quirós Hermosillo to dump insurgents into the Pacific Ocean were also employed to transport drugs from Guerrero, activity that “blurred the lines between counterinsurgency and counternarcotics” (Aviña, 2016: 144-145).  

6. The War on Drugs-violation of human rights tie-in. The militarization of anti-drug efforts in northern regions such as Chihuahua and Durango and Guerrero to the south in the framework of the U.S.-promoted Plan Mérida has sometimes served as a cover for crushing community resistance to extractivism projects through the “criminalization and terrorizing” of local residents” (Paley, 2014: 132-138). Official discourse accepted by much of the media often explained the fatalities as the collateral damage of cartel wars (Paley, 2014: 35-37).

7. The corruption-drug cartel tie-in (part a). Some of the fanfare about the success of the war on drugs involved blows against one cartel to the benefit of another that had greater political influence and thus enjoyed “protection,” meaning that the state refrained from undertaking actions against it (Boullosa and Wallace, 2015: 58).

8. The corruption-drug cartel tie-in (part b). The Zetas and other drug cartels terrorized and extorted money from Central American transit migrants who sought to enter the United States and in doing so sometimes worked in a “complementary fashion” with Mexican migration officials and with local police and in accordance with U.S. interests (Paley, 2014: 148). According to drug trafficking expert Dawn Paley, “the policing of northward migration… has been partially outsourced to paramilitary groups… with deadly consequences” (Paley, 2016: 143).

9. The war on drugs-violence tie-in. Some of the blows against criminal syndicates resulted in the splintering of powerful cartels and the emergence of new ones. This dynamic often ended up increasing violence and/or drug trafficking (Aviña, 2016: 146; Boullosa-Wallace 2015: 59-60; Paley, 2014: 146; Noriega and Trigos, 2015: 2). Thus, for example, Calderón’s aggressive war on drugs which was the defining issue of his administration only increased the number of major criminal organizations from seven to dozens, some of which were better armed. The pattern was also clearly illustrated in the case of famed trafficker Miguel Angel Gallardo who began with the Sinaloa drug syndicate but was forced to flee to Guadalajara where he formed the Guadalajara cartel and then from jail helped consolidate various cartels by engineering the dividing up of routes to the United States (Paley, 2014: 144-145).

The narco-economy was characterized by the pervasiveness of complicity, which was an essential component of the system. One factor that explained complicity was fear, but it was not the only one. Sometimes collaborators were directly involved in the flagrant actions that were committed and other times they were not. An example of the latter were the peasants who formed part of what one analyst called “politician-military-landed elite-peasant alliances” around the drug trade (Aviña, 2016: 146). Indeed, the narco-economy in Mexico is hardly a marginal structure but rather it interlocks with the established political economy in numerous ways, as the above examples of interconnectedness indicates. The term "drug war capitalism," which is the title of a book by Paley, also points to the tight connection between drugs and the entire structure of Mexican society and economy (Paley, 2014).  (4)

 

THE LOPEZ OBRADOR CANDIDACY AND PRESIDENCY

 

The legitimacy crisis, more than any other factor, explained the sweeping victory of López Obrador (hereafter referred to as AMLO) in the 2018 presidential elections. Sluggish economic growth, which under Peña Nieto averaged 2.4 percent annually rather than the 4- 4.5 percent he had promised, along with the fact that over 50 percent of the work force belonged to the informal economy, contributed to the discontent. The centerpiece of AMLO’s discourse was corruption which he adroitly weaved into his analysis of the nation’s poor economic performance, neoliberalism and the abandonment of the nationalistic ideals of the Mexican Revolution.

AMLO's electoral program and discourse represented a thoroughgoing critique of the Mexican political and economic establishment, even while stopping short of the radical leftism of Pink Tide presidents Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales. On the one hand, AMLO lashed out at the neoliberal policies implemented over the previous three decades, which he held responsible for the country’s “lack of economic growth” once population increases were taken into account (López Obrador, 2018: 158). He called privatization per se “theft” (López Obrador, 2018: 15, 158). Specifically, he advocated reversing PEMEX’s neoliberal-style autonomy as well as the privatization of the oil industry, following approval of the move in a national referendum. Along the same lines, he pointed to PEMEX’s failure to build any new refinery since 1979 and the “unfortunate paradox” of Mexico being a major oil producer while “importing more gasoline and petroleum than most other countries world-wide” to the benefit of corrupt officials (López Obrador, 2018: 42). As a corrective he promised to build two large refineries and renovate six others. While all politicians claim to oppose corruption and favor national interests, López Obrador denounced “a laundry list of corruption” while providing numerous specifics including the names of national actors he accused of unethical conduct and multinational corporations that profited from neoliberalism (López Obrador, 2018: 42).

On the other hand, AMLO assumed more moderate positions than those of his two previous presidential campaigns of 2006 and 2012. His pledge to refrain from increasing taxes limited the potential for redistribution of wealth and was designed to avoid alarming the wealthy, even though it placed in doubt the feasibility of his ambitious socio-economic programs. Most important, AMLO followed a strategy of attracting and privileging individuals who lacked credentials as leftists or reformers into the fold of both the MORENA party and his inner circle of decision makers. Among the alleged opportunists were newcomers from other parties who MORENA militants pejoratively called “chapulines” (grasshoppers) (Ellner, 2018: 120). AMLO also formed an alliance with the conservative evangelical “Social Encounter Party.” Once elected, he appointed Alfonso Romo, a powerful businessman who had formerly been an active supporter of President Fox and an ardent detractor of the left, as head of the Office of the Presidency of the Republic (Gonzalez, 2019: 139-140).

AMLO’s position during the 2018 campaign in favor of deescalating the war on drugs represented a complete break with the strategy employed at the time. His slogan of “hugs not bullets” and his proposal for amnesty for drug crimes was the antithesis of the Plan Mérida and the militarization of the war on drugs. Actually, his proposed strategy was not completely new. During the 2012 presidential campaign, Peña Nieto put forward a similar one and during the first two years of his government, he followed what one leading U.S. diplomat in the region called a “passive approach,” which was in line with the pacts with cartels under previous PRI governments (Noriega and Trigos, 2015: 2). Following the prison escape of the notorious Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán in 2015, Peña Nieto changed course.

Many Mexicans supported the “passive approach” and applauded the insistence of Mexican presidents that the United States do more to solve its domestic problem of drug use. (5) These Mexicans vehemently argued what Mexican presidents stopped short of saying: the narco problem is not of Mexico’s making; since the markets are located elsewhere, Mexico should not be dragged into a war on drugs with such disastrous consequences. 

A second implication behind the “passive approach” which frequently came up in conversations on the topic concerned the armed forces. The Plan Mérida and the concomitant militarization of the war on drugs led to an escalation in the use of sophisticated weapons on the part of the cartels as well as a sharp increase in fatal casualties associated with the conflict. The number of murders in Mexico between 2008 and 2017 more than doubled those of the previous decade with half of them estimated to be criminally related (Speck, 2019: 69). Some Mexicans argued that militarization was a recipe for corruption and increased violence given the impunity of the Mexican military dating back to the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre of scores, if not hundreds, of students. (6) Sanjuana Martínez, a prominent journalist, labels the nation’s political system a “military democracy” in which “military jails are spas for authentic war criminals who are capable of committing massacre[s]” (Martínez, 2018). Other Mexicans across the political spectrum expressed a less negative view of the military. They blamed the spike in violence on the Calderón administration and the United States for refusing to recognize that the war on drugs should be the exclusive preserve of the police (working in conjunction with communities), which failed to receive sufficient resources and attention.

The first year and a half of the AMLO administration (up until mid-2020) has been characterized by a mix of the pragmatism reminiscent of his term as Federal District mayor (2000-2005), on the one hand, and relatively modest breaks with the past, on the other. Perhaps his most polemical retreat was his decision to create a National Guard to combat drug trafficking. In his 2012 presidential bid, AMLO had called for a gradual return of the military to the barracks, a process which he estimated would take six months (Arteta M, 2018).  He also became a critic of U.S. military cooperation and upon assuming the presidency advocated the discontinuance of the Plan Mérida with its stimulation of militarization. As president, he created the National Guard (GN), consisting of former policemen and military officers, which was supposed to maintain an equilibrium between military and civilian input. Nevertheless, AMLO’s choice of a general lacking in a background in civilian relations to be the GN’s operative head stood in contradiction to the spirit of his previous positions. Sanjuana Martínez suggested that AMLO may have caved into pressure from the high command of the armed forces which resisted relinquishing the institution's key role in the war on drugs (Martínez, 2018). This explanation is reinforced by Gravante’s article which states that AMLO “throughout his term has shown a close… relationship with the Ministry of Defense, thus confirming… the untouchable role of the … armed forces.”

The first major deployment of the GN, which was to Mexico's southern border, initiated a policy that also went counter to AMLO's previous stands. During the 2018 presidential campaign and before, AMLO had called for safe passage and a humane treatment for Central American transit migrants, who were often abused by Mexican immigration officials due in part to their training at the hands of U.S. authorities in the context of Plan Mérida (Sarabia, 2019: 51). Prior to his election, AMLO also swore that Mexico would not do Trump’s "dirty work” at the border (Proceso, 2018). Those words came to haunt AMLO once Mexico began to filter the flow of immigrants toward the north. The use of the GN undoubtedly stemmed from the threats by President Trump to slap an incremental tariff on imports from Mexico if that nation did not vigorously block Central American immigration into the U.S. Once on the southern border, the GN clashed with Central American immigrants in circumstances that were never clarified. The militarization of both the northern and southern border contradicted AMLO’s pledge prior to being elected to do just the opposite. In another contradiction between stated objectives and occurrences, the mission of the GM was to maintain a presence in regions where organized crime was most acute, a situation which was not the case with Mexico’s southern border.

The area in which AMLO adhered most firmly to the principles he had previously embraced was foreign policy. AMLO asserted that Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro was “democratically elected” and thereby broke with Peña Nieto's activist role in the 14-member Lima Group, which was formed to support Washington's effort to achieve regime change in Venezuela, At the same time, AMLO invoked Mexico's long-standing principle of non-interventionism which he claimed dated back to Benito Juárez in the nineteenth century and was then reaffirmed by the 1917 Constitution but subsequently abandoned by neoliberal governments beginning with Zedillo. He also defied Washington by calling the ouster of Evo Morales a coup and then granted him political asylum in Mexico. AMLO, however, stopped short of accepting  that Mexico along with Argentina under recently elected president Alberto Fernández form part of an “anti-neoliberal front,” as put forward by Maduro in Havana. AMLO rejected the idea on grounds that “each country has its own reality” and precisely for that reason Mexico adheres to the “principle of self-determination” (Aristegui, 2019).

On the domestic front, a number of AMLO's initiatives also accorded with his previous positions. In the first place, AMLO canceled the 13-billion dollar construction of what was designed to be the nation’s principle airport at Texcoco outside of Mexico City. Under Peña Nieto, numerous contracts with Mexican and foreign firms had been signed and construction had already begun, thus explaining the intense opposition to the decision. There were, however, many reasons to discontinue the project. Studies demonstrated that it was geographically unviable and ecologically unsound (in that it jeopardized the migratory patterns of birds). In addition, the plan was riddled with corruption, involved peasant land dispossession, and had generated opposition from neighboring towns and resistance from peasant and student social movements dating back to 2001 that resulted in government repression. In the second place, AMLO complied with a campaign pledge by implementing ambitious social programs directed at the very poor consisting of stipends for students at all levels of public education, those in apprenticeship programs, earthquake victims, the disabled, elderly residents of indigenous communities, those over 68 years of age, and members of rural communities who participate in an agroforestry-based program. In the third place, the construction of the Dos Bocas refinery in the state of Tabasco, which was slated for completion in 2022, was a major project and part of AMLO’s pledge to strengthen PEMEX and in doing so reverse neoliberalism.

During his first year and a half in office, AMLO appeared to be following a strategy that Marxist theoretician Nicos Poulantzas called "walking a tightrope" with reference to social democrats in power, a metaphor used by some analysts to describe Pink Tide governments (Nelson, 2020: 60-61; Poulantzas, 2014: 197-198). On the one hand, AMLO had to demonstrate an unyielding adherence to principles in order to lend credibility to his commitment to the fight against corruption, which was AMLO's major banner and a point of honor. On the other hand, through flexibility and pragmatism, he sought to demonstrate that his government’s relationship with the private sector could be a win-win situation. Such an approach was designed to prove that he was not a socialist, in spite of the accusations formulated as far back as the 2006 presidential campaign that he was a surrogate and a carbon copy of Hugo Chavez.

Yet there was another dynamic at play that was at odds with the “walking a tightrope” or “balancing act” imperative. One of the main lessons of the Pink Tide experiences was that leftists in power needed to take full advantage of favorable moments when it had the upper hand vis-à-vis a temporarily demoralized opposition by boldly moving forward to achieve objectives and further strengthen the left’s position (Ellner, 2020: 12-14). The Brazilian case of Lula da Silva was telling in that it showed that moderation and discretion (implicit in the tightrope approach) would not deter adversaries on the right from ruthlessly attacking once they sensed government vulnerability – thus the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff and Lula's jailing.

Looking at events from this perspective, AMLO’s first year in office was a missed opportunity. AMLO's popularity soared at the time of his election and by the outset of his presidency had reached 79.5 percent (in March 2019) but then sharply declined to 57.1 percent in the course of the following twelve months (according to a survey conducted by the newspaper El Universal - see Expansión Política, 2020). AMLO was in a political position to do in early 2019, what was becoming increasingly difficult to do in 2020. AMLO’s critics on the left pointed to his heightened popularity as well as the demoralization of the two main opposition parties PRI and PAN and their inaction to argue that the president had been overly cautious and had made unnecessary concessions. Instead of focusing on combating corruption, critics like the renowned sociologist Pablo González Casanova argued that the emphasis should be on anti-neoliberalism which was the root cause of corrupt dealings (Casanova, 2019). In contrast, his MORENA party defenders pointed out that Mexico was surrounded by conservative and right-wing governments in the hemisphere and concluded that conditions were not ripe for a more radical approach. Thus the evaluations of AMLO's initial period in office by fellow leftists varied according to their assessment of the political climate in Mexico and the region.

THIS ISSUE OF LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

The thematic articles in this issue deal with the devastating effects of neoliberalism on diverse fronts. In her article, Tamar Diana Wilson interprets the results of a survey she conducted with street vendors whose parents migrated from rural areas to show that the migration had been motivated by what she calls a “double exposure.” In the first place, climate change and specifically drought had inflicted special harm on small farmers and in the second place, neoliberalism eliminated subsidies and other forms of aid for small-scale agriculture. Actually, neoliberalism-globalization was to blame for both adversities since it promoted extractivist industries and export-led growth which resulted in deforestation, soil erosion, pollution and impairment of biodiversity. Contrary to general perceptions of migrants in urban areas, 88 percent of the interviewees were receptive to the idea of engaging in small-scale farming in the hometown of their parents.

The paper by Eugenia Bayona Escat on commercial strategies that tap Mexican traditions provides a glimpse at how globalization and the neoliberal policies associated with it have impacted indigenous women weavers in Chiapas. The article shows that globalization imperatives have induced women in the predominantly Mayan municipality of Zinacantán to display and commodify traditional symbols, instruments and techniques, such as pre-Hispanic waist loom weaving, and that some of them benefited from their own entrepreneurial skills. Nevertheless, class distinctions remained intact. As a result of being ‘touristified,” indigenous women are allowed to “walk freely through the streets” of the tourist city of San Cristobal, but are still prohibited from entering hotels and restaurants “so as not to disturb the tourists.” The end result of the “global consumption of ethnic culture” due to the tourist industry’s recent discovery of the highlands of Chiapas has been the reinforcement of class, ethnic, and gender relations. Furthermore, as Bayona Escat notes in the final words of her essay, the “undervalued work of indigenous women [remains] insufficient for daily survival.”

Jill Wigle’s article looks at how globalization impacted spatial planning for downtown Mexico City to the detriment of marginalized sectors of the population. After it went into effect in 1994, NAFTA engendered “higher levels of foreign direct investment” including the construction of headquarters in the center of the nation’s capital city, “as national and international investors look to Mexico City to invest their ‘over-accumulating capital.’” This pattern along with policies directed against the downtown’s informal economy contributed to gentrification and drove out the less privileged from the area to the city’s periphery. Mexico City governments, including those under the mayoralty of AMLO (2000-2005) and current foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard (2006-2012), implemented developmentalist programs such as housing renovation for the middle class in the downtown area. “Flexible,” fast-track land use regulation was applied to the city’s central area. In contrast, slow-pace regularization characterized by a lethargic bureaucratic process was applied to low-income peripheral areas whose residents consequently often lost access to urban services. Wigle commends AMLO and Ebrard for “extension of social programs for vulnerable groups and to marginalized areas,” even while their “spatial planning policies undermine[d] the objectives of these programs.”

The articles by Michael Walonen and Tommaso Gravante deal with the issue of protest and violence in Mexico. Walonen uses the genre of the novels of Mexican detective writer and university professor Élmer Mendoza to shed light on historical developments that led into Mexico’s neoliberal period beginning in the 1980s. The 1960s in Mexico as elsewhere was characterized by great idealism among the youth and mobilizations that resonated throughout the rest of society. Subsequently, struggles for change were brutally defeated as in the case of the guerrilla movement in the 1970s in Mexico and the “dirty war” that was waged against it. The characters that run through Mendoza’s Janis Joplin’s Lover (whose protagonist is the cousin of a student activist turned guerrilla) and five subsequent detective novels (whose brother of the main protagonist was also a 1970s guerrilla) bring to light the continuities between the 1970s and the subsequent neoliberal years. Walonen notes that from the “ashes” of the 1970s movement arose the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, which was “founded by surviving militants from this earlier period.” Walonen concludes that “the past of revolution and counter-revolution in Mexico is not dead (to paraphrase Faulkner), in some ways ‘It’s not even past.’” The same applies to the legacy of state repression: “The forms of state violence… during the neoliberal era marks a continuation of, rather than a break from, the forms of repression of this earlier era.”

Gravante’s article attempts to explain the “unexpected response in Mexican society” to the forced disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa which – unlike the general reaction to human rights abuses of the dirty war of the 1970s – “trigger[ed] protests at a scale never seen before.” The question is especially intriguing because of the long-standing stigmatization of students at rural teacher training colleges, such as those of Ayotzinapa, who are often “accused of being unruly, communists or guerrillas.” Gravante points out that Ayotzinapa became “a collective cultural trauma” that broke the “trend of inaction” in the nation in the face of flagrant human rights violations. “Common, everyday people without any type of affiliation” became involved in protests that, in fact, were not sponsored or actively promoted by national political parties such as MORENA (Ellner, 2018: 122-123). Gravante compares the national reaction to other “collective cultural trauma” such as the Holocaust in that “empathy” and “solidarity” toward the victims and their families were displayed. In the process, the victims were transformed “from anonymous numbers to human beings,” as opposed to seeing them “as a depersonalised and chaotic mass” (see also, Maldonado-Maldonado and Bañuelos Astorga, 2020: 166-167). Furthermore, the public discussion of the incident created “a relationship of meanings between the events in Ayotzinapa and other events” such as the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre (see also, Pleyers, 2018: 166). Gravante contextualizes the public reaction by pointing to the discrediting of political institutions such as the presidency, political parties and the judiciary that reached about 80 percent, “thanks to the neoliberal policies and reforms promoted by Fox, Calderon and Peña Nieto.” 

The articles by Nemer Narchi, Sula Vanderplank, Jesús Medina-Rodríguez, and Enrique Alfaro and by Sergio Rea and Rafael Plaza deal with a broad range of environmental concerns along with issues related to democracy and the labor force. The first article, which is a case study of industrial agriculture and breeding in the coastal municipality of San Quintín in Baja California, shows how the logic of global markets has been “socially and environmentally harmful.” The implementation of the neoliberal-inspired NAFTA in 1994 led to “growing international interest in Baja California for large scale agricultural and industrial projects… including those that cannot be easily developed in the U.S. due to environmental restrictions.” This activity generated an “unsustainable demand on the water table” which threatens numerous species with extinction. The article goes on to describe and document capitalist-driven “structural violence” affecting the area’s labor force.

The article by Rea and Paza centers on the numerous shortcomings of the nation’s environmental legislation. The laws stop short of facilitating democratic participation and fails to “provide timely, complete and relevant information on projects potentially affecting ecosystems,” as is required by the International Labour Organization and indigenous populations throughout the continent. The authors point out that the modification of the 1917 Constitution by the pro-neoliberal PAN and PRI opened the doors for fracking and offshore drilling. The article goes on to detail the debate over an important proposed law on biodiversity introduced in 2016 and still under consideration. The law will, according to Greenpeace (in the words of the authors) “open doors to the privatization of both genetic resources and traditional knowledge of Mexico´s indigenous people.”

Some of the critics of González Casanova’s above-discussed argument that under the AMLO government the accent mark should be placed on anti-neoliberalism and not anti-corruption delink corruption and violence from neoliberalism. These writers point out that the seriousness of the problem of corruption and violence predates the neoliberal era beginning in the mid-1980s. They conclude that combating corruption and violence should be the primary targets, not anti-neoliberalism (Calderón Alzati, 2019).

The articles in this issue of Latin American Perspectives point in the opposite direction. It is true that Mexico’s ongoing one-party system which dated back to the 1920s was conducive to high levels of corruption and state-sponsored violence. (7) Nevertheless, as this issue’s articles show, these problems peaked in the age of neoliberalism. The articles by Gravante and Walonen as well as this introductory essay’s discussion of drug trafficking starkly demonstrate the pervasiveness of violence in the neoliberal years. Despite some continuities, the violence reached a new threshold over the last several decades in the era of drug cartels and the Plan Merida. Moreover, corruption under the presidency of Carlos Salinas reached unprecedented levels and hardly receded in subsequent years. In addition to corruption and violence, the articles in this issue shed light on the intensification of problems in numerous areas in the age of neoliberalism: social inequality, environmental degradation, land grabbing, the informal economy, migration, privatization, urban gentrification and displacement of the poor. Given its multidimensional adverse effects, neoliberalism has to be seen as a new stage, different in major ways from the import substitution stage that preceded it.

ENDNOTES

1. Ex-president Calderón recognized that organized crime is a threat to “the state itself, as it tends to displace and substitute law enforcement agencies and institutions” (Calderón, 2015: 52).

2. The maquiladora refers to plants that produce for exports with little local upstream input and are largely exempted from tax, labor and environmental requirements.

3. The relationship between feminicide, the maquiladora, corruption and complicity are revealed in the movies Bordertown (2007) and El Traspatio (2009). 

4. Similarly, those who view speculative financial capital as separate from the rest of the economy underestimate the barriers and challenges in rooting out unproductive speculation (Mello and Sabadini, 2019).

5. This paragraph and the following one regarding attitudes of Mexicans on the issue of drugs are based on numerous conversations I have had during nearly annual trips to the nation since 2005.

6. In his article in this issue, Gravante, calls the armed forces an “untouchable institution.” The issue of military impunity was brought to national attention with the investigation into the Ayotzinapa massacre. The decision to prohibit government-sponsored investigators onto the installations of the 27^th Battalion of the Infantry of the city of Iguala, where the crime took place, allegedly came from President Peña Nieto. Relatives of the 43 students have also demanded access to the barracks (Hernández, 2016; see also the Netflix-distributed documentary “Los Dias de Ayotzinapa,” based on eyewitness testimony).

7. In this paragraph, I restate a thesis that I raised in the introduction to the November 2019 issue of Latin American Perspectives, which is titled “Neoliberalism and the Challenges Facing Popular Sectors.” In it, I point out that contrary to the assertion of some on the left, the nefarious effects of neoliberalism on diverse fronts argue for viewing it as a stage in capitalism and not as representing more of the same (Ellner, 2019: 8).

 

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