Mexico: a New Turn for the Left (Resumen)

By Atilio Boron on October 2024

The powerful could not with AMLO, who took away many of their privileges and began to put an end to the plunder they had exercised for more than a century. Nor will they be able to with Claudia Sheinbaum.

Claudia Sheinbaum begins today [by Tuesday] a new six-year term within the framework of the Fourth Transformation initiated with the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) on December 1, 2018. Sheinbaum arrives at Mexico’s highest office on the shoulders of a sweeping electoral victory: 59.76 percent against the meager 27.45 percent of her most immediate pursuer, right-wing candidate Xóchitl Gálvez.

And also being the beneficiary of the positive legacy bequeathed by her predecessor, who is retiring from the presidency -and from politics, as he has said- with an impressive 74 percent popular approval rating that reaches 77 percent in other polls. Among women, AMLO’s approval rises to 78 percent; but the sharpest jump occurs with those over 65 (87 percent) and the younger electorate, under 34, where his approval fluctuates around 80 percent.

There are objective reasons for this popular support. López Obrador’s government implemented a series of social programs that benefited the elderly, once left to their own devices, with pensions. He also launched a massive scholarship program for young high school and university students. In addition, during his administration, 145 universities or university institutes were created within the framework of the “Universities for Benito Juárez Welfare” program, conceived to extend free public higher education -attention Casa Rosada!- in rural areas and marginalized districts of the country, where popular access to university was very difficult.

This proposal is inspired by the experience of the American “community colleges”, offering programs that normally last two years in specialized fields with immediate employment opportunities such as agronomy, nursing, automotive mechanics, among others, and that either enable students to be trained to respond to the needs of their community or serve as a gateway to careers offered by traditional universities.

Among the peasant population, support for the Morena government and its allied parties, mainly the Labor Party and the Green Party, is also in the majority, as a result of numerous initiatives within the framework of the “Sembrando Vida” program (economic support to reforest and revitalize agricultural soils); guarantee prices for corn, beans, wheat, rice and milk; microcredits “a la palabra”, direct subsidies to producers as well as numerous infrastructure works that improved living conditions and the possibilities of developing economic activities and guaranteeing adequate transportation of what is produced. The new president has indicated her firm decision to maintain AMLO’s achievements.

She counts on a qualified majority in both houses of congress and the governorships of 23 of the 32 states that make up the republic. To maintain the social advances but also to broaden its social agenda and intensify the fight against poverty, which although it was reduced during the last six-year term, still hovers around thirty-five percent of the population as a consequence of the increase caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

There is nothing in the current and future governing cast that could be mistaken for naïve conformism. Satisfied with what has been achieved, however, there prevails a lucid conviction that there is still much to be done and that the nefarious legacy of long decades of neoliberal orthodoxy cannot be dismantled in a six-year term. Proof of this was the difficulty to advance in a fiscal reform, in cutting the independence of the Bank of Mexico or modifying the neoliberal components of the T-MEC, the new treaty between Mexico, the US and Canada, which replaced the one signed in 1994, which limits the margin of action of the Mexican government.

Domestically, Sheinbaum will have to deal with several burning issues, the main one being insecurity. Violence and drug trafficking, especially in the northern states of the country, with a focus on Sinaloa and its cartel war, results in an average of 80 homicides per day, and on some days, up to 100 homicides per day. In the year 2023 the homicide rate was 23.3 per 100,000 inhabitants, slightly higher than that of Brazil, 22.3, not to mention Argentina, where it was 4.4 per 100,000 inhabitants.

But the issue of insecurity in Mexico or Brazil does not even remotely reach the spectacular and yellowish nature of the Argentinean case, especially when progressive forces are in power, and where the media scoundrels bombard the collective imaginary with apocalyptic images of uncontrolled violence.

Related to the issue of violence, the implementation of the Judicial Reform, already with constitutional rank, will be one of the biggest challenges Sheinbaum’s administration will face. All of Latin America looks with hope at this advance that the government of the Fourth Transformation has achieved to break the resistance of one of the most backward and conservative centers of our countries.

The new president begins her administration with an economy that rests on solid foundations. The peso was significantly revalued against the dollar; the international reserves of the Bank of Mexico reached a historical level of 225,427 million dollars in the last months, while exports reached 600 billion dollars in 2023 (almost equal to Argentina’s GDP in that same year). Add to the above a growing commercial and technological link with China, which has now become the second largest trading partner after the US. In addition to these favorable conditions, the country has received 63 billion dollars in remittances from Mexicans living abroad and more than 12 billion dollars from tourism, all of which make up an economic picture that is not free of challenges but which allows us to look to the future with cautious optimism.

Contrary to Argentina’s official credo, the left in government, far from impoverishing and underdeveloping countries, does the opposite, as the Mexican case amply demonstrates. I wish Milei would take note of this lesson, although I see it unlikely, blinded as he is by his ideological fanaticism.

On the external flank, Sheinbaum will have to deal with a convulsed international scenario. The closest: the tensions within the T-MEC. It is well known that for Washington Mexico is the most important country in the world, although its bureaucrats and experts say otherwise with the intention of weakening the negotiating capacity of the Aztec country. Such importance goes hand in hand with an uncontainable tendency to interfere in Mexico’s internal affairs. Examples: the militant opposition to the energy reform and, just now, to the Judicial Reform.

There is also the complex issue of migration, given that Mexico is an obligatory passage for the huge caravans of victims of neoliberal policies from Central American and Caribbean countries seeking to enter the U.S., which provokes racist and very aggressive responses from the U.S. leadership, such as those of Trump and just a little less from Harris.

The growing commercial and political gravity of China will be another issue that will strain the always complicated relationship with Washington. It is not just a matter of trade but a geopolitical issue of vast scope. AMLO’s “Mayan Train” will not only favor the economic and social development of the Mexican Southeast, but it is also a key piece to turn the Isthmus of Tehuantepec into a new bioceanic passage between the Atlantic, via the Caribbean Sea, and the Pacific. At just two hundred kilometers wide, it is the most attractive alternative to facilitate the traffic of goods between East and West, which would relegate the Panama Canal, in fact controlled by Washington, to an unbearable obsolescence. There is a huge Chinese interest in promoting this initiative and this inevitably leads to a collision course with the US government.

There would also be other issues on Mexico’s external agenda, such as its deep respect for national self-determination, its support for multilateralism and, of course, the multipolarism that is here to stay in the international system. For now, there is no talk of Mexico’s eventual entry into BRICS, which would be little less than a declaration of war for Washington, but the question floats in the air.

In sum, Sheinbaum will have to face challenges of all kinds both domestically and internationally. But she is a very intelligent person, with a solid political background, and a long career in the management of public affairs. And, above all, she is a woman of strong convictions who will not be intimidated by the powers that be: the Mexican plutocracy and its American masters. They could not stand AMLO, who took away many of their privileges and began to put an end to the plunder they had exercised for more than a century. They will not be able to defeat Claudia Sheinbaum either, and this is great news for Mexico and all of Latin America. There is a reason why the big media in the US, Latin America and Spain are attacking her.