The weekly newsletter of the México Solidarity Project

December 16, 2020/ This week's issue/ Meizhu Lui, for the editorial team

 

A Note from the Editors: Time Warp

 

We shouldn’t think of time, the astrophysicists tell us, as linear. Right now, in the transition from 2020 to 2021, we all understand that. We haven’t had a bigger US leap from one year to another since 1945 became 1946. Out goes Donald. In come vaccinations.

 

All this may make this year’s holiday — and post-electoral — season the perfect time to pause and reflect, to refresh our energy. Here at the México Solidarity Project, we’re going to do just that, with a two-week holiday time-out. Have some ideas or reactions you’d like us to consider during the break? Write us at editors@mexicosoliarityproject.org. Thanks!

 

Navigating the Hurricane

 

In 2020, elected leaders guiding ships of state around the globe ran into the most awesome hurricane ever: Covid-19. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in his second year as president, would have no smooth sailing. But AMLO had already made changes, in his first year, that prepared the Mexican people for the stormy waters.

 

Before AMLO, bribes and financial rewards for loyalty, fraud and outright theft had defined politics as usual. México’s ruling elite had treated the public treasury like a private bank account. The wealthy, people quipped, didn’t become politicians. Politicians became the wealthy. AMLO changed all that.

 

Upon taking office, AMLO almost immediately increased financial support for ordinary people. Some 70 percent of all Mexicans now receive government assistance. The dollars come, in large part, from plugging the corruption leaks that were sinking México’s ship of state even before the Covid storm.

 

In the US, mid-term elections two years into a president’s term usually repudiate a president’s party, signifying dissatisfaction with what little has been accomplished. In México, two years in, AMLO still enjoys the confidence of 65 percent of the population.

 

Amid strong winds, a good captain first aims to stay afloat and then get back on course. AMLO and Morena know where they want to land: on a more democratic and egalitarian society. They have the ship of state, Mexicans believe, moving in the right direction.  

Today, as we close out 2020, we excerpt from Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s reflections on his first two years in office, as delivered December 2 in his second annual State of the Nation address in México City.

On the fight against corruption

 

On our first day in office, my wife and I drove to the Legislature for the swearing in ceremony without the presence of the Presidential General Staff apparatus or the usual paraphernalia of power.

 

We knew what changes had to be made. Among other modifications to the legal code, corruption, the massive theft of gasoline, and electoral fraud were classified as serious crimes; the National Guard was created; tax waivers were cancelled; the possibility of holding citizen consultations was guaranteed; the procedure for revoking the president’s term in office was approved; presidential immunity was eliminated so that the president could be judged for any crime just like any other Mexican. In two years, we saved 1.30 trillion pesos in government purchases and contracts, fuel theft — what is known as huachicol — was reduced to a minimum; tax fraud and other harmful malpractices that proliferated in public finances under the old regime were drastically reduced.

 

On the Covid-19 crisis 

 

We have installed 32,203 general hospital beds and 10,735 with ventilators and 193,645 general practitioners have been trained. 71,000 new health-care workers were hired. I cannot fail to mention the solidarity, the humanism shown by foundations sponsored by companies and private hospitals that, since the first days of the pandemic, have been supporting us in attending to patients with COVID and other illnesses. We have established relations with pharmaceutical companies and governments internationally to obtain and apply the COVID vaccine as soon as possible.

 

On the economic crisis

 

Facing the economic crisis has been less painful and complex than fighting the spread of the virus. It has turned out that it was very useful that we discarded the economic prescriptions applied during the neo-liberal period, starting with the strategy of plunging the population into debt in order to rescue those at the top. Thanks to the austerity measures and the fight against corruption, we did not have to resort to taking on new loans and all the resources freed up go directly. That is, preference is given to the poor and the middle classes.

 

In two years, the minimum wage has increased by 30 percent, in real terms, something that had not happened in the past 36 years of neoliberal rule or prior to that period. The stipends provided to senior citizens and people with disabilities were paid in advance, educational scholarships were maintained, support was given to peasant farmers, growers, and fishermen, and the credit program was expanded for small businesses in the formal and informal sectors of the economy.

 

Not only was the subsistence of all facilitated, but a drop in the consumption of food and other basic goods was avoided, which would have had additional disastrous effects for the rest of the economy. This strategy coincided with the 10 percent increase in remittances sent from the United States by our migrant compatriots to their families. Here or there, our people always show extraordinary solidarity.

AMLO Isn’t Pro-Trump. He’s Proving a Point About Foreign Meddling.

Is Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Donald Trump’s backpocket? His critics in the United States certainly think so, and they point to AMLO’s refusal to acknowledge Trump’s defeat in the weeks right after the U.S. election. Kurt Hackbarth, co-founder of the independent media project “MexElects,” has a different take, as this excerpt from his analysis published earlier this month in Jacobin explains. AMLO, meanwhile, sent Biden congratulations on his electoral triumph right after the Electoral College made that victory irrefutable.

On November 7, four days after Election Day, the major television networks called the US presidential election for Joe Biden. In response, many countries proceeded to congratulate the former vice president; others did not. Among those who have declined to do so is Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a fact that has incensed the Democratic Party hierarchy and the Washington intelligentsia alike. Representative Sylvia Garcia has insisted that “an extended abrazo from our friends in Mexico is in order”; her colleague Henry Cuellar preferred a more open threat, warning that the “slight” would be “remembered” by Democrats.

 

For his part, AMLO was unmoved. “We are adhering to our policy of principles, to our legality,” he said at his morning press conference. “And furthermore, we are not a colony. We are a free, independent, and sovereign country.”

 

With the argument that “the best foreign policy is domestic policy,” AMLO came to power in 2018 seeking to find a way to neutralize American interference in his reform agenda as much as possible. Despite dire warnings to the contrary, he managed to work out a sort of détente with Donald Trump that left him the room for maneuver he was looking for.

 

AMLO’s decision to hold off on recognizing Biden, moreover, is in line with public opinion: according to a poll by the Mexican newspaper El Financiero, 57 percent of those polled agreed with the presidential decision to wait, and only 25 percent disagreed. In the context of embarrassing losses among Mexican-American communities in Texas last month, the Democrats might want to spend a little less time lecturing their neighbor on its own diplomatic prerogatives and spend a little more listening to people on both sides of the border.

Regardless of what happens with the Cienfuegos affair, Mexico will not be anywhere near free with an asymmetric power playing spy-versus-spy in its territory for foreign benefit. It is high time for the DEA to go, and for the era of American vigilantism south of the border to come to an end.

Recent news reports and commentaries, from progressive and mainstream media,
on life and struggles on both sides of the US-México border

 

Raul Cortes Fernandez and Drazen Jorgic, ‘No presents’: Mexicans urged to embrace abstemious Christmas to stop pandemic, Interaksyon. Mexicans should cancel celebrations and even avoid exchanging Christmas presents to beat the coronavirus, advises AMLO.

 

Laura Carlsen, For US-México Relations, the Real Hope Lies with Energized Social Movements, Indypendent. Presidents will always have limitations. Our challenge as activists: to use the grassroots energy and the radicalization of the past six months to look over the border as well.

 

Andalusia Knoll Soloff, How Opioid Addiction in the U.S. Fuels a Crisis for Farmers in Mexico, Intercept. With Americans turning to fentanyl, poppy growers in Mexico are turning to migrant work and organized crime.

 

Justin Ling, Legalization Advocates Hope to End Mexico’s Drug War, Foreign Policy. Threats, violence, and clampdowns have failed. Can decriminalization work?

 

Mary Beth Sheridan, Mexico lashes out at U.S. with law expected to harm cooperation on drug fight, Washington Post. México is protesting “unilateral solutions” to combating international drug-trafficking.

 

Ana Swanson, Panel Finds ‘Serious Concerns’ With Mexican Labor Reforms, New York Times. Support for the new U.S.-México trade agreements will depend, in part, on how successfully the changes in the agreements advance the rights of workers.

 

Catalina Pérez Correa, AMLO’s Broken Campaign Promise: Demilitarizing México, Americas Quarterly. AMLO has expanded the powers of the Mexican armed forces beyond national security tasks, granting them powers over customs offices, airports, health programs, and infrastructure construction.

 

Alejandro García Magos, The Plebeian Populism of López Obrador, Open Democracy. Plebeian politics politicizes the social and economic differences between haves and have nots, precisely what AMLO has done throughout his long political career.

 

Lower House Approves a Bill To Reform Judicial Branch, Telesur. México's lower chamber has approved legislation that seeks to consolidate the judicial career system, enhance equal opportunity, and combat nepotism.

 

Yvette Hammett, Reduced prison sentences lead to deportation for hundreds, Legal Examiner. Some 35,000 non-citizens make up nearly 20% of the federal prison population, with Mexico constituting the largest contingent.

 

México: AMLO To Recover Money From Plant Purchase, Telesur. The government is working to recover $200 million from the 2013 sale of the Agro Nitrogen plant to purchase Covid vaccines.

 

Revés de la Suprema Corte a Trump; avala leyes "santuario" en California, La Jornada. A defeat for Trump administration efforts to strike down California laws that protect immigrants from deportation.

 

J. Jaime Hernández, Los Angeles Times pide perdón a generaciones de migrantes, La Jornada Sin Fronteras. En un inédito acto de contrición, el más leído periódico de la costa oeste ha reconocido que “durante sus primeros 80 años de vida Los Angeles Times fue una institución profundamente arraigada en la supremacía blanca.”

The Mexico Solidarity Project brings together activists from various socialist and left organizations and individuals committed to worker and global justice who see the 2018 election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as president of México as a watershed moment. AMLO and his progressive Morena party aim to end generations of corruption, impoverishment, and subservience to US interests. Our Project supports not just Morena, but all Mexicans struggling for basic rights, and opposes US efforts to undermine organizing and México’s national sovereignty. 

 

Editorial committee: Meizhu Lui, Bruce Hobson, Bill Gallegos, Sam Pizzigati. We welcome your suggestions and feedback. Interested in getting involved? Drop us an email!

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