The weekly newsletter of the México Solidarity Project

Online at mexicosolidarityproject.org

August 23, 2023/ This week's issue/ Meizhu Lui, for the editorial team

Developing México: a Better ‘American Dream’ 

The word “economy” comes from a Greek word meaning “household management.” From our own budgets, we know we can’t rely just on income — we must build our assets to survive losing a job or having a health emergency. For example, owning a home gives more protection than paying rent. To buy a home, we need a loan from a bank. Without a mortgage, homeownership is out of reach.

The same goes for national “households.” Poor nations don’t want to see their money land in foreign pockets. But to build their own assets, they must seek loans from banks that have more capital than they do — a foreign lender. Their dilemma: how do they build the power to negotiate favorable terms — terms that don’t force them into impossible debt?

This week, historian Christy Thornton tells us about México’s 50 years of struggle around fair global financial arrangements — from shortly after the revolution in the 1920s to the 1970s. In the ‘80s, neoliberal Mexican governments abandoned the ideal of a global economic order and jumped into the capitalist feeding frenzy with both feet. For their own gain, they mortgaged their nation’s future.

But in 2018, the Morena government resurrected the other American dream, the one where the united governments of Latin America compel the US to invest in poorer countries at terms that produce a fair distribution of wealth.

A well-managed household ensures that every member of the family is secure. In the Americas, there is more than enough to guarantee prosperity for all.

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México: Making Rules for the Global Economy

How did you come to write this book, Revolution in Development?

I was interested in the history of economic development from a Latin American perspective. I thought it would probably be a typical simple story. But as I started researching, a weird thing kept happening — various Mexican actors kept popping up where I wasn't expecting them.

That made me wonder about the role that Latin Americans had played in the Bretton Woods conference, the conference that created the World Bank and the IMF in 1944. We have always understood Bretton Woods as a great contest featuring the US and its Treasury official Harry Dexter White versus the UK and its great economist John Maynard Keynes. It was a clash of the titans: the declining empire versus the rising empire. All that was true as far as it goes.

The Mexican Constitution of 1917 was a progressive document, ahead of its time. But weren’t Mexico’s post-revolutionary plans simply to reform the country nationally? You’re saying that Mexico was also active in international arenas.

We, historians of México, have considered the Mexican post-revolutionary state as a purely national project because, unlike other 20th-century social revolutions like in Russia or Cuba, México didn’t try to replicate its revolution on the world stage. There was no sense that the Mexican Revolution provided a model to be followed by other nations.

When you examine the Mexican foreign relations documents, Mexican economists, lawyers, diplomats, and political leaders were constantly engaging in struggle around questions of international economic governance.

From the 1920s on, they advocated for rules and institutions that would, in effect, constrain global capitalism in the North for the benefit of the countries in the South.

Bretton Woods Treaty, 1944-46

The Mexican vision for global economic governance called for representation for the countries of what became the Global South, and redistribution of the surplus capital of the Global North. They advanced new multilateral agreements, outlined innovative international institutions, and during crucial global negotiations fought for the rights of the poorer states and the duties of the richer ones — and compelled the world’s powerful countries to respond. This fight, waged over more than five decades, was Mexico’s “revolution in development.”

You make the point that racism was a key factor at Bretton Woods and beyond. Right?

The Mexican actors were well-educated, often in the US and Europe, and many came from elite landowning families. Many were much whiter than their compatriots, but when they met their counterparts from Europe and the US, they experienced an overwhelmingly racist dismissal of their competence to participate in the international world of finance. 

In the British National Archives, I found an incredible letter from a British treasury official to his boss. He's writing about the Bretton Woods conference and wondering why so many Latin Americans are invited. He states that it's ridiculous to think that a Mexican or a Brazilian economist could participate at the same level as a Belgian or a Dutch economist.

And Keynes famously calls the conference the “most monstrous monkey house” assembled for years.

How do they respond? The Mexican representatives hold up the democratic ideals of their revolution. They say to the representatives of the wealthy countries that because we are inheritors of the Mexican Revolution, we have principles of social justice.

We achieved this domestically — we created new social structures, new social protections, a new property rights regime. To create a democratic world order, we must replicate our principles in  international trade, investment, and finance. We must create rules that constrain the richest countries, corporations, and banks for the benefit of the poorest countries.

What were their views on foreign investment?

From the revolution forward, everyone involved in the Mexican state understood they needed foreign capital to pursue their economic development goals. México didn’t have capital goods themselves; they needed to buy machines to industrialize. They needed international financial institutions to make the transactions. For them, economic sovereignty meant that the Mexican state has democratic control over how foreign investment happens — where the money is invested, where the profits go.

They were not just trying to catch up. They wanted to put the brakes on US economic expansion. They said, your development came from us, so now you must constrain your own activities to our benefit.

But once the capital started to flow in the '50s and '60s, México changed gears. It backed off its vanguard role in advocating for Latin America and the Global South. In the crisis moment of the '70s, while other Third World countries were stridently arguing against the unfairness of institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, México explicitly defended them, advocating for minor reforms instead of for overturning the system.

Before the neo-liberal '80s, México’s vision was bigger than the national economic development project. It sought to transform the domestic economy, but it also sought to devise new rules and institutions for managing the global economic systems that Mexico was increasingly a part of.

That dream echoes to this day — that a global capitalist economy, with proper institutions and rules, could ensure that the poorer, weaker, indebted countries of the world could overcome their structural disadvantages, and enjoy a share of the returns from capitalist
progress. My book tries to give México its rightful place in the history of global finance.

Mexico Reduces Poverty — But Gets No Credit in the US Press 

The piece/Under the headline “Mexico’s poverty rate declines from 50% to 43.5% in four years as remittances almost double,” an August 10 article by AP News reported new data showing there were 5.7 million fewer poor Mexicans in 2022 than in 2018. 

The claim/According to the AP article, the cause of the decline in poverty “was unclear,” but it suggests that the near doubling of remittances from Mexican immigrants in the United States over the previous four years may have been a key factor. They only briefly mention that the federal minimum wage has also nearly doubled since 2018, and that the federal anti-poverty aid program has vastly expanded — fulfilling a promise by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), whose motto is primero los pobres, or the poor come first. The piece appears to discount these measures’ significance in explaining the good news.

The back story/Two years ago, when results from a survey done over the summer of 2020 showed that 3.8 million Mexicans had sunk below the poverty line, news media were all too eager to report that the populist president had failed his most ardent supporters. As it turns out, that disappointing data was a transitory consequence of a global health emergency that had forced a massive economic recess. Whether AMLO was right not to take out a multibillion-dollar loan to spare millions probably several months of worsened scarcities is a valid and important question.

But contrary to the rightwing claim — repeated or implied along with regular reminders of that 2020 data — that the government’s leftwing policies create poverty rather than reverse it, the latest survey results emphatically suggest the opposite: Between 2020 and 2022, nearly 9 million Mexicans ceased to be poor, not just reversing the fortunes of those who fell into poverty during the pandemic but also those of another 5.7 million. As for the impact of the remittances, economist Gerardo Esquivel, a former Banco de México deputy governor, tweeted the other day that while dollars sent home by Mexicans abroad are helpful to their families, their impact overall is minimal, representing “little more than 2% of household incomes,” and “cannot explain these results.”

The bottom line/Corporate media has long shown its antipathy toward AMLO by regularly amplifying false or misleading stories that paint him negatively — and by downplaying accomplishments, if they report on them at all. For instance: In addition to AP News’s slanted coverage of a historic occurrence that should invite study and discussion for policymakers around the world seeking to fight poverty, the vast majority of English-language outlets — from the New York Times to The Guardian — have completely ignored it. Perhaps, besides working to avoid news that makes AMLO look good, they also want to avoid providing their readers with examples of leftwing economic policies that work.

Jesús Hermosillo, a Los Angeles-based researcher, has been a lifelong observer of social justice politics in the United States and México, the original home of his family. His perceptive writing and research — on full display in this 2021 Current Affairs analysis — have always contested negative mainstream narratives on México. More such analyses will be coming via his new México Solidarity Bulletin “Media Rewind”. 

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

Goodyear workers in Mexico choose to be represented by an independent union, IndustriAll Union. After five years of struggle, Goodyear workers in San Luis Potosi now have an independent union.

Encuesta México Agosto 2023, CELAG. 6 de cada 10 mexicanos consideran que el país va por buen camino.

John Gibler, Army impunity slams door on Ayotzinapa investigation, Ojalá. The government of Enrique Peña Nieto lied about the forced disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa. Does AMLO’s complicated relationship with Mexico’s military place him in the same position?

Marcos Roitman Rosenmann, La historia en disputa: qué enseñan los libros de texto, La Jornada.

AMLO’s pro-working class policies are why poverty decreased in Mexico, People’s Dispatch. The sensible policies taken by AMLO’s government are the reason for a significant reduction in poverty—yet mainstream media claims the causes are “unclear”.

Exigen alto al despojo de tierras en Ixil tras represión a campesinos mayas, Redacción Desinformémonos. El colectivo Defensores y Protectores del Futuro de Ixil lanzó una petición para denunciar la responsabilidad de las familias de empresarios Abimerhi y Millet y de las autoridades estatales y municipales, así como exigir un alto al saqueo de las tierras de uso común para intereses particulares.

Jessica Corbett, In 'Assault' on Mexican Food Sovereignty, US Ramps Up Fight Over GM Corn, Common Dreams. "U.S. agribusiness exporters, the biotech industry, and their allies in Congress are pushing this case, intent on compelling Mexico to accept U.S. exports without debate," said Karen Hansen-Kuhn.

Policía mexicana rescata a más de 40 migrantes centroamericanos, Telesur. Según reconoció el miércoles el presidente mexicano, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, las condiciones de hacinamiento a las que se enfrentan los migrantes son una prueba fehaciente del inédito flujo migratorio.

Cecelia Brackey, U.S. escalates trade dispute over GM corn, challenges Mexico's food sovereignty, Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy. U.S. Trade Representative office’s move to form dispute resolution panel lacks justification according to experts.

Jorge Zepeda Patterson, Las arriesgadas apuestas de Marcelo, sin Embargo. En los últimos días Marcelo Ebrard emprendió una estrategia que sacudió el tablero de la sucesión presidencial, a menos de tres semanas de definirse el candidato del partido mayoritario a la presidencia.

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, Courtney Childs, Victoria Hamlin, Agatha Hinman, Peter Shapiro. To give feedback or get involved yourself, please email us!

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