The weekly newsletter of the México Solidarity Project

Every issue archived online at mexicosolidarityproject.org

January 10, 2024/ This week’s issue/ Meizhu Lui, for the editorial team

Two Faces of Janus: Mexico and the US 

Janus, the two-faced god of the new year, looks backward and forward at the same time. More than other years, 2024 will be a year of transition for both Mexico and the United States. Will they be stuck in the past or move boldly into the future? 

This year, the presidents of both nations will be chosen.

In Mexico, at the end of his six-year term, AMLO has a 75% approval rating. While he is beloved, it’s not a matter of personality. The majority of Mexicans feel more secure because of the 4th Transformation programs, which actually deliver on the promises of the three previous revolutions: to uplift farmers and working people and end the privileges of the owning class. Most Mexicans swell with pride at Mexico’s new resolve to manage its own affairs out of Big Brother’s control. 

Their choice is clear. Go back to a past of privatization, corruption, and impoverishment embodied in conservative candidate Xochitl Gálvez. Or, continue the 4T under a new leader, Claudia Sheinbaum. With a consistent 20% lead in the polls, Morena candidate Sheinbaum looks to win handily. For Mexicans, the 2024 election promises to be a joyful and festive time to celebrate Mexico’s radical break with the past.

And in the US? The people are as divided as the two faces of Janus. One face looks back toward the Confederacy, wanting a racist, classist, anti-democratic government. The other face may or may not be willing to pull the lever for current president Biden to avoid the fascist alternative. The mood of the US electorate is one of fear and loathing. 

The difference is stark. We’ll see which face of Janus each nation will wear in 2024. 

We’re excited to announce MSP member José Luis Granados Ceja’s

in-person West Coast speaking tour!

This accomplished investigative journalist from México City spoke with hundreds of people on his East Coast tour, sparking much interest in México. He will speak, among other things, on issues of immigration and the border, national sovereignty, and trade, and what this means for México and US progressives. Here are the West Coast cities José Luis will visit and the dates:

Jan 31 - Feb. 2:  Portland, OR

Feb. 3:  Salem, OR

Feb. 4 - 6:  Oakland and San Francisco, CA

Feb. 6 - 8:  San Diego, CA

Feb. 8 - 9:  Los Angeles CA

Bring friends and feel free to share this notice. Donations gratefully accepted.

Any questions? Contact Betty Forrester or Jeff Elkner

Don’t miss an issue! Sign up for a free México Solidarity Bulletin subscription.

2024: Stay Tuned for a Momentous New Year

In 2024, Lopez Obrador’s presidency will end, as well as US president Biden’s. Our Bulletins will bring you the voices of social movements and political activists around key issues in México. We’ll cover migrants and Mexicanos in the US, and the US-México relationship, which will be a critical factor in both countries’ national elections. In our Voices and Reflections sections this week, we highlight some 2023 Bulletins that illustrate what we will continue to cover. Researchers, analysts and cultural voices will enhance our understanding.

We’ll bring you a unique insider viewpoint that cannot be found anywhere else.

Stay tuned!

“The traditional method for choosing the candidate we call the dedazo, from dedo, meaning finger. The outgoing president would point to the person he wanted to succeed him. Simple! In the nomination process for 2024, AMLO rejected the dedazo; he wanted the Morena candidate to be chosen by the people.” 

https://mexicosolidarityproject.org/archives/148/

“We worked a regular 48-hour week. Everyone got the same pay, no matter whether you worked there seven years or were a new employee: the minimum wage, as set by the federal government, 312 pesos a day ($17.00). We won a union, but then the owners closed the plant. It’s painful and unjust.”  

https://mexicosolidarityproject.org/archives/150/

“The workers that employers import via the H-2A program are at their complete mercy. They can work only for the employer that recruits them. If they complain, they're fired, lose their visa, and get deported back to México where they're blacklisted so they can't return in future seasons. The net result: Both undocumented and H2-A workers get deprived of their basic rights.”

https://mexicosolidarityproject.org/archives/116/

“Having 43 young people disappear at once was unusual and triggered massive outrage. Mexican investigators uncovered proof that people at the highest levels of government had lied and obstructed justice. Investigative work in the US put the students’ disappearance into a broader international context. The Ayotzinapa case connected directly to drug trafficking operations from Iguala to Chicago.”

https://mexicosolidarityproject.org/archives/118/

“Both parties are unhappy about México’s growing influence in Latin America and the Caribbean. AMLO is trying to create an economic bloc not based on the needs of the US economy. Military intervention? For Mexicans, you don’t have to be a socialist to understand exploitation and imperialism. Under AMLO and Morena, we’re gaining the confidence to assert our right to control our own future.”

https://mexicosolidarityproject.org/archives/147/

“Precious metals taken by force since the 1500’s made European colonialists rich and laid the foundation for the developing capitalist system. Under neoliberalism, the Mexican government granted 106,000,000 hectares — over 50% of Mexican land! — as mining concessions. The reform of the Mining Law in 2023 now limits what mining companies do and protects people and the environment.”

https://mexicosolidarityproject.org/archives158/

The Present and Future Grow Out of the Past

In 2023 we featured thoughtful reflections that inspire and guide us to a better future.

“AMLO has found a way to use anti-corruption discourse to re-legitimize the state and advance a project against neoliberalism. The way that he’s done this is by redefining neoliberalism: neoliberalism wasn’t the contraction of the state, as is normally assumed. Instead, neoliberalism was the instrumentalization of the state in the service of the upper class. Neoliberalism is corruption. It wasn’t the separation of the state and market; it was actually their coming together as part of an elite class project. This holds lessons for the Left at large.” 

https://mexicosolidarityproject.org/archives/151/

“The mural form is my favorite. I love the theatricality, the social interaction in a public place, the monumentality, the interface with the environment. Murals make the images accessible to a wide public: to the folks in the streets, at demonstrations, or just going about their lives, struggling, loving, suffering, rejoicing. You’ll be walking down the street, and pow! A building becomes a song, a film on walls, an alternative vision to the commercialism bombarding us from billboards to our telephones.”

https://mexicosolidarityproject.org/archives/115/

“Under México’s penal code, stealing a cow rated as a more serious crime than raping a woman. And if you terminated a pregnancy, you were committing a crime. We had to decide how much we should ask for, how much progress we could realistically make. After much debate, we agreed that we would avoid the language of criminalization. So later, in 2021, we felt we had won a huge victory when lawmakers finally decriminalized abortion at the federal level.”

https://mexicosolidarityproject.org/archives/119/

“Chicago is México’s US political capital. While Los Angeles has a larger population, they’re not active the way we are. In 2000, we held our own symbolic Mexican election, even though our votes didn’t count. We set up 42 polling places, and 10,000 people voted. We’ve been doing it ever since. Most Chicago Mexicans identify with the left. In 2018, AMLO got 69% of the vote in México; he got 78% here. The PRI polled at less than 5%. Why? Because for most Mexicans, neoliberal PRI government policies are the reason they had to emigrate.

https://mexicosolidarityproject.org/archives/155/

“Arsenic came mostly as a byproduct from the smelting of copper and silver, a large-scale enterprise in late 19th century México. American companies imported arsenic into the US to make glass, paints, and insecticides. By the 1930s, US companies were sending arsenic-based pesticides back to México for use on cotton plantations. Arsenic happens to be toxic to humans as well as insects, but the deadly effects of this cumulative poison took a long time to recognize. In both México and the United States, the Mexican and Black workers who dominated the farm labor sector suffered the most from the deadly effects of arsenic and other pesticides.”

https://mexicosolidarityproject.org/archives/120/

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

David Raby, Mexico shows how to neutralise the extreme right Labour Outlook. Concerns about a possible regional right wing advance after the election of Milei in Argentina are “extremely understandable but it’s important to realise that not all countries are vulnerable to this type of extremism. Mexico under AMLO is a model of how to neutralise the extreme right.”

Elba Mónica Bravo, En México hay unos 110 mil haitianos; 45 mil en CDMX La Jornada. “Pedimos unión, solidaridad de todos en beneficio de nuestros hermanos migrantes haitianos, pido a los hermanos mexicanos seguir ayudando a nuestros hermanos haitianos.”

Viri Ríos, The Real Reasons for AMLO’s Popularity Americas Quarterly. Mexico’s leader is much more than the “charming demagogue” often portrayed in the foreign media.

Eder Suárez, La nueva política en seguridad garantiza la soberanía y el combate a la corrupción: AMLO De Raíz. Durante los cinco años al frente del Gobierno Federal, la política de seguridad ha buscado garantizar la soberanía de México al tiempo que combatir la corrupción imperante en sexenios anteriores, afirmó el presidente López Obrador.

Timothy A. Wise, Genetically Modified Corn Tribunal Raises Concerns with First Decisions foodtank. The Three Kings brought gifts, but the Three Panelists empowered to settle the ongoing trade dispute between the U.S. and Mexico over genetically modified corn—Christian Häberli of Switzerland, Hugo Perezcano Díaz of Mexico and Jean E. Kalicki from the U.S.—seem not to be in the same festive spirit.

Kurt Hackbarth, La última Juana Sentido Común. Entre las hazañas más importantes de este sexenio en México figura la de romper la mafia farmacéutica que dominaba de la misma forma aquí: un trabajo que se tendrá que consolidar en el gobierno siguiente.

Ana Isabel Martinez, Sarah Morland and Valentine Hilaire, Mexico hails unspecified 'important' deals with US in talks on migration, trade Reuters. AMLO urged U.S. lawmakers to invest more to help the poor in Latin America and the Caribbean "instead of putting up barriers, barbed wire fences in the river, or thinking about building walls."

Zedryk Raziel, Arturo Zaldívar: “La Corte está dominada por un grupo opositor y aliado a causas conservadoras” El País. El ministro en retiro confronta las críticas sobre su cercanía con el Gobierno y sostiene que la mayoría de los jueces del Supremo responde a la derecha, la oligarquía y al ‘PRIAN’

Alejandro Santos Cid, And they shouted ‘enough’: The 30-year-long Indigenous uprising that rewrote Mexican history El País. It’s too early to know what new direction the most iconic anti-globalization guerrilla movement will now take. For the moment, the Zapatistas are celebrating three decades of survival against the state, along with their own way of understanding politics, life, dignity and freedom.

Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, México: un cine sin cines nexos.  El TLCAN y su efecto en la distribución y exhibición del cine mexicano han sido una causa primaria de las contradicciones estructurales de la industria cinematográfica nacional.

The Mexico Solidarity Project brings together activists from various socialist and left organizations and individuals committed to worker and global justice. We 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, Agatha Hinman, Victoria Hamlin, Courtney Childs, Susan Weiss.  To give feedback or get involved yourself, please email us!

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