The weekly newsletter of the México Solidarity Project

Every issue archived online at mexicosolidarityproject.org

January 17, 2024/ This week’s issue/ Meizhu Lui, for the editorial team

Our Peoples’ Health: House on Fire!

 “Germs don’t carry a green card.” That was a saying we had at Health Care for All, a healthcare advocacy organization in Massachusetts. Policymakers may not want to spend money caring for people who aren’t citizens — but when immigrants mingle with citizens at workplaces, in school or on the street, viruses travel from one person to the next without checking anyone’s papers. 

At one time in the US, if your house was on fire, the firefighters wouldn’t come if you hadn’t bought insurance. But the fire didn’t care and merrily consumed one house and then the next. If you lived next door to the house where the fire started, would you say, “I’m so glad I have insurance,” or would you say, “I wish the firefighters would put out that fire next door before it burns my house down?” People chose the latter and voted in a public system of firefighting.

Similarly, the threat of ill health — COVID anyone? — affects us all as part of a population, not simply as individuals. Why does this common-sense approach, a public solution, elude the US and Mexico?

As Gustavo Leal Fernández points out in today’s interview, health policy discussions are all about money, not health. Who gets to profit from “care?” Who pays? Instead, he asks, let’s talk about how we can make a profound shift away from capitalist healthcare models that feature expensive western medical treatments and are often culturally inappropriate.

In both countries, policies should focus on preventing injury and illness. But — as AMLO tells us — consider “first, the poor.” If the most marginalized people can call the fire department, all our houses are protected.

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

in-person West Coast speaking tour!

The México Solidarity Project and Democratic Socialists of America are proud to host this accomplished investigative journalist from México City. He 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 - 7:  San Diego, CA

Feb. 8 - 10:  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.

Health Policy and the 4th Transformation

Everyone wants to be healthy! What does “being healthy” mean to the average Mexican citizen?

This is the right question to start with! Because we have to build the healthcare system from the bottom up, beginning with the beliefs, desires, and needs of the people.

Yes, but if you need it, getting medical care,  including hospitalization, is important. Before AMLO was elected in 2018, what kind of access was there?

Most Mexicans get state-funded healthcare, although a significant number still don’t have access. Under neo-liberal PRI governments, the healthcare sector was privatized in hopes that Mexico would be more attractive to private investment. Privatized medical care resulted in several bad trends: only those with money could afford care, private hospitals were located only in big cities, and the gulfs between rich and poor and urban and rural grew even wider.

During the PRI governments, private companies sold complex new medical technologies to the government at inflated prices. The Mexican government wanted to be seen as “modern,” but the technologies were hugely expensive, and often the intended users didn’t know how or were unable to use them! For example, what good are technical devices in rural areas that don’t even have electricity? 

The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the International Bank for Development facilitated these policies. Neoliberal PRI presidents supported them domestically in their health and budget departments.

One of AMLO’s campaign promises before his election was that he would improve access to care. Did he succeed? 

He promised a public system of free care for all. But an important lesson in developing policy is that you need clear plans that are developed together with the people. AMLO’s first healthcare team was better at criticizing the existing system than developing a new explicit agenda. They were an interdisciplinary academic team, very theoretical, with almost no experience in operating a healthcare system or even understanding the actual state of the existing one. How many new clinics were needed?  How many doctors? Where? They were experts in words but not prepared to move quickly

Moreover, the initial team had unanticipated conflicts among themselves. They lacked consensus about the program’s direction, which was supposed to be developed in the context of the Fourth Transformation, that is, to prioritize Mexico’s poorest and guarantee their access to health care. On top of this — the COVID pandemic. It created an unprecedented emergency, which even further interrupted health sector reform.

What has happened since COVID? Can Mexico afford a universal system?

What can we afford? In Mexico and the US, we commonly debate how a national healthcare system should be financed and not so much about the mechanisms for delivering services! AMLO has always said that the money is there; that is not the problem.

Under past governments, health funds were channeled to the states. The system was riddled with corruption and also had profound design problems. One terrible example was the Seguro Popular, ostensibly a universal public health care program, which emerged from the desktop computer of Julio Frenk (today chancellor of the Universidad de Miami). The program had no operational knowledge about the great diversity of Mexico’s regions and ethnic groups. It might have been designed from the air by drones! Little of the money got to the people.

On Dec. 29 2023, workers unpack medicine at a “mega-pharmacy” warehouse that will help end a supply issue for hospitals that don’t have medicines needed by patients. (AP Photo: Fernando Llano)

AMLO believes a strong central government manages the money and financing of health services better than the states, but health planning and programming must be local because conditions and populations vary in different parts of the country. In other words, the legal framework and funding stream must be centralized, but the operational side must be localized. Still, we need much more discussion on the ground as to what this should look like.

The domestic production of essential medicines and medical devices must also increase. Mexico’s health economy needs to be more self-sufficient to avoid the extortionist prices charged by foreign companies. Recently, AMLO announced a national mega-pharmacy that can supply the drugs that people need.

Most importantly, the healthcare focus will shift to primary healthcare and community action, as was proposed in the 1978 Alma Ata Declaration of the World Health Organization. That is, it will prioritize prevention. Public health initiatives will address infectious diseases, diabetes, heart disease, TB, and respiratory problems.

So, is health care a human right or a privilege? Do you have hope that AMLO’s promises can be fulfilled under a new president?

Morena’s candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum, may well become president in 2024. The opposition, which wants to copy the US system, has been discredited and is not taken seriously. With her scientific background, Claudia will get the research done and collect the data to ensure that the people’s voices drive all plans to improve the population’s health and to provide free and accessible care.

However, the Business Coordinating Council (CCR) has already proposed a different model, “A Better Mexico for All," that would continue promoting private health insurance, as in the US. And so, until the election, the matter is still up in the air.

Leftist Women Write Morena’s Next Chapter

Claudia Sheinbaum at a political rally on 12/10/23, Tlaxcala, MX. Essene Hernandez/Eyepix Group/Getty Images

On November 19, Dr Claudia Sheinbaum, the former mayor of Mexico City, became MORENA’s “pre-candidate,” guaranteeing that she will be the standard-bearer in the presidential election to be held on June 2, 2024. Days before, Clara Brugada, the head of the city’s Iztapalapa district, registered as the party’s pre-candidate for Mexico City mayor in elections to be held the same day.

There will also be female gubernatorial candidates in four other states. Building on the gender parity achieved in the Mexican Congress in the elections of 2018, the next chapter of MORENA’s history is set to be shaped by women.

The Post-’68 Generation

Sheinbaum and Brugada have much in common. Just a year apart in age (Sheinbaum is sixty-one and Brugada is sixty), both grew up in the turbulent generation following the twin massacres of Tlaltelolco 1968 and Corpus Cristi 1971. Both cut their teeth in left-wing militancy and activism, Sheinbaum as a student leader in the 1986–87 movement opposing one of the National Autonomous University’s periodic attempts to turn Mexico’s free public university model into a fee-paying one; Brugada defending housing rights in Iztapalapa, a sprawling district of nearly two million made up of many internal immigrants from the countryside. Both worked their way up through the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) before becoming founding members of MORENA in 2014. Both prioritized public transport, collaborating on the elevated trolley and cable car lines known as the Cablebus, which serve the marginalized communities on the outskirts of Mexico City.

The Mexico City mayoralty (in reality, governorship, as the federal district attained the status of state in 2016) is a natural springboard to a presidential candidacy. Sheinbaum has seized upon this political advantage by acting on a wide variety of fronts, building parks, schools, and a pair of universities, repairing housing damaged in the massive 2017 earthquake, investing in public Wifi, solar and hydrothermal energy, and designing a widely praised vaccine rollout for COVID. She made women safer with a network of brightly lit “safe routes” with emergency buttons, a dedicated hotline, women’s lawyers in public prosecutor’s offices, and the “aggressor leaves the house” law.

But Sheinbaum’s biggest calling card at the national level will undoubtedly be her crime-fighting success: where the federal government has struggled to contain cartel and organized crime-fueled violence, Mexico City has seen a 50-70 percent reduction in “high impact” crimes such as homicides, kidnapping, and human trafficking.

Sheinbaum Must Navigate the Pitfalls

Sheinbaum marks a break in questions of style. Where AMLO wields his regional Tabasco accent with aplomb, she speaks with the polished tones of the capital. In contrast to his folksy phraseology and fiery, naming-names rhetoric, Sheinbaum prefers a more measured discourse.

This very difference, however, entails its dangers. While measured tones work well in press conferences and one-on-one interviews, Sheinbaum has yet to find her footing before larger crowds, where she can often sound stiff and wooden.

Sheinbaum’s bet is clearly to replace immediate charisma with a sense of technical competence. But absent the communicational wizardry and ear to the ground that helped López Obrador get over so many humps in his administration, her manner could slip into a perception of being out of touch, not just “technical” but “technocratic.”

She has made a few policy and strategic missteps. But nothing has put as much as a dent in the sense of inevitability that surrounds Sheinbaum: a cross-section of polls consistently puts her twenty to thirty points ahead of the scandal-ridden, right-wing candidate Xóchitl Gálvez. Sheinbaum has been clever to frame her political philosophy as advocating for the expansion — not of the state —but of a series of positive rights: education, health, housing, culture, dignified employment at a fair wage, sustainable mobility, and a healthy environment. 

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

Camilo Montoya-Galvez, Texas "physically barred" Border Patrol agents from trying to rescue migrants who drowned, federal officials say CBS News. Earlier this week, Texas National Guard soldiers abruptly seized control of a public park in Eagle Pass that Border Patrol had been using to hold migrants.

AMLO alista dos reformas al artículo 123 sobre salarios y pensiones El Economista. A partir del 01 de enero de 2024, el sueldo mínimo mensual en México es de 7,468 pesos, luego de que en diciembre pasado se aprobó el aumento del 20% al salario mínimo, lo que significó el sexto incremento durante la administración de AMLO.

Mexico and Venezuela seeking to create O&G alliance bnamericas. Mexico’s federal oil company Pemex and Venezuela’s PDVSA are seeking to create an alliance.

Viri Ríos, ¿Qué esperar de Claudia Sheinbaum? Milenio. Su campaña tiene dos escudos infalibles: la aprobación que el votante tiene de López Obrador y el rechazo de una oposición que no deja de ser impresentable.

Isabella Cota, Mexico set to surpass China as the largest exporter to the US in 2023 El País. Mexico overtook the Asian giant in the value of exports to the U.S. in the cumulative first 11 months of 2023, totaling almost $439 billion, while China lagged behind with $393 billion.

Fernando Buen Abad Domínguez, Para una economía política del humanismo Rebelión. Incluso la inflación opera como un arma de guerra del conservadurismo, como un sistema de tortura psicológica contra la clase trabajadora.

Mexican president aims for ambitious pension reform Reuters.  Mexico's president AMLO unveiled a new reform proposal which would ensure pensioners earn in retirement what they made as workers.

En Diálogos por la Transformación no permitiremos la regresión: Juan Ramón de la Fuente La Crónica de Hoy. El ex rector de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Juan Ramón de la Fuente, señaló que el proyecto “Diálogos” son ejercicios que buscan que la Cuarta Transformación avance y de continuidad al proyecto de nación iniciado por el presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Patrick J. McDonell, The muxe, Mexico’s ‘third gender,’ are part of a worldwide LGBTQ+ movement Los Angeles Times. Elvis Guerra, explains that the muxe stand in solidarity with burgeoning gender rights movements worldwide, pronouncing themselves trailblazers of cultural preservation and inclusion in a rural bastion of Catholicism.

José Maria Valenzuela, ¿Desde dónde partimos para la transición energética? Sentido Común. Hoy es más evidente que la profunda transformación de las economías requiere pensar en un Estado más involucrado y en mercados que funcionen bajo el principio de solidaridad.

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!

Web page and application support for the México Solidarity Project from NOVA Web Development, a democratically run, worker-owned and operated cooperative focused on developing free software tools for progressive organizations.