Shortly before we left for our visit to friends in Mexico
City and to our son in Bahía de Banderas on the Pacific coast, I read the
obituary of Luis Echeverría Álvarez who was President of Mexico when I first
arrived in the country in the summer of 1972. The governments of Mexico had
agreed an exchange programme: Mexican students would go to the UK to bring back
technical skills and British students would be awarded a stay in Mexico funded
by the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (National Council of Science
and Technology). The three who arrived together on a BOAC flight were
historians: my companions were Alan Knight, who would become Professor of Latin
American History at Oxford and Guy Thompson who had a long career at the
University of Warwick. Reading of Echeverría’s death, I realized that my
connections with Mexico are now half a century old. It seemed a good time to
reflect on those five decades.
Those three months in 1972 were incredibly exciting. I read
about Mexican history in the library of the Colegio de México (the elite
graduate social sciences school of Mexico) and travelled at the expense of the
Mexican taxpayer to visit places that I read about in histories of the Mexican
Revolution of 1910-1921: to Cuautla, where the forces of the peasant leader
Emiliano Zapata once gathered his troops; to San Luis Potosí, the northern city
that gave its name to the manifesto of the first revolutionary leader, a
wealthy, rather mystical northern landowner, Francisco Ignacio Madero, who
actually launched his rebellion from the USA, not from San Luis; to Veracruz,
the Gulf coast port, so often invaded by foreign powers in pursuit of
territorial and political profit; from there Alan Knight and I took a long bus
journey to the port of Tampico in the far north, travelling through tropical land
where the British Pearson company once had its oil fields. I discovered how
hospitable the Mexican people are and made friendships that have lasted for
half a century. I returned in 1974-1975 to carry out research for my doctorate.
I was fascinated by the great metropolis which was Mexico
City, once Tenochtitlan, the city in a lake that was the capital of the Aztecs.
The centre of Tenochtitlan was a great plaza, framed by the palace of the Aztec
ruler, the huey tlatoani (“the man who speaks”) and temples, the
greatest of which was the Templo Mayor (the Great Temple of the Aztecs). When I
was there in 1972 it lay hidden under the colonial structures of the Ciudad de
México, the capital of New Spain as Mexico was known for three centuries of
Spanish rule, but was discovered in 1978 by workmen and is now a visitor
attraction and a museum. During Spanish colonial rule the square was the Plaza
de Armas, where Spaniards mustered if needed to defend the King’s realm or to
calm period fears of a Black slave rebellion. On the site of the palace of
Moctezuma the Spaniards erected what Mexicans now call the Palacio Nacional,
where the President has his offices (and the current incumbent his official
residence). The historic centre soon filled up with palaces and a considerable number
of churches, monasteries and convents, all funded by the rich and powerful who
made their money in trade with Asia and Peru, in silver mining, livestock, or
corruption, the Mexican vice introduced by the Spaniards. In 1972 many of the
religious buildings, expropriated by anticlerical governments of the 19th and
20th centuries, were public institutions: the National Library, the
National Newspaper Library, museums and so on. In modern Mexico, the great
square is known as the Zócalo, which translates as “plinth”, an odd name to
give to the political centre of the country. The reason is that in 1843 Antonio
López de Santa Anna, who frequently but usually briefly occupied the presidency
in the first decades of independent Mexico, had work begun on a grandiose monument
to independence in the square. The project had got as far building a large
plinth when the Americans invaded in 1846, after which Santa Anna’s monument was
forgotten, except in the popular name of the plaza. The plinth, by the way, was
discovered by archaeologists, who usually unearth Aztec remains, in 2017.
Everywhere I travelled in the now enormous metropolis,
Mexico’s turbulent and often sad history was evident. The Metro, recently
constructed for the Olympic Games of 1968, unearthed Aztec remains which were
on view in some stations. In Coyoacán, once a rural town, I saw the mansions of
some of the most important conquistadors, such as Diego de Ordaz and Hernán
Cortés himself, the leader of the Spanish invaders. On the hill of Chapultepec
stands the castle (really a large palace), the residence of Emperor Maxmilian,
the Austrian prince installed by Napoleon III as the second emperor of Mexico from
1864 -1867 (the first, a Mexican royalist, Agustín de Iturbide, wore the crown from
1822-1823). The palace was later the favourite residence of dictator Porfirio
Díaz (1877-1911). At the foot of the hill stands the monument to the Niños
Héroes, cadet soldiers who refused to surrender to the invading
Americans (1846-1848), preferring to jump to their deaths. Their sacrifice is
commemorated every September just before the fiestas patrias that mark
Independence. The latter begin at midnight on 15 September when the President
emerges on the balcony of the Palacio Nacional to give the Grito (the “Yell”
or call to arms against the Spaniards) first made by the priest father Miguel Hidalgo
y Costilla in 1810 on the steps of his church in Dolores Hidalgo. Nobody knows
exactly what he said, but the traditional grito of Viva México!
is brief and to the point.
The city expanded beyond the colonial-era centre in
neighbourhoods known as colonias. Colonia Cuauhtémoc, a short distance
from the centre was a late 19th-century development to the north of one
of the city’s great avenues, the Paseo de la Reforma. Here the well-to-do of
the Porfiriato, the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, built solid mansions that
have survived earthquakes and political upheavals. The British embassy is in
one of them (actually, it suffered considerable quake damage a few years ago,
but still stands). Roma, and Condesa where I lived, were developments of the
first decades of the 20th century. The expansion of the city picked
up pace after World War II, eventually engulfing formerly independent villages
such as colonial Coyoacán, and, as tram lines developed, further still to the
south as far as San Ángel, an area of charming cobbled streets and expensive
homes combined with still more plazas, olonial churches and monasteries. The
city now sprawls over the valley, engulfing parts of the adjoining state of
Mexico.
In the summer of 1972, I found myself in a Mexico that lived
under the managed democracy of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI)
that emerged from the years of revolution. This was the Mexico that had
committed itself to universal education, a goal still imperfectly achieved, but
a noble goal nevertheless. The national university (Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, UNAM) turned out highly qualified economists, engineers, lawyers,
doctors, archaeologists and so on who staffed the government and provided professional
services on a par, for the wealthy and the middle classes of the cities and
major towns, with more prosperous countries. Rural provision was much inferior,
although graduates were obliged to give a year of social service in the
provinces, and schools and clinics appeared in small towns, but not in many
remote villages and hamlets. I lodged with such a middle-class family (still
dear friends) in Condesa (the land had once belonged to a countess). Nearby the
Jockey Club had established a horse racing track in the 1920s, whose layout can
still be seen in the oval shape of Calle Amsterdam. My first landlady, Consuelo,
was the widow of a businessman engaged in shipping. Her eldest daughter married
an UNAM-trained economist who worked for the Ministry of Public Works, the son
of one of her father’s business friends. After Consuelo’s death her daughter’s
family moved into the house and I lodged with them. The government kept such
families happy by paying a salary top-up “off the payroll” (“fuera de la
nómina”), providing a subsidized ministry shop and enabling them to live
comfortably.
There were similar subsidized shops for some of the more
humble classes run by the Consejo Nacional de Subsistencias Populares
(CONASUPO). CONASUPO’s shops were closed in 1999 to be replaced with a much
smaller number that cater only to communities that live in what the government
considers extreme poverty. The poor’s share of economic prosperity is still
much less than the lifestyle of the middle class: inequality has increased
markedly in my own country, but in Mexico the gap between rich and poor is
staggering. The man who belched fire from his mouth to earn a few pesos in 1972,
the children singing romantic ballads or selling chewing gum on the buses and
metro, or cleaning windscreens at red traffic lights, were not beneficiaries of
the PRI’s “Mexican miracle”. These poor people worked hard and with great
ingenuity to scrape together enough to eat one day at a time. I remember one
day seeing a young man pedalling a bicycle along the Alameda in central Mexico
City. Behind him was a pile of newspapers and seated on the pile was his
partner. As they approached a newspaper kiosk, the boy on the newspaper pile
pulled a bundle from under him and flung it to the newspaper seller. To my
amazement the pair barely wobbled, let alone lost their balance. Slightly
better off perhaps were the members of the “informal economy” who sold fruit-flavoured
water (known as aguas frescas), tacos, tortas (a sort of Mexican
sandwich) and other foods on the street. The contrast with the lives of the
middle-class residents of Condesa, the rather more upscale homes of the
Pedregal de San Ángel, newly-built on an ancient lava field, or the rich and
powerful of Lomas de Chapultepec emphasized the enormous inequalities of 1970s
Mexico, which are still painfully visible today.
Much as these urban dwellers lived precariously, in rural
areas life was more basic still. The homes of all but the well-to-do (if there
were any) were frequently one-or-two-room affairs of adobe. Larger settlements
would usually have a basic school building, although smaller places even in the
21st century sometimes still have schools made of “palos” –
literally “sticks”. Larger villages might also have a one-room clinic run by
the Instituto Mexicano de Seguro Social (IMSS). The more fortunate might have a
parcel of land provided by the agrarian reforms of the post-revolutionary era,
but by the 1970s population growth was fragmenting the holdings, creating a
landless rural population and driving migration to the United States.
The post-war economic growth managed by the PRI regime had
provided families such as the one I lived with an income sufficient to employ
two young maids, to live in a comfortably appointed modern home and to run a
car. True, imported goods were heavily taxed and beyond their reach. While a
similar British family might serve wine at a social gathering, the parties I
attended were lubricated with plentiful rum and tequila. Wine and other foreign
luxuries were for the wealthy, as were restaurants such as Churchills, a
veritable institution which braved every national misfortune except for the
recent pandemic during which it closed its doors for good. But by 1972 the
shine was beginning to wear off the political and economic “miracle” of the
Mexican revolution. There was discontent in rural areas fuelled by poverty and
the rule of corrupt and brutal political bosses. There were rural guerrillas in
the mountains of the state of Guerrero where I studied the 1910 Revolution. In
Mexico City there had been enormous peaceful student demonstrations (later
joined by workers) in 1968 just before the Olympic Games to protest against
restrictions on liberty, official corruption, and the still widespread poverty.
My landlord Alfonso and another friend were present in Plaza of the Three
Cultures and the housing complex of Tlatelolco, famous for its provision of
decent working-class homes, on 2 October 1968, when the regime lost patience.
Soldiers shot many students dead, arrested others, and the fortunate fled to
hiding places in the countryside.
Luis Echeverría, who as Secretario de Gobernación (Interior
Minister) had ordered the massacre, was chosen by the PRI to be elected
President in 1970 (the PRI always won national elections until 2000: the
competition was to be chosen as candidate, not elected). Echeverría struck a
leftist pose, getting politically close (but not so close as to irritate the
USA too much) to Cuba, and associated Mexico with the movement of non-aligned
nations. He promised an “apertura democrática” (democratic opening) but
sent soldiers to the mountains of Guerrero to conduct a dirty war against
dissidents, despatched government-paid thugs called halcones (falcons)
to commit the Corpus Christi massacre on 10 June 1971, and shut down a critical
newspaper, Excélsior. Journalists and other writers were kept onside
with cash subsidies or appointments as ambassadors to desirable countries. The
government controlled paper imports, and consequently could silence excessive
dissent in the press. Echeverría splashed cash with abandon on projects that
took his fancy, such as a fruit canning factory in the village in coastal
Nayarit where he had a vacation home. His six-year period in office ended with
a currency crisis. This rather verbose man, one of whose much-derided phrases
was “No es ni el uno ni el otro, sino todo el contrario” (“it’s neither
one thing nor the other, but quite the opposite”), failed to secure the PRI’s dominance
of Mexican politics in the long run.
In the next two and a half decades the PRI would struggle to
hold power with the firm grasp to which it was accustomed. In 1988 the party
had to resort to post-election rigging of the count to prevent the Partido de
la Revolución Democrática (Party of the Democratic Revolution) of Cuauhtémoc
Cárdenas (son of one of the regime’s most famous presidents) from reaching
power. Finally, the PRI’s candidate for 2000, Luis Donaldo Colosio, was
assassinated four months before the election. As luck would have it, constitutional
provisions prohibited anybody who held a government post less than six months
before the election from being a candidate, which eliminated all the most
powerful alternative candidates. The only possible candidate available, Ernesto
Zedillo, did one remarkable, unheard-of, thing: at the end of his term, he
permitted a free election that the PRI lost.
Many PRI politicians switched to other parties or formed new
ones. One such was Andrés Manual López Obrador (known as AMLO: contemporary
Mexico has a habit of turning public figures into acronyms), from the southern
state of Tabasco, a region known to British readers from Graham Greene’s
evocative novel of the anticlerical 1930s, The Power and the Glory. AMLO,
also known less flatteringly as “el pejelagarto” (a Tabasco reptile with an
extra-large mouth), for his verbosity, joined the PRD and was elected head of
the Federal District, as Mexico City was formally known, in 2000. He ran for
the Presidency in 2006 and vigorously disputed the result when his opponent
Felipe Calderón of the Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party) was
declared winner. He similarly disputed the elections of 2012, when he was
beaten in the polls by the PRI’s man Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN: as I said,
anybody who is anybody is now an acronym), but then won big with an
unprecedented landslide in 2018 as the head of his own party, MORENA ( and
other acronym for Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional: National Regeneration
Movement).
So, the Mexico I now visit to see my son is the country of
AMLO. This is not the Mexico of 1972. The infrastructure is much more modern.
Multi-lane toll highways now take freight, passengers and private cars to all
the main cities and a good many lesser towns. All the major cities and tourist
areas now have airports. 1972 Mexico City already had multi-storey buildings,
but now it has many more skyscrapers. Wealthy Mexicans drive expensive cars,
live in luxurious houses (probably several) and vacation around the world. The
middle classes now eat in restaurants offering a variety of international
cuisines, even in small provincial towns, and drink imported wines (and some
good ones from the nascent Mexican wine industry). Almost everybody, it seems,
has a mobile phone and communicates by WhatsApp to arrange everything from a
drink in a bar to a business meeting. But the fire eaters, jugglers and trick
unicyclists are still at traffic intersections, as are the children begging for
a few pesos while a parent waits nearby (children receive more sympathy than an
adult) and the children who clean windscreens at red lights. In Bucerías, where
luxury condos line the beach, we saw a family of two adults and three small
girls, the eldest no older than six, loaded with merchandise walking to the
beach for a day selling to holidaymakers in the hot sun. We also saw a boy and
a girl, no more than ten or eleven years old, with no adult present, trudging
along the beach at Bucerías laden with textiles and bags for sale. These
children and their parents still toil daily to barely meet their basic needs.
The children’s education suffers and so poverty is reinforced.
I have not had the close-up view of contemporary Mexico that
I had in 1972 and 1974-1976, but AMLO, who is regularly characterized in the
British press (in so far as our press refers to him at all) as a leftist,
strikes me as no such thing, but rather a politician made in the mould of old-style
authoritarian PRI politicians. Not so much the suavely corrupt EPN, but the
rough tough, often gun toting politicos of old. However, there is one
difference. While an Echeverría might have kidded himself that the people
adored him and his grandiose projects that came to very little, there was, in
truth, no great enthusiasm for his government. Things are different under
AMLO: those who believe with fervour see
a plan to transform Mexico into a much more prosperous country standing tall in
the world; semi-believers credit him with some good policies but dislike his
authoritarian manner; others (including, as far as I can tell, the better-off
middle class) loathe him as an authoritarian disaster who is taking the country
in the wrong direction. AMLO tends to talk in quasi- mystical terms (one is
tempted to say pseudo-mystical). For example, during the pandemic he told
Mexicans that they would be all right because of their country’s deep cultural
resources and produced assorted amulets and charms that he carries to ward off
disease and other maladies. Nevertheless, whatever one might think of AMLO, he
has undoubtedly succeeded in selling a vision of a more promising, even
glorious future for Mexico to win enough votes to control almost all levers of
power. The overarching framework of the vision is the Fourth Transformation
(acronymed, of course, as the 4T). In
AMLO’s view (it can hardly be called an analysis, since it would fall apart if
tested against what actually happened in the past), Mexico has undergone four
transformations which constitute triumphant moments in Mexican history:
Independence from Spain in 1821; the Liberal Reforma of the 1860s (led
by one of AMLO’s great heroes, President Benito Juárez); the Revolution of
1910-1921 (started by another hero, Madero); and AMLO’s own promised
transformation.
A theme in all four transformations, in AMLO’s account of
history, is independence. He expresses Mexico’s independence in a number of
ways. Like Echeverría, he makes a point of offering support to Cuba, to which
AMLO adds Nicaragua and Venezuela. Unlike Echeverría, however, AMLO seems
uninterested in overseas travel and the international stage. Apart from one
visit to the White House, he tends to despatch Marcelo Ebrard, his foreign
minister, to international engagements. However, the policy that most notably stems
from ALMO’s pursuit of independence relates to petroleum. Petroleum has been
drilled in Mexico from at least the early 20th century, and in 1938
President Lázaro Cárdenas nationalized the industry in the teeth of opposition
from the USA and the UK. But it was in the 1970s that large reserves were found
off the Gulf Coast. PRI politicians believed that they ruled a country that
would become a member of the club of rich oil nations, but things did not quite
turn out that way. For example, Mexico exports crude oil to the USA but then
imports gasoline because it lacks sufficient refining capacity. One of AMLO’s
first acts was to commission a new refinery, Dos Bocas, in his home state of
Tabasco. On the meagre evidence of my conversations, this element of AMLO’s
policy is popular with Mexicans who are not otherwise devotees of the
President. It taps into deep feelings of independence from foreign powers who
have so often bullied Mexico in the past.
To an outsider, this large bet on a technology whose
medium-to-long-term future looks uncertain, to say the least, if other
countries seriously pursue decarbonization, does not entirely make sense. But
to many Mexicans, for whom oil is the very symbol of independence for a country
much pushed around in its 200 years as an independent nation, energy
independence is a very alluring prospect. The trucks of PEMEX, the state-owned
oil company, carry the slogan “por el rescate de la soberanía” (rescuing
sovereignty).
Moreover, a future based on oil seems to be pretty much the
entire energy policy of AMLO’s government. I asked a friend in Mexico City why
I saw no electric cars here: simple, he replied, no charging points. He added
that the new Tren Maya (see below) will run on diesel engines, not electric,
and that construction has destroyed large swathes of virgin forest. One
loyalist whom I asked about the apparent lack of interest in renewable energy
assured me that I was mistaken and mentioned five areas that are the focus of
renewables, such a geothermal. I was not convinced of his argument: after all,
AMLO has prevented renewable energy companies from entering the electricity
market in order to protect the Comisión Federal de la Electricidad (Federal
Electricity Commission) from competition. In essence, a regime for which
petroleum is the very expression of Mexican independence does not really seem
to think the country needs anything else.
In some respects, AMLO’s attitude to the private sector
bears comparison with that of Echeverría, who had particularly frosty relations
with big business, most notably with the wealthy industrialists of Monterrey in
northern Mexico. While some of Echeverría’s hostility was as much rhetorical as
practical, AMLO is instinctively distrustful of the business sector. Soon after
he came into office, he cancelled the construction of a new, half-finished,
international airport, and incurred a compensation bill of some US$93 billion,
perhaps more. The former airport is now to become an ecological park, and a new
airport, converted from a Mexican air force base by the army, has been opened
to supplement the current airport in Mexico City.
This brings us to the role of the army in AMLO’s Mexico. An
important element of AMLO’s appeal in 2018 was his promise to tackle the
violence of organized crime. His policy was “abrazos no balazos”:
embrace the criminals rather than shoot them. His argument was that, if poor
young Mexicans were given alternatives to organized crime, they would prefer a
life of honest labour. He also disbanded the Federal Police and merged them
with elements of the military to form the National Guard, which patrols the
streets and is supposed to tackle organized crime. More recently, he has
brought all police forces under the control of the Ministry of National Defence
and ordered the army to secure the streets of the nation. He recently divided
the three main opposition parties by proposing a law that authorized the army
to provide internal security for the next six years. AMLO’s opponents argue
that this is unconstitutional, but the President shows no interest in
constitutional or other provisions that might constrain him.
The results of the militarization of policing and the direct
involvement of an army not trained to police a civilian population are not
encouraging. Violent crime has not decreased. Rather, according to published
statistics it has increased. A friend from a small town a short drive out of
Mexico City told me that, while there is no violent crime where he
lives, it is common knowledge that local businesses pay extorsion levies to
criminals, many of whom are known to live from such rackets. When we visited
the dog hotel in the Pitillal district of Puerto Vallarta where Chris had
lodged his dog Winston while we were in Bucerías (the apartment owner does not
permit pets), I spotted a sign on a beer shop across the street. It read: “Vigilant
neighbours united against crime. If we capture a thief, we will beat the s**t
out of him.” The British Foreign Office writes the following concerning the
state of Guerrero where I travelled as a young student (my emphasis):
The interior of the state is
dangerous. State security forces have scant presence. Control is often in
the hands of organised crime groups and local ‘self-defence’ organisations.
Foreigners’ presence in rural Guerrero is likely to be regarded with high
levels of suspicion by omnipresent organised crime and local self-defence
groups, and the possibility of misunderstanding and ensuing violence is high.
An archaeologist friend who has worked in Guerrero for
decades, told me that he only dares go there now with a local friend (even to
the state capital), since any outsider is viewed with suspicion and is
therefore vulnerable. Guerrero is an extreme case, but it is not unique. The
British government’s verdict on Michoacán is similar: “some areas are totally
lacking state control and do not have a security presence.” A friend in
Michoacán tells me that the west of the state and adjoining areas of Jalisco
are now known as “the corridor of death”.
No president could solve the problems of Guerrero, or of
other parts of the country plagued with crime, in a six-year term. Moreover, Mexico’s
government is not solely responsible for the increase in organized crime. The
consumption of drugs in the USA has funded the growth of crime south of the
border, and lax American gun laws have facilitated the illegal export to Mexico
of powerful weapons that are illegal under Mexican law. The American love
affair with automatic weapons is responsible for the deaths of many innocent
Americans, but equally for the murder of America’s neighbours. However, there
is little evidence to suggest that AMLO’s handing of a security role to the
army, combined with “abrazos no balazos”, is improving matters.
AMLO has been remarkably indifferent to one of the most
appalling aspects of violent crime: violence against women, and in particular
the murder of women. Mexico has even coined the Spanish-language term now
widely used for this form of gender violence (feminicidio). Violence
against women is widespread, rarely investigated by the police, and in most
cases a crime that men can commit with impunity. Moreover, this particular
violent crime cannot be attributed to the existence of powerfully armed
organized crime groups. This is predominantly a crime committed by individual
men for individual motives. AMLO has dismissed demonstrations against feminicidio
as politically motivated by his “neoliberal” enemies. Since the government
tends to pay attention to issues only if AMLO decrees them worthy of government
action, gender violence is more or less ignored. Such violence existed before
AMLO took office, and occurred in the Mexico I knew 50 years ago, but the scale
of the crime has increased, facilitated by official inaction.
Moreover, the role of the army has been expanded beyond policing.
The military is being turned into a business enterprise that will manage projects
close to the President’s heart. The army has built the new airport (Aeropuerto
Internacional Felipe Ángeles), which a friend reports to be very well built and
organized but with very few people (because few airlines want to fly passengers
to an airport a long way north of Mexico City with poor transport links to the
capital). The army is also building the Tren Maya, a railway that will start at
Palenque, one of the great ancient Mayan cities, passing through the
president’s home state, Tabasco, and then running through cities and
archaeological sites in Campeche, Yucatán and Quintana Roo. Another train line
is planned to cross the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, linking the ports of Salina
Cruz on the Pacific Coast and Coatzacoalcos on the Gulf. AMLO’s stated goal
here is to replace the Panama Canal as the preferred transhipment route between
China and Europe.
This reliance on the army is a huge departure from the norm.
There was a time when historians argued that post-revolutionary Mexico had
found a novel formula to keep the military out of politics, unlike many other
Latin American countries that suffered brutal military dictatorships. In fact,
the army was more important for political control of the country than
historians thought: the 1968 suppression of protests and in the 1970s the dirty
war in Guerrero and elsewhere proved that. But formally to hand the army
responsibility for civil law and order and for large business enterprises is
another matter. What will happen if the generals rather like their lucrative
roles and dislike giving them up?
A recent article in El Universal (11 September 2022) is
not encouraging. Since the formation of the National Guard in March 2019 There
have been 8,656 complaints of extorsion, abuse of authority, assaults and other
matters. The army itself examines all complaints against it. The journalists
were able to examine the records of 1,303 complaints. All were dismissed by
army investigators for lack of sufficient proof. This amounts to impunity on a
large scale: other incidents did not result in complaints since to complain is
a waste of time. However, AMLO seems to be convinced of the absolute honesty of
the military. On 14 February 2022 he said to National Guard officers in
Michoacán: “The most important thing is honesty, integrity, not to be tempted
by corruption, that members of the National Guard can say “I am loyal to Mexico
and am incorruptible and I would rather leave my children in poverty than in
dishonour.” The history of Mexico’s military makes it most unlikely that it
consists entirely of such paragons of virtue.
One wonders, moreover, whether army commanders might quite
like their access to large contracts, and whether it might be unwise or even dangerous
to curtail the army’s activities in future, especially if commanders find them
pleasantly lucrative. This thought is especially troubling in the light of
AMLO’s undermining of the institutions that, since 2000, have helped to ensure
a degree of democracy that might not be perfect, but which is at least an
improvement on the PRI’s controlled political system. AMLO has certainly
attempted to influence the judiciary and to limit the ability of the Instituto
Nacional Electoral (INE: the National Electoral Commission). A friend we met
for lunch in Mexico City arrived at our table excited because she had passed a
table at which Lorenzo Córdova Vianello was eating and had greeted him. Our
friend’s husband added that they consider Córdova a hero for standing up to
AMLO, who they consider a fascist.
AMLO’s hostility to journalists is well-known. I learned
while I was in Mexico City that an international paper which publishes an
edition in Mexico, and which had been critical of AMLO, was told that its
advertising would suffer if it continued to question his policies. The owners
complied. This brought to mind the case of Excélsior, the most
independent paper in the 1970s. In this respect, AMLO is a return to an
authoritarian past, not a harbinger of a bright new future, and his arm
twisting is more direct than the more indirect methods of Echeverría.
Two of AMLO’s great themes, as already mentioned, are “abrazos
y no balazos” and corruption. In AMLO’s world, opportunity for the young
will incentivize them to take on honest work rather than involving themselves
in organized crime. To his credit he has instituted some social programmes for
the young to offer greater opportunity, although a determined lack of
transparency prevents independent evaluation of the results. He also increased
state pensions and required employers to enrol domestic servants in the social
security system to give them access to healthcare. However, he has not
increased the budget of the public health system correspondingly. AMLO insists
that corruption will be defeated by his “republican austerity” and the
unimpeachable honesty of his colleagues in MORENA. Corruption, he argues, was
the sin of previous regimes, not of his. This is seductive rhetoric if one
ignores facts and Mexican history. Only the credulous can really believe it.
But as more than one friend has commented, nobody in his circle dares
contradict AMLO. What he says must be done and must be right.
AMLO is not responsible for Mexico’s many problems and it
would be unreasonable to expect any government to fundamentally transform a
country as large and complex as Mexico in a single six-year term (Mexican
presidents serve only one term), but one would hope to discern in AMLO’s
policies firm directions that point towards sustained and verifiable
improvements during the terms of subsequent presidents. While some positive
steps have been taken, real progress remains in the realm of rhetoric rather
than policy or accomplishment. To some extent, this reflects the rather
depressing politics of our times: think of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Viktor
Orbán, Vladimir Putin. Like them AMLO deploys rhetoric that inspires his
followers, however much his detractors may despise him, like them he subverts
norms and restraints on his powers. However, AMLO draws on decades old Mexican
political practices and thinking that a PRI president would have recognized.
However, while superficially a PRI president was, for six years, a king of all
he surveyed, in practice the PRI coalition of interests (unions, peasant
organizations, employers’ confederations) applied some brakes to a president’s
power. AMLO, in contrast, won power with a sweeping majority and recognizes few
if any constraints. He can do much good and can also do immense harm.
AMLO has undermined, but not yet destroyed, Mexico’s
democratic processes that emerged from the defeat of the PRI. He has damaged
constitutional and judicial checks on power. He has enormously expanded the
role of the military in Mexican life, while doing little to address violent
crime. Since he takes all the key decisions, it seems certain that he will
anoint his chosen successor, and since the opposition is weak and divided his
chosen one will probably become president in 2024. If AMLO is then the power
behind the throne, presumably the next government will pursue similar policies.
Despite the increased role of the military, I think it is most unlikely that
the army would seek to seize power directly, but the generals will probably
wield greater influence. If MORENA remains dominant and further undermines
institutions intended to ensure a degree of democracy, Mexico may return to
something resembling the managed democracy of the PRI, but perhaps more authoritarian
and unipersonal. While previous militarized attempts to combat criminal cartels
have failed, AMLO’s policy of non-intervention, or at least minimal
intervention, does not seem to be a viable solution either. In the absence of a
serious attempt to reduce organized crime and its accompanying violence it is
likely that those parts of the national territory that are no longer controlled
by the government will continue to be so, and control of additional regions may
also be lost. And if I were able to come back in another 50 years, I expect
that I would still find children begging at traffic lights and selling tourist
souvenirs on the beaches.
But one thing has not changed, the hospitable and courteous
character of the great majority of Mexicans, a certain formality and insistence
on polite forms of address, which Spaniards tell me they find too servile, but
which I find charming (especially since being older I tend to be the one to
whom formal politesse is directed). Working-class Mexicans are hardworking and
resourceful people. If they are poorly paid and less productive in comparison
with their northern neighbours it is worth remembering that many workers north
of the border are also Mexican. The difference is that, with some exceptions,
businesses in the US are more capitalized and automated than those in Mexico. Many
customers of Mexico’s largest mobile phone company, Telmex, owned by Carlos
Slim Helú, Mexico’s richest man and one of the wealthiest in the world, top up their
phones and resolve customer service problems in retail outlines or in one of
Telmex’s many offices. In other words, it is economic for Mr Slim to employ low
paid Mexican staff rather than to invest in greater automation as his
counterparts in North America and Europe have done. A meagre share of the
changes of the last 50 years has percolated down to the lives of many Mexicans.
By and large they continue to live in a society in which the rich and powerful
bend the law and politics to their benefit.
The ordinary Mexican is still obliged to fall back on hard
work, family, and community resources. For a long time, one strategy has been
to cross the border seeking work and a better life in the USA, but undocumented
Mexicans live in constant fear of some minor misconduct bringing them to the
attention of the authorities. Unwittingly exceeding the speed limit, carelessly
jumping a red light, or annoying a co-worker who informs the authorities of your
irregular immigration status can end in deportation and separation from your
family. One person told us that she had lived in Sacramento for many years,
having three children there, who were all therefore American citizens. She was deported,
initially for a five-year term, later doubled by Mr Trump to ten, leaving her
children with their father. She works and saves all year to pay half her
children’s air fares for a longed-for annual visit (their father pays the other
half). However, in 2021 two bouts of Covid severely reduced her income so the
children have not visited her for more than a year. A man who drove us into
Puerto Vallarta told us that he had crossed the border aged 15 initially to
work in agriculture in California until a friend invited him to work in
Tennessee in road and bridge construction. His children too were born American citizens
and he too decided to leave them in America for a better life. His eldest son
is now a welder in a car factory. The children speak their father’s tongue as their
second language: the welder son learned to write it by copying the Bible in Spanish.
A similar tale, aggravated by the pandemic, was that of a woman who worked in agriculture
in northern California. When she returned to Mexico leaving her children in the
USA, she trained to be a chef of Italian cuisine in a restaurant in Puerto
Vallarta. The pandemic closed the restaurant and when it reopened her employers
cut her salary: she decided that she would be better off driving tourists and fellow
Mexicans around the towns of the Bahía de Banderas. Her children too live in
the USA.
The Americans who voted for Mr Trump because he maliciously denounced
Mexican immigrants as criminals and promised to keep them out of the USA (a
promise as empty as AMLO’s “abrazos no balazos”) are happy to drive on roads
and bridges built by Mexican labour or to eat potatoes graded and cleaned of
stones by hand in northern California by a Mexican mother. However, at the same
time they want those same people sent home and certainly kept well away from Americans
who consume the fruits of Mexican hard work, Americans who are no more law
abiding (perhaps sometimes less so) than the immigrants they despise.
