Historical Materialism Conference, New York City, April 2015

Panel on Mexican Perspectives:

Social, Political and Economic Trajectories in Mexico and the Prospects for Social Change.

Mexico under Enrique Peña Nieto:

Neoliberal Authoritarianism, Social Turbulence, and the Absence of a Left
By Dan La Botz,
Co-Editor, New Politics;
Editor, Mexican Labor News and Analysis

Abstract: The Mexican government continues the thirty year drive to complete the
neoliberal transformation of the economy, compelled from the beginning and continuing
today to use authoritarian methods, repression and violence; and while we now see
social turbulence in many regions and sectors, in the absence of a left political party and
a broader social movement, these outbreaks do not cohere into a sustained resistance
capable of challenging the administration much less of overturning it. Rejecting the
notion that Mexico is a developing democracy, failed state, or a narco-government, we
look, in the light of Mexico’s modern history, at the origins of the current regime, the
sources of the contemporary social turbulence, and the difficulties that today beset the
various movements and the Left.1

Despite widespread disillusionment with the political system, an organized attempt to prevent the
election from taking place in a few states, as well as continuing economic doldrums, President
Enrique Peña Nieto and his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) were the big winners in the
Mexican elections of June 2015, followed by the conservative National Action Party (PAN).
Both are parties are committed to continuing the deepening of the country's neoliberal, free
market economic reforms.

The PRI won 29 percent of the vote and the PAN 20 percent, while several competing leftist
parties divided their vote: the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) received 10.8, the
Movement of National Regeneration (MORENA) 8.3 percent and the Citizens Movement, 5.9
percent, while the Workers Party (PT), received only 2.87 percent, too little to keep its
registration and ballot status. MORENA took comfort from winning a majority of seats in the
Mexico City legislature, surpassing its rival the PRD. The PRI and its allied parties, such as the
Green Ecological Party and the New Alliance Party, will have large pluralities in both house of
the Mexican Congress. How and why is it that despite Mexico’s serious political crisis, president
Peña Nieto and the PRI won such a stunning victory?

At the same time, the Mexican left of all stripes lost, in some cases disastrously. The left parties
that participated in the election saw their percentages of the national vote decline, while the left
groups that attempted to prevent the election from taking place were successful in only some
cities and towns and in only a few states. While more than half of all Mexicans did not vote, that

1
Originally presented at the Historical Materialism conference, this paper has since been somewhat amplified.

1
seems to have been more a result of typical voter apathy or general disgust with the government
and the parties than the result of the boycott or the campaign to prevent voting.

The National Coordinating Committee (la CNTE), a dissident caucus within the Mexican
Teachers Union (el SNTE)--arguing that the government, electoral authorities and the parties are
utterly corrupt--prevented the National Electoral Institute (INE) from setting up hundreds of
polling places in several cities and towns in Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Chiapas. The teachers
originally called for a boycott, but rather than attempting to persuade voters not to vote, they
made it impossible wherever they could. In some places the teachers and their allies burned
polling booths and ballots or in other ways discouraged or prevented their fellow citizens from
voting. In some towns the teachers found themselves at odds with locals who wanted to
participate in the elections while in others they faced repression from the police. But in most of
the other 32 states the election went as planned without substantial problems. The call for a
national boycott of the election failed.

Why is it that the Mexican left failed and is now in the weakest position in electoral politics since
the 1980s? Between the late-1980s and the 2010s the left united behind the PRD could generally
win about one third of the vote. Now no left party has more than about 10 percent, whileAndrés
Manuel López Obrador, leader of MORENA, has pledged that his party will not join in a
coalition with the PRD in the coming presidential election in 2018, virtualy insuring the left’s
continued decline.

Without an understanding of the nature of the Mexican state, it becomes impossible to

understand the turbulent times the country is passing through or to develop an intelligent analysis
of events, much less conceive a revolutionary strategy. Yet we find that there are serious
misunderstandings about the Mexican state not only in the general public but also among
political activists in Mexico and abroad.

There are three views of the Mexican state that have been repeated frequently throughout the last
decade by organizations and individuals both within Mexico and abroad. They are that Mexico is
a developing democracy; that it is a narco-government; or that it is a failed state. Among groups
in Mexico one finds, accompanying these analyses, the notion that change is possible through the
country’s political process; or that Mexico stands on the edge of the abyss of fascist reaction; or
that the country is on the verge of revolution. Consequently, one finds on the left in Mexico
today, groups that believe they should be participating in elections as usual, others convinced
that they must arm against a fascist state, and yet others preparing for an imminent revolution.
One finds similar views among leftists and solidarity activists outside of Mexico as well.

There is no doubt that the rapid shifts in Mexican politics since the 1980s, and even more
dramatic swings since 2000 have contributed to widespread misunderstandings about the state of
the Mexican government and society. Consider all that has happened in such a short time:

 The early 1980s saw the victory of the “Technocrats” over the “Dinosaurs” in the
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), leading to the beginning of neoliberal economic
reforms. By the early 1990s, Mexico had entered the General Agreement on Trade and
Tariffs (GATT – later the World Trade Organization or WTO), joined the Organization

2
 for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and negotiated the North
American Free Trade Agreement. Many of Mexico’s state-owned industries had been
privatized, government subsidies to working people and the poor terminated, and unions
systematically repressed.

 The PRI lost its monopoly on political power beginning in the 1980s with the
strengthening and growth of the pro-Catholic and pro-business National Action Party
(PAN) together with the rise of the new social democratic and populist Party of the
Democratic Revolution (PRD). While the PRI remained the strongest, in presidential
elections each party could (at one time or another) win about one-third of the vote in a
presidential election.

 On January 1, 1994, a leftwing guerrilla group, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
(EZLN) led a small, armed uprising in Chiapas, timed to coincide with the beginning of
the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); an event that brought national and
international attention to the plight of Mexico’s poor in under the PRI’s new, neoliberal
order. The Zapatistas, surrounded by the Mexican Army and isolated in Chiapas,
nevertheless were hailed as representatives of a new revolutionary model and seen as an
inspiration to the anarchist left.

 In the national elections in 2000, only the second democratic election in the country’s
history, Coca Cola executive Vicente Fox of the PAN was elected presidents, ending the
nearly 75-year rule of the PRI. By that time not only the PRI, but also the PAN and the
PRD had significant delegations in the Senate and the House, as well as governorships
and mayoralties of important cities, heralding the end of the old PRI one-party state.

 In 2006, through the usual fraud and despite enormous protests, Felipe Calderón of the
PAN was elected to the presidency and launched the war on the drug cartels which would
lead during his term to 100,000 deaths, 20,000 disappearances, and the displacement of
over 100,000 people. The drug war was accompanied by widespread human rights
abuses, the imposition of police governance on many communities, and the appearance in
a few states of community self-defense organizations.

 Finally, the 2012 election brought the victory of Enrique Peña Nieto and the return of the
Institutional Revolutionary Party to power. Not only was Peña Nieto successful in
winning election to the presidency, but he also brought along strong PRI representation in
the Senate and the House. He also succeeded in convincing the PAN and the PRD to join
him in a kind of government of national unity called the Pact for Mexico and succeeded
in passing a series of economic and labor reforms, largely completing the neoliberal
counter-revolution in Mexico, an accomplishment that strengthened government and the
business class while weakening the position of workers.

An observer of Mexico could get whiplash watching the rapid political swings. In addition to this
short list of the major political shifts, we should mention at least in passing a number of other
developments: a high level of violence and kidnapping, several police or military massacres of
Mexicans or Central American migrants, some minor and major urban rebellions, particularly
3
that in Oaxaca City in 2006, the relative decline of Mexican migration to the United States, and
all of this in the context of an economic crisis followed by a very slow growth economy. In the
course of these events, Mexico’s far left parties virtually disappeared and the faction-ridden left-
of-center PRD has undergone a crisis that could lead to its disintegration. Given such economic
stagnation and social turbulence, such sharp political twists and turns, the eruptions and
rebellions accompanied by massive repression, it is not surprising that there would be some
confusion and even bewilderment about the Mexican situation.

How are we to understand what’s really happening? I would suggest that in order to understand
what is really happening in Mexico, it is necessary to conduct a Marxist analysis, looking at the
major social classes in Mexico both in terms of their objective and subjective situations, that is,
where do they stand and how do they understand their circumstances and the possibilities posed
to them. Based on this examination of Mexican society, I will put forward several arguments in
this paper:

 First, Mexico is experiencing a political crisis, but it is crisis of the current

administration—revolving around the Ayotzinapa killings and kidnappings and the
“white house” scandal—not a fundamental crisis of the Mexican state. While the Enrique
Peña Nieto administration is in trouble, Mexican capitalism and its state are strong, if not
invulnerable.

 Second, the Calderón administration with its war on the drug cartels accompanied by the
massive state repression and human rights violations represented an aberration. While the
Mexican state commonly represses the population and violates human rights, the scale of
the Calderon war on drugs and the militarization represented anomaly that quickly proved
to be not simply a failure but a disaster. While it is difficult to predict, it seems unlikely
that Mexico can continue to tolerate such high levels of violence with so many dead, and
that this and any succeeding administration must reduce the violence, or its failure to do
so will affect the basic social and economic reproduction of the society.

 Third, while the drug cartels are large, powerful, and wealthy organizations, they
represent only a proportion of the total Mexican economy; and, while they may influence
or even penetrate parts of the Mexican state, they do not dominate the government.
While the Mexican government has lost control over some police or military forces and
sometimes over significant regions of the country to either drug dealers or other groups,
the central state maintains control of the army, the police, the government bureaucracy,
the capital, and most important cities, highways, and communications.

 Fourth, while the current protests are significant, with almost the sole exception of the
teachers of the National Coordinating Committee (la CNTE), the Mexican working class
has yet to show signs of resistance in a large scale, well organized, a fashion.

 Fifth, the working class not only lacks an independent organizations and an autonomous
movement, but it has no organized political party to represent its interests. The lack of an
independent, revolutionary socialist party makes it impossible for the working class to

4
 take advantage of the opportunities presented by the various economic, social, and
political crises that arise.

We turn now then to an analysis of the capitalist class and the working class in Mexico today.

Capitalism and the Capitalist Class in Mexico

Mexico has a capitalist economy which is highly integrated into the North American and global
economies. One feels obligated to make this statement because of the persistence in the left of
outdated theories of imperialism dating back to the time of Lenin, of Third Worldist views, of
dependency theory, and of liberal developmentalism, theories or ideologies all of which continue
to see Mexico as a colonial, dependent, or backward nation. While imperialism is still a relevant
theory, none of these views have any relevance to Mexico today. Such views, of course, have
historically led to the notion in parts of the left that national liberation must be achieved before
the struggle for socialism, through the political struggle for sovereignty by a block of classes
which includes both the national bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

Since the 1970s, Mexico has become deeply integrated into both the North American and world
economy, as can be seen in its exports. In 2014, Mexico shipped US$397.7 billion worth of
products to countries around the world in 2014. That figure represents about 2.2% of global
exports which are estimated at $18.2 trillion. Below is a list of Mexico’s top 15 trade partners
that imported the most Mexican shipments by dollar value during 2014. Also shown is each
import country’s percentage share of total exports from Mexico.

1. United States: US$319,347,504,000 (80.3% of total Mexican exports)

2. Canada: $10,672,143,000 (2.7%)
3. China: $5,979,179,000 (1.5%)
4. Spain: $5,895,307,000 (1.5%)
5. Brazil: $4,739,600,000 (1.2%)
6. Colombia: $4,733,687,000 (1.2%)
7. Germany: $3,501,384,000 (0.9%)
8. India: $2,720,748,000 (0.7%)
9. Japan: $2,609,887,000 (0.7%)
10. Netherlands: $2,270,181,000 (0.6%)
11. Chile: $2,147,992,000 (0.5%)
12. South Korea: $2,027,267,000 (0.5%)
13. United Kingdom: $1,806,235,000 (0.5%)
14. Guatemala: $1,784,867,000 (0.4%)
15. Peru: $1,730,168,000 (0.4%)

In 2014, 93.5% of Mexican shipments were delivered to the above 15 trade partners. Among the
listed nations, only Germany decreased its imports from Mexico over the 5-year period ending in
2014 (down 1.5%).2

2
This list is taken virtually verbatim from: World’s Top Exports, available at:
http://www.worldstopexports.com/mexicos-top-import-partners/2610

5
Mexico is not only a capitalist country; it is the thirteenth largest economy in the world measured
in GDP, with a GDP of US$1.32 trillion.3 Domestic and foreign capitalist have huge investments
in financial, industrial, and retail firms that produce products or offer services in Mexico and
abroad. Forbes provides an overview: “In total, there were 19 Mexican companies on the 2013
Forbes Global 2000 list. Collectively, the companies had a combined market value of $369.9
billion, with $347.8 billion in assets; generating $203.3 billion in revenues and $16.8 billion in
profits.”4 Several Mexican corporations are among the world’s largest in their fields. América
Móvil is the fifth largest telecommunications company in the global economy.5 Cemex is the
world’s seventh largest cement company.6 Pemex is the eighth largest petroleum company in the
world.7 Several other companies could be added to the list.8

Of course, it is true that some sectors of the Mexican economy are dominated by foreign
corporations, notably the mining industry. Canadian corporations own 73 percent of all Mexican
mines, followed by the United States and the United Kingdom, companies which are attracted by
what has been called “the fiscal paradise for mining companies.”9 However, there are also large
and important Mexican mining companies, above all Group Mexico, Industrias Peñoles, and
Fresnillo.10 Mexican corporations are not a “comprador bourgeoisie,” but profitable partners in
the exploitation of Mexico’s resources and labor force.

Mexican corporations and foreign corporations in Mexico are profitable. Forbes noted that in
2013, “The combined net worth of Mexico’s billionaires reached $148.5 billion, an increase of
18.4% from the previous year’s total of $125.1 billion.”11 The billionaires’ wealth dropped
considerably in 2014, but recuperated again in 2015. “The combined net worth of Mexico’s
billionaires increased $1.6 billion this year, from $142.9 to $144.5—or 1.12%. Mexican

3
“World GDP Ranking 2015: Data and Charts,” Knoema, available at: http://knoema.com/nwnfkne/world-gdp-
ranking-2015-data-and-charts
4
“Forbes Global 2000: Mexico's Largest Companies,” Forbes, available at:
http://www.economywatch.com/companies/forbes-list/mexico.html
5
“Top Ten Telecom Companies of the World 2013,” available at: http://www.mbaskool.com/fun-corner/top-
brand-lists/7573-top-10-telecom-companies-of-the-world-2013.html
6
“Top 75 Global Cement Companies,” Global Cement, available at:
http://www.globalcement.com/magazine/articles/822-top-75-globalcementcompany
7
“The World’s 25 Biggest Oil Companies,” Forbes, available at:
http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mef45glfe/not-just-the-usual-suspects-2/
8
“Several major Mexican companies among the ‘Global Challengers’,” Geo-Mexico, available at: http://geo-
mexico.com/?p=8994; Enrique Méndez and Roberto Garduño, “México, paraíso fiscal para compañías mineras
canadienses, revela análisis,” La Jornada, Oct. 17, 2013, at:
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2013/10/17/politica/007n1pol. See also: Jennifer Moore and Gillian Colgrove,
“Corruption, Murder and Canadian Mining in Mexico: The Case of Blackfire Exploration and the Canadian
Embassy,” May, 2013, at: http://www.miningwatch.ca/files/blackfire_embassy_report_eng_0.pdf
9
Secretaría de Economía, “Companies with Mining Projects in Mexico,”
http://portalweb.sgm.gob.mx/economia/en/mexico-mining/mining-companies.html;
10
Tom Barry, “,Mexico’s Three Mining Giants” at: http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14044. See descriptions of
some companies at: Mining in Mexico – Producers report record results, at” http://ravarumarknaden.se/mining-in-
mexico-european-gold-centre/
11
Dolia Estevez, “Mexican Billionaires Have Strong Year, With 18.4% Increase In Wealth,” Forbes, available at:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/doliaestevez/2013/03/07/mexican-billionaires-have-strong-year-with-18-4-increase-
in-wealth/

6
billionaires did better than in 2014, when their combined wealth dropped by 4%, but their
aggregate wealth is still below the 2013 level of $148.6 billion.”12

12
Dolia Estevez, “With Carlos Slim Leading The Way, Mexico's Billionaires Have A Better Year,” available at:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/doliaestevez/2015/03/03/with-carlos-slim-leading-the-way-mexicos-billionaires-
have-a-better-year/

7
Table #1 – Source : Forbes – Table at http://www.economywatch.com/companies/forbes-
list/mexico.html

MEXICO’S LARGEST CORPORATIONS FROM FORBES 2013 LIST

OF THE WORLD 2000 LARGEST CORPORATIONS

Market
Global Sales Profits Assets Value
Rank Company ($billion) ($billion) ($billion) ($billion)

100 América Móvil 60.2 7.1 74.6 70.7

349 Femsa 18.5 1.6 22.6 37.7

440 Grupo Mexico 10.4 2.4 18.4 32.3

491 GFNorte 7.7 0.8 70.6 18.5

712 ALFA 15.6 0.7 11.8 12.7

769 Grupo Modelo 7.2 1 9.6 29

778 Cemex 15.3 -0.9 35.9 13.6

818 Grupo Inbursa 3.6 0.7 26.2 18.5

918 Grupo Televisa 5.4 0.7 12.6 14.9

925 Industrias Peñoles 7.4 0.8 6.4 17.4

1106 Grupo Bimbo 13.5 0.2 10.1 13

1117 Grupo Carso 6.4 0.6 5.9 11.3

1153 El Puerto de Liverpool 5 0.5 6.6 15.5

1192 Fresnillo 2.2 0.7 3.3 16.1

1455 Arca Continental 4.4 0.4 4.9 12

1465 Grupo Elektra 5.3 -1.5 12.8 9.5

1469 Mexichem 4.9 0.4 7.6 10.8

1626 Soriana 8 0.3 5.7 6.8

1773 Kimberly-Clark de Mexico 2.3 0.3 2.2 9.6

http://www.economywatch.com/companies/forbes-list/mexico.html

8
The Mexican capitalist economy has lifted sixteen Mexicans on to the Forbes billionaires list
which provides another way of looking at the country’s important corporations. While running
down this list may seem tedious, it provides an important index of the important role of other
sorts of industries and services in the Mexican economy. 1) Carlos Slim, telecommunications
mogul, has a fortune of US$77.1 billion; 2) Germán Larrea Mota y Valasco, the mining tycoon
has $13.9 billion; 3) Alberto Bailleres González, another mining magnate has a fortune of
US$10.4 billion; 4) Ricardo Salinas Pliego, owner of TV Azteca, has US$8 billion; 5) Eva
Gonda de Rivera, got her fortune from ownership of the largest independent Coca Cola bottling
enterprise in the world; 6) Maria Asunción Aramburuzabala, has a fortune of US$5 billion from
the Modelo brewing company; 7) Jerónimo Arango was the founder of the self-service Aurrerá
stores and is worth US$4.3 billion; 8) Antonio del Valle Ruiz is the owner of Mexichem, the
chemical manufacturer; 9) Emilio Azcárrage Jean is the owner of Televisa, and is worth US$3.1
billion; 10) Carlos Hank Rhon, the banker, is worth US$2.4 billion; 11) José y Francisco José
Calderón Rojas, owner of the beverage and convenience chain Fomento (FEMSA), is has some
US$1.8 billion; 12) banker Robert Hernández is worth some US$1.8 billion; 13) Max Michel
Suberville, also of FEMSA, is worth US$1.5 billion; 14) Alfredo Harp Hélu, a former banker
and owner of Avatel telecommunications company, is worth US$1.32; 15) Rufino Vigil
González is a steel baron, the owner of ICH, and has a worth of US$1.3 billion; and, finally, 16)
David Peñaloza Alanís made his US$1.2 billion through toll highways.

The Mexican capitalist economy is modern, diverse, complex, productive, and very profitable.
The billionaires list shows us the significance of mining, television, telecommunications, food
products, consumer goods, and finance. And, while wealth is concentrated in Mexico, it is
important to note that below this one percent comprised of haute bourgeoisie are the richest 30
percent of the population, some 8.7 million families that receive 83 percent of the country’s total
income.13

An important measure of a capitalist economy, of course, is it growth rate. After 2008, virtually
the entire world economy went into crisis, leading to downturns and followed in many cases by
stagnation. Because of its higher integration into the North American economy, Mexico’s growth
rate tends to depend upon the United States which is its largest trading partner. As can be seen in
the charts below, while 2008 was disastrous, Mexico appears to be returning to growth rates
typical of its economy for thirty years, that is around 3 percent.

13
Miguel del Castillo Negrete Rovira, ‘La distribución del ingreso en México,” Este Pais, April 19, 2015, available at:
http://estepais.com/site/2012/la-distribucion-del-ingreso-en-mexico/

9
Table #2 – Source: Trading Economics, available at:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/mexico/gdp-growth-annual

Following the 2008 recession, foreign direct investment (FDI) in Mexico dropped significantly,
but with the recovery in the United States, FDI is now surging again. Mexico received US$42.1
billion in foreign direct investment in 2013, though in 2014 reports suggest the total was just
US22.6 billion.14 Foreign investors are at the moment putting billions into the auto industry in
Mexico. Toyota plans to invest US$1 billion in a plant to build Corollas, while Ford plans to
invest $US1.3 billion in its Chihuahua plant and US$1.2 billion in its Guanajuato transmission
plant.15 Goodyear just announced that it will construct a US500 million tire plant in San Luis
Potosí.16 These are indicators that capitalists internationally are confident that Mexico’s
government and economy are strong.

14
Anthony Harrup, “Mexico’s Foreign Direct Investment Falls in 2014,” Wall Street Journal, available at:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/mexicos-foreign-direct-investment-falls-in-2014-1424798554
15
“Ford to announce $2.5bn investment,” Mexico Daily News; Toyota to invest $1B in Mexico to build Corollas,”
Detroit Free Press; “Toyota plans new factories in China and Mexico, say report,” AFP, The Guardian, April 2, 2003.
16
John Harper, “Goodyear to build $500 million tire plant in Mexico,” Cleveland.Com, available at:
http://www.cleveland.com/akron/index.ssf/2015/04/goodyear_to_open_500_million_p.html

10
11
Table # Mexican Auto Production – Number of Autos produced

Source: http://eleconomista.com.mx/industrias/2015/04/21/empresas-que-van-mexico-pagan-
sueldos-esclavo-sindicato

Perhaps the most important issue in evaluating a capitalist economy is where it is rising or falling
relative to other economies. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the world’s second largest
multinational professional financial services network, has published an updated edition of The
World in 2050 in which it suggests that Mexico will rise from the eleventh largest economy in
the world today to the sixth largest by 2050. “We project new emerging economies like Mexico
and Indonesia to be larger than the UK and France by 2030 (in PPP terms) while Turkey could
become larger than Italy. Nigeria and Vietnam could be the fast growing large economies over
the period to 2050,” according to the PwC report. (See Table #3.) While such prognostications
must be considered with some skepticism, the most interesting thing is that an organization like
PwC sees Mexican capitalism as ascending in rank—and likely to pass such countries as Japan,
Russia, Nigeria, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

Table #3 – Source: PwC at http://geo-mexico.com/?p=12581

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Mexico’s capitalist class is not only wealthy; it is also well organized and politically powerful.
Mexican businesspeople have for many decades been organized in power associations, the most
important being Employers Confederation of the Mexican Republic (COPARMEX) which brings
together “more than 36,000 member companies across the country are responsible for 30% of
GDP and 4.8 million formal jobs.”17 There are many other employers’ associations, one for
every major and many minor industries, but the most important among them is probably
Canacintra, the National Chamber of the Manufacturing Industry.18 All of the various chambers
and particular COPARMEX have worked for years, principally through the National Action
Party (PAN) but also with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to develop policies, write
legislation, and to lobby for its passage.

The conservative National Action Party (PAN), founded by bankers and influential Catholics,
has historically been the principal party of big business in Mexico, though through many decades
the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) demonstrated that it defended the interests of
both domestic and foreign capital quite effectively. Business, however, always resented the
PRI’s large role in the economy through state-owned industries and the party’s affiliated labor
union organizations, as well as the PRI-government’s social welfare state. Following Mexico’s
near default in the early 1980s, the international financial institutions and the American bankers
pressured the PRI to accept the neoliberal policies of privatization, open markets, cuts in the
social welfare budget, and the weakening of the labor unions. A group of leaders within the PRI,
trained at the Harvard Business School and other such institutions, who had broken with the
PRI’s nationalist political model, and welcomed the turn to neoliberalism. With that, the PRI
became a capitalist party much like the PAN.

17
“COPARMEX,” Wikpedia, available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coparmex
18
“Canacintra,” Wikipedia, available at: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canacintra

13
The consolidation of Mexico’s fully capitalist government, a government with a neoliberal
program came in two stages: first the victory of the Technocrats over the Dinosaurs (that is the
neoliberals over the economic nationalists) within the PRI and then the electoral victory of the
PAN. The two PAN administrations—Vicente Fox (2000-2006) and Felipe Calderón (2006-
2012)—demonstrated that the PAN was incapable of governing Mexico. Fox’s administration
failed to deliver on its promises to the business class, while Calderón’s mistaken and disastrous
war on the drug dealers led to over 100,000 deaths, 20,000 disappearances and tens of thousands
of displaced persons, as well as the many human rights violations by the Mexican Army and the
country’s myriad police forces, including numerous cases of beatings, robberies, rape, torture,
and murder.

The war on the drug cartels came at a tremendous cost politically, making it impossible for
Calderón to pass the pro-business agenda demanded by the capitalist class which had put him in
office and it equally impossible for the PAN to hold on to the presidency or a majority in the
Congress. While the PRI ruled Mexico there had been much repression and violence, but in 75
years there had been nothing like the Calderón administration and its war on drugs. In fact, there
has been nothing on that scale since the years of the Mexican Revolution that took one million
lives and drove one million Mexican into exile at a time when the country had only 14 million
inhabitants. It is now clear that both of the PAN administrations failed, while the Calderón
administration with its brutal military strategy for dealing with domestic issues represented an
aberration in the history of Mexican politics. With the PAN utterly discredited and the Mexican
bourgeoisie refusing to permit the PRD, the left-of-center capitalist reform party, to win an
election (as indicated by the fraud in 1988 and 2006), the PRI was destined to come back to
power. The PRI’s return to power represents a return to business as usual, and while business as
usual in Mexico is usually corrupt, violent, and attended by massacres, Enrique Peña Nieto and
his successors are unlikely to remain as violent as the Calderón regime, even if, so far, EPN has
not yet succeeded in lower the level of violence very much.

In the PRI candidate Enrique Peña Nieto, the governor of the State of Mexico who ran for the
presidency in 2012, Mexican capitalists and foreign investors found a champion willing to push
forward the neoliberal agenda that had they had initiated back in the 1980s. Immediately after his
election, EPN succeeded in drawing the PAN and the PRD into his Pact for Mexico,
fundamentally a government of national unity around the neoliberal program advocated by
COPARMEX and by foreign investors. Over the last three years Mexico has passed a series of
reforms—education, labor, energy, and telecommunications—representing a clear victory for big
business. While all of these reforms faced political opposition as well as opposition in the streets
from labor and leftwing opponents, the opposition failed to build a movement large enough to
stop the reforms or to provide a left political alterative that might have attracted mass support.

While the Mexican state founded in 1917 and the ruling party first founded in 1929 once had a
Bonapartist character, that is, a relatively autonomous state-party balancing on the weak
capitalist class, middle class, working class and peasantry, today the PRI is an authentically
capitalist party. When the PRI was at its height, from the 1940s to the 1980s—with its working
class, peasant, and popular sectors—political scientists referred to it as an “authoritarian
populist” party. Today it is an authoritarian party, still with a populist veneer and with a cross-

14
class political base, able to mobilize widespread support of a third or more of the Mexican
electorate. The PRI proved able to return to power because of its support from the Mexican
capitalist class, its large, pervasive, and effective political machine, and the fact that it won a
large number of votes from all social classes. The PRI today is not the old PRI, of course, since
neoliberal privatization and the great auction of Mexico’s national industries undermined much
of the party’s historic patronage machine, nevertheless, the new PRI’s political machine remains
largely the same and it is impressive. The PRI has its operatives in every Mexican city, town, and
rural village. The PRI’s victory depended in large measure upon the support of the television
duopoly—TV Azteca and Televisa—which were crucial, since television is the principal medium
for communicating with the electorate.

Fraud is central to the PRI and to Mexican politics generally. Attempts to manipulate of the
electoral institute (formerly the Federal Electoral Institute or IFE now the National Electoral
Institute or INE), to violate the election restrictions on campaigning, and fraud in vote getting
(ballot box stuffing, vote buying, intimidation, violence) and vote counting, of course, also form
part of the standard procedure of Mexican elections and also formed part of the PRI’s path to
victory. Most historians believe that Mexico has only had two genuinely free presidential
elections—Francisco I. Madero’s in 1911 and Vicente’s Fox’s in 2000—while all others
involved varying degrees of fraud. Some elections have been notoriously fraudulent, such as
Manuel Ávila Camacho’s victory of Juan Andreu Almazán in 1940, and more recently the
Victory of Carlos Salinas over Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas in 1988 and Felipe Calderón’s victory over
Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2006. The point, however, is that the public accepts the
fraudulent elections because the PRI had been able to build a powerful political party and with
the media’s backing to win significant support from Mexican voters. The PRI or the PAN do not
rule primarily through repression, but rather through winning the support, acquiescence, or
consent of the Mexican people.

We should, however, in addition to discussing the economy and politics, say a word about the
state itself, that is, the state in terms of police and military power. The Secretary of Defense
(SEDENA) commands the Mexican Army with active duty troops that number about 250,000,
many of whom serve in the 12 Military Regions and the 44 military zones into which the country
is divided.19 The country also has some 544,000 state and municipal police, though this force is
currently undergoing reorganization.20 Mexico’s has the third largest police force in the world,
after the United States and India, though Mexican police forces are notoriously corrupt and not
entirely reliable. The Federal Police, made up of approximately 40,000 elements, is considered
the government’s elite police corps, and among them is a new special unit of 5,000 police
officers.21 Altogether then the Mexican government has at its disposal about 800,000 soldiers
and police officers to keep the unruly sections of the population in submission. The government
has strong control over the military and the police, notwithstanding widespread corruption
occasional loss of allegiance of an official who went over to the cartels, and since the

19
“Mexican Army,” Wikipedia, available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Army#Regional_command
20
“Law Enforcement in Mexico,” Wikipedia, available at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_Mexico
21
Dudley Althaus and José de Córdoba, “Mexico Unveils New Police Force,” Wall Street Journal, Aug. 22, 2014,
Available at: http://www.wsj.com/articles/mexico-unveils-new-police-force-1408737459

15
revolutionary period ended in 1940 has not faced any serious or large scale indiscipline from the
officers or the ranks.

The United States plays a major role in arming Mexico principally through Plan Mérida, a joint
crime fighting program, which has so far provided $2.3 billion for arms. Mexico also budgets
money for arms—this year some US$1.7 billion22—which it buys from the United States. For
example, Mexico has an order for 3,335 Humvees, hundreds of which are being delivered at this
time.23 The Mexican military then is large and well-armed, providing security for the Mexican
government, for the capitalist market, and for private property.

To summarize this section, the Mexican capitalist class holds a powerful economic position, is
organized into important employer associations which play a large role in developing policy and
proposing legislation, and has two important political parties, the National Action Party and the
Institutional Revolutionary Party which represent its interests in government. The news media
generally support the government and the government has a large and powerful military and
police establishment. The wealth, size, and strength of the capitalist class and its organizations
suggest that Mexico is far from being a “failed state,” while the institutional character of
electoral manipulation and fraud also demonstrate as well as the widespread repression and
violence that it is not an “evolving democracy,” but rather remains an authoritarian state.

One might argue, that in early 1910 the Mexico of Porfirio Díaz seemed equally strong
economically, politically, and militarily, and yet is quickly succumbed to a revolution that drove
it from power. Yet the difference between then and now are great. The Mexican bourgeoisie of
1910 was deeply divided, with Díaz and his inner circle of capitalists and landlords known as los
científicos being challenged by a rising modernizing bourgeoisie based in the northern states who
put forward a political challenger for president, Francisco I. Madero. At the same time, there was
widespread working class organization and strikes in the largest industrial areas, as well as
tremendous peasant discontent which erupted in the revolution of 1910-1920. Today however,
the Mexican capitalist class is united, while the working class as at its nadir, as we describe
below.

The State of the Mexican Working Class

The Mexican working class today is both objectively and subjectively in the weakest situation
since the 1940s. Mexican has a total population of 120 million of whom 87.5 million are 15
years or older. What the government calls the economically active population, those engaged in
some sort of economic activity, numbers 52.1 million, 32.4 million men and 19.6 million
women.24 Only about 10 percent of all workers are unionized.25

22
Inigo Guevara, “Mexican military requests USD1.7 billion in 2015 procurement funding,” HIS Jane’s 360, available
at: http://www.janes.com/article/42939/mexican-military-requests-usd1-7-billion-in-2015-procurement-funding
23
Inigo Guevara, “Mexican Army receives hundreds of HMMWV, other vehicles,” HIS Jane’s 360, available at:
http://www.janes.com/article/50696/mexican-army-receives-hundreds-of-hmmwv-other-vehicles
24
INEGI, available at: http://www3.inegi.org.mx/sistemas/temas/default.aspx?s=est&c=25433&t=1
25
Roberto Zepeda , “Disminución de la tasa de trabajadores sindicalizados en México durante el periodo
neoliberal,” Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, Vol. LI, núm. 207, septiembre- diciembre, 2009, pp.
57-81.

16
While many foreigners may still think of Mexico as primarily an agricultural country, this has
not been the case for some time. Mexico is a modern economy dominated by manufacturing and
services. Mexico uses the three sector model: the primary sector is made up of agriculture,
forestry, and mining; the secondary sector is manufacturing; and the tertiary sector is services.

Table #4 –
Mexican Working Class – Employment by Sector – Formal Economy:

Primary 6,862,835
Secondary 12,130,771
Tertiary 30,517,620
Unspecified 312,572
Total: 49,823,798
Source: INEGI, available at:
http://www3.inegi.org.mx/sistemas/temas/default.aspx?s=est&c=25433&t=1

The analysis of the working class by sectors is somewhat misleading, however, because it does
not take into account the informal sector. INEGI and the International Labor Organization (ILO)
report that 60 percent of all Mexicans work in the informal sector.26 The informal sector is made
up of businesses that are not registered with the government and consequently pay no taxes and
do not register their employees for their social security (health and pension) benefits and do not
adhere to other laws regarding the environment, labor law, or workers’ health and safety. About
one-third of workers in the informal sector are self-employed.

The Mexican government’s policy for many decades has been to maintain low wages. One way
to maintain low wages is to establish a low minimum wage, one at or even below subsistence
level. Minimum wages have been kept at subsistence except during the period of large scale
labor and social movements in Mexico that lasted from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. The
minimum wage has since 1976 lost 73 percent of its purchasing power.27

26
ILO, “Informal employment in Mexico: Current situation, policies and challenges,” available at:
http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---americas/---ro-lima/documents/publication/wcms_245889.pdf
27
Miguel del Castillo Negrete Rovira, ‘La distribución del ingreso en México,” Este Pais, April 19, 2015, available at:
http://estepais.com/site/2012/la-distribucion-del-ingreso-en-mexico/

17
 Table #5 Mexican Minimum Wage, available at:
Source: http://estepais.com/site/2012/la-distribucion-del-ingreso-en-mexico/

Today as we see, the real minimum wage is actually lower in real terms than it was in 1930 or
1940.

A second way to keep wages low is through the wage ceiling, an unacknowledged but well
known government policy that works to keep wage increases in the public and private sectors
below a certain limit. The Secretary of Labor and the Labor Boards typically use their authority
to keep wage increases slightly below the rate of inflation. The result, of course, is that over the
long haul wages tend to fall below the cost of living.

Wages for workers in all sectors are very low. Jornaleros or agricultural day laborers generally
earn between 65 and 110 pesos per day, that is, between US$4.25 and US$7.15.28 Even when
parents and their children work in the fields, as they frequently do, they earn barely subsistence
wages. Wages are so low in large part because workers are either represented by corrupt “official
unions” or no unions. As Reuters recently reported,

Low wages are a huge incentive for both Mexican and foreign firms. One in seven
Mexican workers earns the average minimum wage of 65.58 pesos ($5.10) a day or less,
national statistics office INEGI says. The average hourly wage in Mexico - home to
Carlos Slim, one of the world's richest men - is 31.3 pesos ($2.43).

Manufacturing workers fare better with wages averaging about $2.70 an hour but they
make up only 16 percent of the labor force and their pay is way below the $19.50 per
hour in the United States, figures from INEGI and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
show.29

28
De miseria los salarios de jornaleros agrícolas” Nuestro México, available at:
http://nuestro.mx/generales/de-miseria-salarios-de-jornaleros-agricolas/
29
Christine Murray, “Analysis - Mexican manufacturing surge hides low-wage drag on economy,” Reuters, available
at: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/06/02/uk-mexico-economy-analysis-idUKKBN0ED1YG20140602

18
Since 2013, wages in Mexico are lower than Chinese wages, about one-fifth lower.30 Some six
million Mexicans earn the minimum age of 70.10 pesos or US$4.50 per day, while another 12
million earn 140 pesos or US$9.00 per day, according to the Center for Multidisciplinary
Analysis of the Institute for Economic Investigations of the National Autonomous University of
Mexico (UNAM).31

Low wages, of course, mean poverty. Commonly people say that 40 to 50 percent of all
Mexicans live in poverty. The Mexican Secretary of Social Development (SEDESOL) reported
in April similar poverty levels. This is also, for example, the recent finding of the Woodrow
Wilson Center.32 The Mexican Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy
(CONEVAL) reported in the summer of 2013 that 53.5 million Mexicans were living below the
poverty line in 2012, half a million more than in 2010. But another 40 percent were in danger of
becoming poor, as newspapers reported at that time.33 Actually Coneval, looking at a number of
factors, finds more Mexican are poor than is generally reported:

Hence, depending on the status of individuals according to their economic (money-

metric) and social rights conditions, four categories are identified: 1) individuals who
suffer from multidimensional poverty (deprived in terms of both income and social
rights); 2) individuals who are income-deprived but not social rights-deprived; 3)
individuals who are social rights-deprived but not income-deprived; and, finally 4) the
non-poor. CONEVAL (2010) estimated that in 2008, 44.2% of the Mexican population
was in the first category, 33.7% in the second, 4.5% in the third leaving only 18.3% in the
non-poor category. CONEVAL also makes allowance for "extreme poverty", based on a
lower income poverty line and the case where individuals are deprived in at least three of
the six social dimensions.34

Note, CONEVAL suggests that only 18.3 percent of all Mexicans are not poor, that is, 81.7
percent or four-fifths are poor. Nor are things improving. The World Bank just published another
report indicating that Mexico stating, “Poverty has not diminished in the last twenty years.” The
World Bank reports that in 2012, the last year for which there are figures, 69 percent of the
country lives in extreme or moderate poverty.35 While there is a great debate about the

30
Mexico hourly wages now lower than China's-study,” Reuters, available at:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/04/economy-mexico-wages-idUSL2N0CR1TY20130404
31
Particia Muñoz Ríos, “Salario de 6.5 millones de trabajadores: $70.10,” La Jornada, April 30, 2015, available at:
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2015/04/30/politica/013n2pol
32
Christopher Wilson and Gerardo Silva, “Mexico’s Latests Poverty Stats,” Wilson Center, available at:
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/Poverty_Statistics_Mexico_2013.pdf
33
Patricia Rey Mallén, “Poverty Increases In Mexico To 45 Percent Of Population: 53 Million Mexicans Under
Poverty Line,” International Business Times, available at: http://www.ibtimes.com/poverty-increases-mexico-45-
percent-population-53-million-mexicans-under-poverty-line-1364753
34
Erik Thornbecke, “Measurement of Social Well-being and Progress,” Reality, Data, and Space: International
Journal of Statistics and Geography, available
at: http://www.inegi.org.mx/prod_serv/contenidos/espanol/bvinegi/productos/integracion/especiales/revista-
inter/RevistaDigital2/RDE_02_6e.html
35
Roberto González Amador, “BM: en México la pobreza no has disminuido los últios 20 años,” La Jornada, April
23, 2015, available at: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2015/04/23/economia/024n1eco

19
methodology of measuring poverty, it seems clear that by any measure a majority of Mexicans
are poor and others near poor and their situation is not improving.

Why are Mexican workers paid so little and so poor? The principal reason is that Mexican
workers do not control their own labor unions or have their own political party, so they have no
vehicle with which to struggle to improve their situation. While the Mexican Revolution and the
Constitution of 1917 and its Article 123 enshrined rights and protections for workers in the
country’ magna carta, the most progressive labor law in the world at the time, the establishment
of the state and the founding of a ruling party soon eviscerated those rights. Since the Mexican
Revolution, the state-party, ultimately the PRI, controlled the labor unions, determining their
policies and setting limits to their activities. Constitutional Article 123 and the Federal Labor
Law of 1931 and subsequent amendments, as well the Secretary of Labor and the Federal and
Local Boards of Conciliation and Arbitration conspire to make it virtually impossible for
workers to create independent unions or to strike.

Many unionized workers belong to unions affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI) and its major union federations: the Congress of Labor (CT), the Confederation of
Mexican Workers (CTM), the Federation of Unions of Workers at the Service of the State
(FSTSE), and other such bodies. Most workers actually belong to unions that are not affiliated
with the federations, but that by and large engage in the same pro-government and pro-employer
policies. These unions collaborate with the government and the employers in attempting to keep
wages low and to prevent strikes. Even so, these “official” unions have also declined in members
as a result of both state policies and employer practices. One study suggests that unions declined
from just over 30 percent to just below 20 percent between 1984 and 2000,36 while today
unionization is about 10 percent.37 Some interpret the statistics somewhat differently and find
that only 8.6 percent of the economically active population is unionized.38

Table #6 Source – Roberto Zepeda , “Disminución de la tasa de trabajadores sindicalizados en

México durante el periodo neoliberal,” Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y
Sociales, Vol. LI, núm. 207, septiembre- diciembre, 2009, pp. 57-81.
Tasa de sindicalización sobre la pea, 1986-2008
Año Población total PEA PEA Número de Sindicalizados /
Ocupada sindicalizados pea
1986 79,542,176 26,280,500 21,640,000 2,369,580 9.0 %
1993 86,613,000 33,652,000 32,833,000 4,644,099 13.8 %
1997 94,732,320 38,095,000 36,298,000 4,493,940 11.7 %
2000 99,356,720 40,307,661 39,695,452 4,704,010 11.6 %
2005 104,966,281 42,818,600 41,320,800 4,356,892 10.2%

36
David Fairris and Edward Levine, “Declining union density in Mexico, 1984–2000,” Monthly Labor Review,
available at: www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2004/09/art2full.pdf
37
Roberto Zepeda , “Disminución de la tasa de trabajadores sindicalizados en México durante el periodo
neoliberal,” Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y
Sociales, Vol. LI, núm. 207, septiembre- diciembre, 2009, pp. 57-81.
38
Enrique Quintana, “Sindicatos, especie en extinción,” El Financiero, April 29, 2015, available at:
http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/opinion/sindicatos-especie-en-extincion.html

20
 2008 106,794,362 45,535,466 43,625,738 4,692,476 10.3 %
Fuente: Javier Aguilar García, La población trabajadora y sindicalizada en México en el periodo de la
globalización, México, Fondo de Cultura Económica/unam, Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, 2002,
pp. 145-158.
Datos de 2005: Javier Aguilar García, Globalización, trabajo y sindicalismo en México, México, Konrad
Adenauer/cenpros/Itaca/, 2008. Datos de 2008: inegi, stps, enoe, tercer trimestre de 2008.
Datos de sindicalización en 2008: dgra, julio de 2008; Anuarios estadísticos del issste (1999-2008), en
http://www.issste.gob.mx/issste/ anuarios/
Base de datos elaborada por la Coordinación de Sociología del Trabajo del Instituto de Investigaciones
Sociales de la unam.

The tripartite system of the Labor Boards, made up of government, business, and labor
representatives represents the institutional collusion of the state, capital, and a corrupt and
violent labor bureaucracy against workers. Studies suggest that 80 to 90 percent of all contracts
in Mexico are what are called “protection contracts” that offer only the basic minimum wages
and conditions, contracts that are frequently negotiated by “ghost unions” unknown to the
workers.39 Very few Mexican workers have genuine labor unions committed to improving the
situation of their members.

So it is not surprising that Mexico has few official strikes. According to INEGI, strikes have
fallen from 577 in 1995, to 84 in 2010, and only 62 in 2011.40 Of course there are many
unofficial strikes and work stoppages, especially in the more unionized public sector, particularly
among teachers, but in the private sector workers who engage in unofficial strikes are often
simply fired and replaced.

When workers have organized large independent movements and engaged in large often
unofficial strikes or in the construction of networks of solidarity, such as in the case of the 1959
railroad workers strike or the Democratic Tendency of the 1970s, these movements have been
crushed by the Mexican government using a combination of the army, the police, and gangsters.
During the height of the imposition of neoliberalism on Mexico in the late 1980s and early
1990s, President Carlos Salinas used the army and the police to attack the offices and homes of
the Petroleum Workers Union (SNTRM) and arrested its leader Joaquín “La Quina” Hernández
Galicia and other union officials attempted to frame them for murder, and imprisoned the union
leaders on charges of corruption. Salinas also sent the army to occupy Cananea preemptively to
prevent strikes and protests over the privatization of the company.41

Most recently, Felipe Calderon used the army and the police to occupy the facilities of the Light
and Power Company, firing 44,000 workers and eliminating the politically independent Mexican

39
Auge y perspectivas de los contratos de protección: ¿Corrupcion sindical o mal necesario? PRD and Friederich
Ebert Stiftung, http://www.fesmex.org/common/Documentos/Libros/Libro%20Contratos%20Proteccion.pdf
40
INEGI, available at:
http://www.inegi.org.mx/prod_serv/contenidos/espanol/bvinegi/productos/integracion/pais/aepef/2012/Aepef2
012.pdf
41
Dan La Botz, Mask of Democracy: Labor Suppression in Mexico Today (Boston: South End Press, 1992).

21
Electrical Workers Union (SME) in 2009.42 His government also collaborated with Grupo
México to eliminate the miners’ union from the Cananea mine, and brought trumped up charges
of embezzlement against Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, head of the miners’ union, forcing him to
flee to Canada. When Enrique Peña Nieto became president, his administration arrested, charged
with corruption, and jailed Elba Esther Gordillo, head of the teachers’ union. The Mexican
government uses its power to keep corrupt union officials in power, or, if like La Quina and
Gordillo, they get out of line, it turns on them and destroys them.

Mexico’s largest and most active working class movement is the National Coordinating
Committee (la CNTE) of the Mexican Teachers Union (el SNTE) which since the 1970s has
been able to mobilize tens and often hundreds of thousands of teachers from the state of Chiapas,
Oaxaca, Guerrero, Mexico City, and more recently Michoacán. La CNTE forms coalitions with
other independent unions, workers, and community groups and takes positions opposing
neoliberal policies such as privatization. The Mexican Miners Union (SNTMMRM) maintains
independence from the government and the employers, but does not generally join with other
unions and does not advance a left political agenda. The Mexican Electrical Workers Union
(SME), though eliminated from the workplace several years ago keeps together about 16,000
union members who continue to fight for their jobs, though with no success so far. The Union of
Workers of the National Autonomous University (STUNAM) and other university workers, as
well as the Telephone Workers Union (STRM), remain independent and those two union anchor
the independent labor federation the National Union of Workers (UNT).

Still all of these organizations taken together represent only a small percentage of unionized
workers and an even smaller proportion of the working class. La CNTE engages strikes and often
large and often militant demonstrations and the SME continues it protests demanding
reintegration into the electric power industry workforce, and four or five times a year the UNT
leads these and other unions, peasant organizations, and community groups in large protests
against neoliberal policies, but these have little effect on the government’s agenda or the
corporations’ behavior. The Mexican Union Front (FSM) and the National Front against
Privatization which the SME once led seem to have disappeared from the political scene. While
90 labor unions and other organizations came together a year and a half ago to organized the
New Labor Central (NCO), that organization has yet to make its mark. The organized and
independent Mexican working class remains small.

Social Turbulence

Mexico has a long history of social turbulence, that is social disturbances or unruliness, but for
the last twenty years the situation has been more extreme than at any time since the end of the
Mexican Revolution in 1940. Such social turbulence generally appears in two forms: social
rebellions and criminal activity. We could date the beginning of the current period of social
turbulence to the outbreak of the Chiapas Rebellion led by the Zapatista Army of National
Liberation (EZLN). Surrounded by the Mexican Army, the EZLN remained armed, but its
soldiers have not used their arms now for twenty years, raising the question of whether or not

42
Dan La Botz, “Mexican Government Seizes Power Plants, Liquidates Company, Fires Workers, Union in
Jeopardy,” Monthly Review’s MRZine, October 11, 2009, available at
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2009/labotz111009.html

22
they should still be considered a guerrilla organization. In addition to the EZLN there are other
guerrilla groups, the most important of which is the Peoples Revolutionary Army (Partido
Democrático Popular Revolucionario-Ejército Popular Revolucionario or EPR) which for some
time has not been engaged in armed attacks but presumably continues to recruit and train troops
and meanwhile issues manifestos press releases.43

A far larger and more serious threat to the Mexican state is found in the drug cartels, business
organizations involved in the sale of illegal drugs, other criminal enterprises, and which engage
in violence in the defense as well as the expansion of their territory and their trade. The Mexican
drug cartels grew with the growth of the American market for drugs, the impact of neoliberal
policies on Mexico devastating the economy and particularly agriculture, together with the
collapse of the PRI’s tacit regulation of the cartels. With farmers planting marijuana and opium
poppies, young men and women finding work as dealers or hired guns, the development of an
internal Mexican drug market, and the cartels splintering and becoming rivals, the situation
became more volatile.

President de la Madrid and his successors (Carlos Salinas, Ernesto Zedillo, and Vicente Fox)
became increasingly involved attempts at police and military suppression of the cartels, until in
2006 Felipe Calderón launched a full scale war on the drug dealers. Calderón mobilized the
Mexican Army, sending some 45,000 troops as well as 5,000 Federal Police to confront the drug
cartels, leading to the deaths of 100,000 people, the forced disappearance of 20,000, and the
displacement of something like 100,000.44 The Mexican Army and police engaged in widespread
human rights violations including robbery, beating, rape, torture, and murder, as documented by

43
Centro de Documentación de los Movimientos Armados, available at:
http://www.cedema.org/index.php?ver=mostrar&pais=9&nombrepais=Mexico
44
Carmen Boullosa and Mike Wallace, “How the Cartels were Born,” Jacobin, available at:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/mexico-drug-cartel-neoliberalism/

23
Amnesty International, the Trans-Border Institute, and the Washington Office on Latin America
(WOLA), and other organizations.45

In response to the failure of the Mexican Army in Michoacán and some other state to protect
local communities from the drug dealers, there arose beginning in 2012 a third kind of
independent armed group in Mexico, the auto-defensas comunitarias, armed self-defense
organizations, or they might also be accurately called para-militaries or vigilantes. Such
organizations have long been a part of Mexican history and of contemporary society, though
what makes this recent phenomenon different is the number, size, and high caliber, rapid fire
arms. While these groups may have originated among local ranchers, businessmen,
professionals, and returning migrants as genuinely popular, local organizations engaged in the
self-defense of their community, the situation has become more complicated over time.

The movement has been strongest in Michoacán where the auto-defensas where fighting against
the Knights Templar cartel, though it seems quite possible that the rival La Familia cartel may
also have been involved in creating some of the Michoacán auto-defensas.46 By January 2014,
when the Enrique Peña Nieto decided to regularize the auto-defensas and incorporate them into
the Mexican police,47 they may have numbered as many as 20,000 men in arms.48 Some groups
which refused to be incorporated into the police forces were suppressed and their leaders
arrested. At about the same time Peña Nieto announced that he was doing away with the 1,800
municipal polices forces and bringing them under the control of the 32 state police organizations,
thus definitively doing away with the local character of the auto-defensas. Nevertheless new
auto-defensas continue to form and to operate outside of the control of the government. While
some on the left in Mexico and abroad have romanticized these groups, it seems clear that—led
by local ranchers, businessmen, and professionals to protect their property from the drug lords—
these are thoroughly bourgeois organizations.

The Current Crisis of the EPN Administration

The EPN administration today confronts a major political crisis on two fronts. The first is as a
result of the massacre and kidnapping that took place on September 26 when assailants in
Ayotzinapa, Guerrero killed six, wounded twenty-five, and kidnapped 43 students.49 The case
remains unsolved, with allegations that the police and local drug dealers and perhaps the military
were involved in the killing. Since the massacre and kidnapping took place, there have been

45
Catherine Daly, Kimberly Heinle, and David A. Shirk ,“Armed with Impunity Curbing Military Human Rights
Abuses in Mexico,” Trans-Border Institute, University of San Diego, available at:
https://justiceinmexico.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/120807_armed_with_impunity.pdf
46
Valentina Valle Baroz, “Two Years of the Autodefensas Movement in Michoacán, Mexico: Persecution and
Politics,” Upside Down World, March 24, 2014, available at: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-
79/5255-two-years-of-the-autodefensas-movement-in-michoacan-mexico-persecution-and-politics
47
Mexico legalizes vigilante groups in Michoacan, welcomes them in fight against drug cartels,” CBS News,
available at:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mexicos-vigilantes-legalized-and-put-under-military-umbrella/
48
Patrick Corcoran, “Peña Nieto's Mexico Police Reform Proposal Fails to Convince,” Insight Crime, available at:
http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/pena-nieto-proposal-municipal-police-reform-mexico
49
Dan La Botz, “Shock, Horror, Anger…,” available at: http://newpol.org/content/shock-horror-anger-killing-5-
disappearance-43-mexico-protests-marches-strikes-govt-buildings

24
massive demonstrations in Guerrero, Mexico City, and several other states, some of them
massive and some violent. Mexicans are appalled at the abduction of these young people and
indignant at both the involvement of local officials and police and the national government’s
failure to deal with the issue.

Then, in early November, the media discovered that, in a flagrant conflict of interest, President
Enrique Peña Nieto and his wife Angélica Rivera had a $7 million home in the exclusive Lomas
neighborhood—the president’s wife call it “their real home”—a modern house that belonged to a
subsidiary of Grupo Higa, a company that had done hundreds of millions of dollars of business
with the State of Mexico when Peña Nieto was governor and which had just signed a contract on
November 3 with a Chinese-led consortium to build a $3.7 billion high-speed railroad between
Mexico City and Queretaro. The president and his wife quickly announced that the house was
not a gift but that she was buying the home and the government announced it was canceling the
contract for construction of the railroad.50

The killing and kidnapping of the students in Ayotzinapa on the orders of local government and
carried out by the local police—against a backdrop of eight years of the war on drugs that has
taken 110,000 lives, seen as many as 20,000 others disappeared, and left over one million
displaced—led to massive protest demonstrations by students, teachers in Guerrero, in the
Mexican capital, and in several other states strongest in the first three months but continuing over
six months. Mexicans throughout the country were concerned and angry about the disappearance
of the students and the government and police role in it, and the protest movement that began in
Guerrero soon spread to Mexico City and then throughout the country. The dominant groups at
the center of the movement have been teachers and students, with some participation from
middle class and working class groups. Most Mexicans, hoever, have yet to take a stand and the
organized working classes with few exceptions remain observers.

While the current crisis is very serious and the mostly peaceful protests have been inspiring and
militant, so far the movement—without a strong organization itself and without having created a
political leadership—will be challenged to bring significant reform to the Mexican government
and to society at large. The angry movement became large and militant, but as the June 2015
elections revealed, it was not big enough yet to move the powers-that-be, who have indicated
their willingness to use police and military repression to stop any threat to the government and
the economic establishment.

With the left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) implicated in the crime, the new
Movement of National Renovation (MORENA) party still in formation and committed to an
electoral strategy, and the public fed up with politics as usual, there seems to be little chance that
this movement can find a political vehicle to give expression to the movement.
Peña Nieto’s government has been embarrassed by the revelations of the president’s conflict of
interest, the government at the highest levels and shaken by the wide-spread criticism and
massive protests. Still, it has shown few signs of division and little lack of confidence in dealing
with the crisis.

50
Jo Tuckman, “Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto faces outcry over £4.4m mansion,” The Guardian, Nov. 10,
2014. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/10/mexico-president-enrique-pena-nieto-mansion-explain

25
The president, his interior minister, the attorney general, and the head of the army and navy have
taken a clear stand indicating their preparedness to use a heavy hand against protestors who
become a threat to the established order. Still, should new crimes such as took place in
Ayotzinapa continue to be committed or should there be new revelations of presidential
corruption, the movement could grow and spread. Or if Mexico’s independent labor unions were
to throw themselves into the balance on the side of the protest movement that could be decisive.

The Mexican State: Tending toward Crisis but Not Toward Collapse

The combination of angry protests from below over the murder and disappearance of the students
and the scandal at the top have made this the most significant Mexican political crisis since the
2006 elections when protests over election fraud brought a million to the capital and protestors
blocked streets for weeks. The recent crisis has also raised once again the question of the
Mexican state: Is it a failing state? Is it a narco-state? Is it a developing democracy?
The President of Uruguay, commenting on the disappearances, called Mexico “a failed state,” a
remark he almost immediately retracted after Mexico protested.51 His comment however raised
again the question posed only a few years ago by Janet Napolitano, when she was Secretary of
Homeland Security, and said that Mexico’s drug dealers posed an “existential risk” for Mexico.52
Many others have suggested over the past several years that Mexico is a failing state. And others
have asked, if it is not a failing state, then what what sort of state is Mexico? Several suggested
that Mexico was becoming a militarized state largely controlled by the U.S. government.53

Recently in Le Monde Diplomatique made the suggestion that has been made by various analysts
that Mexico is a “narco-state” controlled by the drug lords.54 The conclusion that Mexico is a
narco-state, however, is fundamentally wrong. Mexico remains a capitalist state representing the
great financial and corporate interests of the country—some of which are those of drug dealers—
but Mexico is a state largely divided into political fiefdoms, riddled with corruption, and facing
tremendous centrifugal forces, as a variety of forces from drug cartels to self-defense groups to
leftwing indigenous movements attempt to achieve autonomy at the expense of the central
government, creating the tendency toward a permanent crises of governability, without,
however, the actual breakdown of the central state structures.

Drug dealing, it is true, represents a multi-billion dollar business, but it is only one of several
sectors which bring billions of dollars to the foreign or Mexican corporations in Mexico. Drugs
are more or less of the same magnitude as the other large and important sources of earnings,
namely tourism, manufacturing, petroleum, mining, and remittances from workers abroad. In
rather rough round numbers the role of these sectors in the country’s earnings are:
51
Brianna Lee, “Uruguay's President José Mujica Backtracks After Calling Mexico A 'Failed State',” International
Business Times, Nov. 24, 2014, available at: http://www.ibtimes.com/uruguays-president-jose-mujica-backtracks-
after-calling-mexico-failed-state-1728435
52
Dan La Botz, “Obama Administration Engages Mexico; Message Unclear,” Mexican Labor News and Analysis,
available at: http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/print.php?id=982
53
Dan La Botz, “Evolution of the Mexican State,” Monthly Review, April 4, 2009, available at:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2009/labotz040409.html
54
Rafael Barajas and Pedro Miguel, “Mexico, a criminal country,” Le Monde Diplomatique, December 4, 2014,
available at: http://mondediplo.com/2014/12/04mexico

26
  Manufacturing exports - $370.9 billion in 2013.55
(Mexican autoparts alone generated US$85.1 billion revenue in
2014.)56
 Illegal Drugs – variously estimated at between $13 and $50 billion
 Petroleum - $32 billion
 Remittances - $22.4 billion in 2012
 Mining – $19.4 billion in 2013

The Mexican billionaires who control these sectors dominate the Mexican state, and most of
them are not drug dealers. The government serves the interests of the wealthiest Mexicans and of
the largest domestic and foreign corporations, allowing the continued deterioration of the lives of
middle class, working class, and poor Mexicans. The power of the state is used principally to
enhance the wealth and power of legitimate business, even if it is true that it has also become
deeply intertwined at many levels with the drag dealers. Mexico’s politics do not revolve
primarily around drugs, they revolve around capitalist finance, production, and trade. The trade
policies such as North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) of 1994 and the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) now under negotiation are the result of collaboration between politicians,
government functionaries, and corporate leaders. Similarly, the neoliberal economic “reforms” of
the last two years that have brought labor, education, and energy production and the oil industry
more into line with demands of national and international capital. The labor reforms in particular
have increased the power of business and reduced the already limited power of unions and
workers to organize, strike, and negotiate.

There is no doubt that the illegal nature of the drug business leads drug dealers and those they
work with in government, military, and the police to adopt an extralegal approach—often
brutally violent in their dealings with the citizenry. It should be pointed out that Mexican
authorities often used such brutal methods of repression long before drugs became so significant,
although it is true that the situation is much, much worse today. The involvement with drug
dealers and other criminal gangs of politicians of all parties, as well as of the government, the
military, and the police authorities, at all levels from top to bottom in most Mexican states, does
give the government the character of a political mafia that is prepared to use extortion,
kidnapping, rape, and murder against the citizenry. Consequently citizens, who never had any
confidence in the police, have increasingly little confidence in government of any sort. Mexicans
with whom I have spoken, friends, activists, scholars, most frequently use the term “social
decomposition” to describe Mexico today. One of Mexico’s most famous film directors,
Guillermo del Toro, recently suggested that the country was moving from “social decomposition
an absolute maelstrom.”57 The Mexican government’s ability to maintain the monopoly of
violence and to control the society tends, because of the drug dealers powerful economic

55
Adolo Moloman, “Mexican Export Growth in 2014,” Made in Mexico, March 18, 2014, at:
http://www.madeinmexicoinc.com/mexican-exports-growth-2014/
56
The Offshore Group, “Foreign Companies Continue to Invest in Mexico Manufacturing,” Feb. 9, 2015, at:
http://offshoregroup.com/2015/02/09/foreign-companies-continue-to-invest-in-mexico-manufacturing/
57
Columba Vértiz de la Fuente, “’México pasó de la descomposición social a la absoluta vorágine’,” Guillermo del
Toro, Proceso March 19, 2015, at: http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=397977

27
interests, political influence, and vilence, to face a constant—but never realized—crisis of
potential political disintegration.

Yet, at the same time, to use a term more often applied to Turkey, and adapted by Jo Tuckman to
discus Mexico, “the deep state,” that is the “state within the state” remains a fundamentally
capitalist state controlled by high finance, major corporations, the political party leaderships, the
highest level government officials, the military command, and the top level police officials.58
The function of this deep state is to protect and enhance the interests of capital over and against
those of the Mexican people. The Mexican deep state remains intact. Unlike Tuckman, I do not
believe that the state has allowed its central functions of the state to devolve upon regional or
sectoral power brokers. The central state remains intact, if constantly challenged.

Let me make an analogy. Consider your experience as a passenger on an airplane which passes
through extreme turbulence with violent up-and-down and side-to-side motions and moments
when it seems the plane is in free fall. We feel as if the plane will crash, but if the ship’s
structure remains intact, if there is fuel, and if the pilot and navigator can maintain control, the
plane will come through the storm and land. This, it seems to me, is the experience of Mexico
today, while there is turbulence and sometimes extreme turbulence, the Mexican state structures
remain intact, the capitalist economy continues to function, and the government maintains
control.

The question might be asked might the Mexican government, if it proves unable to maintain
control of the state, either suffer a military coup or carry out an “auto-golpe,” that is, a coup
organized by the government itself. While either is theoretically possible, they suppose a much
higher level of social decomposition, social turmoil, and political rebellion than actually exists.
The state as it is now is strong enough to keep the ship of state aright at least for the time being.

The State of the Mexican Left

While Mexico has experienced a great deal of social turbulence, including significant social
resistance to repression, there has been no strong, well organized left to provide a vision and
strategy for the social movements. The Mexican left is deeply divided between reformist
electoral political parties of the left (PT, PRD and MORENA), radical social movements (such
the Ayotzinapa protestors), guerrilla groups of various sorts (most important the Zapatistas), and
dozen small left sects. While all of these groups are critical of the existing order, they have
fundamental differences about their visions of a just society, about political principles, and about
strategy. These differences are so deep that they generally make it impossible for these rival
political tendencies to collaborate. The most fundamental difference is between the electoral
parties on the one hand and on the other hand the radicals who see the entire political system and
corrupt and corrupting and therefore eschew it.

Mexico’s nineteenth century labor movement was anarchist, though there were also small
socialist groups. The Communist Party of Mexico (PCM) was founded in 1919 and played a role

58
Jo Tuckman, Mexico: Democracy Interrupted (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012). My review of Tuckman’s
Mexico: Dan La Botz, “When the Center Will Not Hold,” New Politics, Nov. 23, 2012, available at:
http://newpol.org/content/mexico-when-center-will-not-hold

28
in various labor and peasant movement in the 1920s, though the party did not become well
organized until the 1930s. During the 1930s, the Communist International, now controlled by
Joseph Stalin, implemented the Popular Front line, and so the Communist Party worked closely
with President Lázaro Cárdenas and with the state-party (then called the Party of the Mexican
Revolution), as well as with the Confederation of Mexican Workers. The Popular Front
continued until the late 1940s when the Cold War led to purges of Communists from the
government, the labor unions, and the peasant organizations. The Communists split into two
parties, the PCM and the Popular Socialist Party (PPS), both Stalinist. The two parties both
played a role in the teachers’ movement of the late 1950s and in the railroad strike of 1959; and
both suffered repression and the jailing of party leaders.

The 1960s saw the growth of a new left made of up various tendencies: Mexican nationalists
who formed the Mexican Workers Party (PTM), Trotskyists who formed the Revolutionary
Workers Party (PRT), and also of Maoists who eventually formed the Workers Party (PT). There
were also a wide variety of groups involved in community organizing, labor organizing, as well
as in the organization of guerrilla movements inspired by Ernesto “Che” Guevara or Mao Tse-
tung, or the Vietnamese General Võ Nguyên Giáp. The left played an important role in the labor
insurgency of the 1960s and in the student movement which was violently repressed at Tlatelolco
in 1968 with the death of hundreds. In Mexico as around the world, 1968 was a watershed.

By the mid-1970s the government had passed a political reform leading the various left parties—
PTM, PRT, and the Unified Socialist Party of Mexico (PSUM - created by the PCM and other
left groups). The PRT put forward Rosario Ibarra de Piedra as the first woman candidate for
president of Mexico in 1982, and in the 1980s the various left parties elected several
congressional representatives in what was the highpoint for the far left in Mexico. But things
shifted in the late 1980s as a crisis developed within the PRI.

The decade long struggle within the PRI between the so-called Technocrats (neoliberals) and the
Dinosaurs (nationalists) ended with the victory of the former and the exit from the party of the
latter. Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, Ifigenia Martínez and other left to form the
National Democratic Front (FDN) and were soon joined by the PSUM, a group from the PRT,
and by many other leftist organizations and individuals seeing the opportunity to finally
construct a mass party of the left in Mexico. The left’s search for relevance, however, because its
suicide.

After the fraudulent 1988 election, the FDN became the Party of the Democratic Revolution in
1989, a left nationalist and populist party with a social democratic platform. While with first
Cárdenas and then Andrés Manuel López Obrador as the party’s standard bearer in several
presidential elections (at least two of which were notoriously fraudulent), the PRD grew to be a
major political party representing about one-third of Mexico’s voters. From the beginning the
PRD was deeply divided by factionalism and over time it became quite corrupt, leading to a
series of splits in the 2000s, the most important of which was López Obrado’s foundation of
MORENA, the Movement of National Regeneration Party, which now has legal standing and
will for the first time participate in national elections this June. Various public opinion polls for
the June 2015 election predict that the PRD will receive 25 percent of the vote and MORENA

29
about 10 percent.59 So in the next presidential election in 2018 there will be two major and
several minor parties of the left, and whether or not an electoral coalition will be possible
remains to be seen.60

The other poll of the contemporary Mexican left has been the Zapatista Army of National
Liberation (EZLN) which remains confined to its social base among indigenous Mayan
communities in the state of Chiapas where it is capable at times of mobilizing thousands of its
supporters. The EZLN originally erupted on the Mexican political scene on January 1, 1994 as
an armed guerrilla group which announced that it was going to stop the implementation of the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), overthrow the administration of Carlos
Salinas de Gortari, and call for a Constituent Assembly to lay the basis for a new democratic
Mexican society. Some EZLN members at the time told the press they were fighting for
socialism.

Immediately halted by the Mexican Army, in the 1990s the EZLN underwent a transformation,
now putting itself forward as the voice of the indigenous Mayan people and of Mexico’s
underdogs generally and adopting a set of political attitudes which some interpreted as anarchist.
The EZLN made a few attempts to become a national organization (such as the Zapatista Front
for National Liberation – FZLN), but these failed. In 2006 the EZLN initiated “The Other
Campaign,” a national propaganda campaign undertaken together with a number of other small
left groups, one of them carrying large portraits of Joseph Stalin. When protests broke out that
year over election fraud, the EZLN refused to participate and withdrew again to its redoubt in
Chiapas. While the EZLN began in 1994 with enormous moral authority, today it is far less a
factor on the left.61 Neither the Mexican electoral left—the PRD, MORENA, and the PT—nor
the EZLN has proven capable of providing the Mexican left with a vision and a strategy for
fighting the Mexican capitalist class, its authoritarian state, or its neoliberal program of austerity.

The Mexican left has historically attempted to navigate between the Scylla of armed
revolutionary movements and the Charybdis of nationalist reformism, that is between Zapatismo
and Cardenismo—and all too often the ship of the left has either crashed on the rocks or been
sucked into the whirlpool. The Mexican left of all stripes invokes the leaders of the armed
movements of the past, Francisco “Pancho” Villa and Emiliano Zapata, as it heroes, to whom
must be added Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the Argentine-Cuban revolutionary who helped lay the
foundations for the contemporary Cuban state and who advocated the foco theory of revolution
by a small band of armed guerrillas. While Villa and Zapata were certainly heroes of the
Mexican Revolution’s underdogs, they were as Adolfo Gilly argued so persuasively in his book
La revolución interrumpida more than forty years ago, they were leaders without a vision and
strategy that could provide political leadership to the revolution even in their own time. And

59
See “Mexican Legislative Election 2015,” Wikipedia, available at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_legislative_election,_2015
60
Dan La Botz, “Mexico’s Party of the Democratic Revolution at 25: Disappointment and Disillusion,” New Politics,
May 13, 2014, available at: http://newpol.org/content/mexicos-party-democratic-revolution-25-disappointment-
disillusion,
61
Dan La Botz, “Twenty Years Since the Chiapas Rebellion: The Zapatistas, Their Politics, and Their Impact,”
Solidarity, January 13, 2014, available at: https://solidarity-us.org/node/4082

30
perhaps nothing has done more damage to the Latin American revolutionary movements of the
last 45 years than the adulation of Che who helped found the bureaucratic and authoritarian
Cuban regime and whose foco theory proved a disaster throughout Latin America. The
romanticized version of Che’s life provides no political vision or strategy for today, any more
than it ever has. One has to ask if these historic traditions, preserved by all sectors of the left, do
not actually constitute an obstacle to developing a revolutionary socialist political vision and
strategy today.

On the other hand, there is also the tradition of President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940), that is,
the notion that left nationalism, the fight of the Mexican left within and through the political
system and the state can be the vehicle for fighting to overthrow capitalism and bring about a just
society. This tradition too—through fundamentally reformist—can also use revolutionary
rhetoric to justify its strategy. The idea of this reformist left was to build a movement in the
struggle against imperialism, for national sovereignty, and for ideals of social justice revolving
around the right to land and labor rights, a national people’s struggle. The Stalinist Communists
believed that they could accomplish this by backing Cárdenas, so they supported his program
and accepted positions in his administration. Cárdenas, of course, was one of the founders of the
one-party-state; and while Cárdenas distributed land to peasants, supported the labor unions, and
nationalized the oil industry, he also brought the labor unions and peasant leagues under the
control of his authoritarian state. The Cardenist state—while it encouraged mass participation—
had no space for democratic control or for civil rights or personal liberties. The Communist
Party, the Popular Socialist Party (Lombardistas), and later the Party of the Democratic
Revolution all at one time or another became Cardenists—and one could say that the EZLN also
held a more militant version of this position, at least in 1994 when displaying the Mexican flag it
called for a constituent assembly to re-found the Mexican nation. Today MORENA represents
something like this position, though overtime the nationalist vision has become ever more
reformist, moderate, and tepid. These movements often combine anti-imperialist and
revolutionary rhetoric with reformist behavior and capitulation when the chips are down.62

While Mexico has almost constant social turbulence and frequent social explosions—Chiapas
Rebellion (1994), Oaxaca Rebellion and San Salvador Atenco (2006), the Ayotzinapa protests
(2014-15)— these have not formed the basis for the building of a new national political
movement.63 More important have been the broad coalitions such as those constructed about a
decade ago by alliances between the independent labor unions, peasant organizations, and
community groups with involvement from all the parties of the left.64 The virtual destruction of
SME which frequently acted through the Mexican Union Front (FSM) as the catalyst for such
coalitions, together with the preoccupation of the dissident teachers of la CNTE with the fight
against the government educational reform, together with the weakness and cautious behavior of

62
Dan La Botz, “Mexico at the Edge: Toward a Declaration of Dual Power,” Monthly Review’s MRZine, Sept. 6,
2013, available at: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2006/labotz130906.html.
63
Jeff Gibbler, “From Oaxaca to the Zócalo: Uprisings and Repression in Mexico,” Upside Down World, Oct. 30,
2006, available at: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/473-from-oaxaca-to-the-zo-uprisings-
and-repression-in-mexico. Gibbler provides a panorama of the social explosions of 2006.
64
Dan La Botz, “Mexico’s Labor Movement in Transition,” Monthly Review, June 2005, available at:
http://monthlyreview.org/2005/06/01/mexicos-labor-movement-in-transition/

31
the National Union of Workers (UNT) has meant that at the moment there seems to be no such
large coalition.

The Mexican left at present lacks what we might call a strategic horizon, a vision and strategy for
the construction of a mass, democratic, working class movement. The most interesting
experiment along these lines was the Political Organization of the People and of the Workers
(OPT). Several small left parties working with the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) and
with the dissident teachers of la CNTE as well as other labor, peasant, and community groups,
founded the OPT as a political alternative for the left.65 While this OPT has not proven so far to
be successful either electorally or as the center of a social movement, this model of a broad
workers party, fighting for democracy, and political power, engaging in electoral activity but
seeing that as an expression of the social movements, provides a model of what is needed in
Mexico if a revolutionary socialist movement is to be created. While violence and repression
lead to sporadic mass movements of protest and resistance they have proven incapable of laying
the foundation for a democratic working class socialist movement. The key problems of the
Mexican working class are the lack of independent labor union, the need for job security and
higher wages which can only be achieved by a struggle against Mexican and foreign capitalist.
Consider, for example, that Mexico does not have a national union of auto workers. Or that no
independent union has succeeded in organizing more than one of the maquiladoras. The party
that finds the way to organize and provide leadership to struggles to improve workers lives will
be able to put the Mexican left and the Mexican working class on a new trajectory, one aimed at
the taking of political power. We are not talking here about an economistic party, but about a
party which while it has a full critique of Mexican society and a program for a transition to
socialism, places the organization of the working class as workers at the center of its agenda.

65
OPT website: http://optmex.org/; Humberto de la Oca, “Nace la Organización Política del Pueblo y los
Trabajadores (OPT),” Enlace Socialista, available at: http://www.enlacesocialista.org.mx/articulo/nace-la-
organizacion-politica-del-pueblo-y-los-trabajadores-opt; Edgard Sánchez, “La Organización Política del Pueblo y los
Trabajadores y la digna resistencia del Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas,” Anti-Imperialista, available at;
http://chilcuyo.blogspot.com/2014/10/la-organizacion-politica-del-pueblo-y.html ; Edgard Sánchz, “La OPT, una
alternativa proletaria frente a la crisis de los partidos,” PRT, available at: http://www.prt.org.mx/node/280

32