The Return of Plebeian Mexico: Populism and Hegemony

By Katu Arkonada on July 9, 2018

Photo: Bill Hackwell

On July 1 historic elections were held in Mexico, where a project with roots in the left and in the national-popular, won the elections. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, candidate of Morena and the coalition Juntos Haremos Historia (Together we Will Make History), obtained 30 million votes, 53% of them, the highest figure obtained by any presidential candidate in the country.

This is the largest election in Mexican history (more than 4000 elected offices, including the President, 500 deputies, 128 senators and 9 governors, including Mexico City) and it represents a strong victory. It also reflects a confidence in a leader who has grown up in the face of adversity in what was his third and last presidential candidacy, but, above all, it is a vote against a neoliberal regime that  had left  Mexico plunged in violence, poverty and inequality. It was a vote against the Pact for Mexico signed by the PRI, the PAN and the PRD.

The Mexican people voted, therefore, against an authoritarian agreement that sought to initiate a new cycle of neoliberal reforms. It voted to give an opportunity to the only one who did not appear in the photo of the Pact for Mexico and who promised to repeal the so called education reform and make a query about the energy reform, both negative legacies of the six years of Peña Nieto.

But here comes the first notice. 53% of the votes obtained go far beyond the hard core of Morena (or PT or PES, allies in this election campaign). It is a vote which expands as never before the support of a President, bordering on hegemony (political, not cultural), but it is also an extremely demanding mandate that will need to see real changes during the first  few months of the new government that will be begin on December 1, 2018.

These elections are also the failure of those intellectuals and media manipulators of the neoliberal PRIAN regime, who could not (re) impose the idea that Lopez Obrador was “a danger to Mexico”. Even massive purchases of votes in Mexico City and Puebla were not enough to prevent his triumph. These elections were primarily the return of plebeian Mexico, those of  the poorest, even though, paradoxically, Morena and AMLO have expanded their base of voters in middle and upper-middle class strata like never before.  And next to the ones from below was the youth, and especially the millennials, who voted for the oldest candidate to represent them. It is, in short, the victory of the popular against the distant cupola. 

The data

The figures of López Obrador’s triumph are more than conclusive. For the first time in Mexico, the left will govern the country, Mexico City, and will have a majority in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. In addition, both in the executive and legislative branches, there will be gender parity.

Amlo also won in 31 of the 32 states of the Republic (only Guanajuato continued to bet on the PAN). Especially significant is the victory in the largest electoral district in the country, the State of Mexico, cradle of the PRI, where Morena and the coalition Juntos Haremos Historia will govern in 55 municipalities.

The Morena triumph also occurred in 5 of the 9 states where the government was at stake and in 11 of the 16 mayorships that make up Mexico City.

And all this, without major regional gaps in the composition of the vote, as well as gender, class or education background.  In the results it is necessary to highlight not only the victory of AMLO, but the resounding defeat of the PRI. Not only did the PRI not win any of the 9 elections for governor, but in the presidential election it did not even get one of the 300 electoral districts in which the country is divided, or one of the 32 states. The old Party of the Institutional Revolution is left with less than 10% of the 2,464 Mexican municipalities; and just to make a comparison, in the Chamber of Deputies the PRI will have a smaller group than the PT, which until the last election had 3% of the percentage nationwide.

The 4th transformation?

Andrés Manuel López Obrador has stated on numerous occasions that the fourth transformation of Mexico is coming, after the Independence, the Reformation and the Mexican Revolution.  This one will be a peaceful and democratic transformation. (according to the standards of liberal democracy).

It is clear that, if the Mexican Revolution was the first social revolution in all of Latin America, and of the entire 20th century, the one produced on July 1 is an electoral revolution unprecedented in the history of Mexico. A kind of Jacobinism of the polls.

And really, the changes have already begun to be felt. Before even being officially declared the elected President, AMLO had already spoken with Trump for half an hour, arranged a meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and has met at the National Palace with outgoing President Peña Nieto, as well as the economic elites grouped around the Business Coordinating Council.

But, what kind of government can we expect from Lopez Obrador?

To begin with, it will be a government that will revolve between institutional democratization and the fight against corruption in the political sphere, economic redistribution without affecting the interests of big capital in the economic sphere, and the defense of national sovereignty in the international arena.

Politically, the priorities are to combat the insecurity and violence that Mexico is experiencing, which has led to the militarization and para-militarization of a large part of the national territory to wage a social war of extermination. The Narco and the Necropolitics will be the main problem it will face.

Lopez Obrador has made one his main battles the one against corruption. However he is wrong in 2 things when facing this battle, corruption will not disappear by the mere will of the President; no matter how honest he is and contrary to what the next President affirms, corruption is a cultural fact, deeply rooted in society, with an origin in colonialism and the capitalist logic of modernity.

It is also expected that he will drive a policy of respect for freedoms including the press, the right to dissent, respect for sexual diversity and Human Rights, as AMLO himself said in a campaign spot, citing Mexican intellectual Ignacio Ramírez , I kneel where the people kneel. 

Among the pending political issues not deepened during the electoral campaign include,  the inclusion of indigenous peoples and communities. Marichuy’s indigenous presence in the pre-campaign gave a voice to the voiceless, but it is the new President who will have to design a State policy for indigenous peoples, respecting their autonomy.

If we analyze the economic area, it is urgent and necessary to address the redistribution of wealth in a G20 country that does not grow more than 2% per year; where the minimum wage is 88 pesos per day (less than 5 USD); where 4 Mexicans have as much wealth as 50% of Mexico’s poorest, 10% control more than 2/3 of the national wealth, and 1% accumulate 1/3 of Mexico’s wealth.

The commitment in the economic sphere is clear, strengthen the sovereignty over natural resources from the audit of contracts and concessions obtained from the energy reform, and a commitment to the internal market that now allows a neo-Keynesian reactivation of the economy. Likewise, a plan to support and employ young people in the hands of the business community, which will have to be refined so that it does not become a scholarship program that authorizes cheap labor for economic elites. All this comes in the middle of a renegotiation of NAFTA with the United States and Canada, in which the incoming government is expected to take part alongside the negotiating team of the outgoing government.

And finally, foreign policy is probably where the recovery of Mexico sovereignty, given away by the PRIAN regime, will be best served. In that sense, the Summit of the Pacific Alliance that will take place on July 24 in Puerto Vallarta, and where Peña Nieto has invited López Obrador to participate, will be the space where his Mexican foreign policy will begin to be outlined. It would be desirable for Mexico to leave the Lima Group at least, which only seeks to destabilize the process of regional integration.

The other fundamental issue, and where Mexico will have to make a balance with the United States government, in a new and different relationship with the Trump administration, is the question of the wall, and the defense of Mexican migrants in the United States. This is an issue that cannot be separated from the Central American migrants who cross Mexico every day looking for the border, and whose human rights are subjected to constant violation and harassment  by the current Mexican administration.

Neoliberalism vs Populism with Mexican characteristics

Beyond the cold figures, and the master lines contained in the draft of the national perspective of Morena, that is expected to continue in the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, it is necessary to stop to analyze and characterize what the triumph of this post-movement party led by AMLO implies.

We remember Mariátegui when he spoke of neither tracing nor copying the past, but heroic creation for the future. And while the phrase applies perfectly to the current moment, in the face of erroneous interpretations, ignorance or, above all, ill will, we must say that López Obrador looks more like a Bernie Sanders than Trump, and that his political project is closer to that of Perón than to that of Hugo Chávez.

What Lopez Obrador has really become is an empty significant that brings together all the unmet demands of society with all the corruption and evils that plagues the country from the bottom up.

The election was a visceral reaction to the neoliberal shock doctrine. It is a project whose roots sink into the national-popular, from where it faces the dispossession to which neo-liberalism subjects us.

And now what?

The question is what comes on December 1

On July 1, the party system imploded. It is clear that a replacement of elites begins and the question is whether AMLO is going to take advantage of the situation and end up disintegrating the PRI and the PRD, to consolidate a kind of bipartisanship in which he polarizes, as he only knows how, with the PAN. There are several possible scenarios, which are already beginning to be analyzed by some Mexican intellectuals.

The Latin American experiences leave us with several lessons. One of the main ones is that reaching the government does not mean having (all) power. From the first day a struggle begins with economic and media power conducting the process.

In that sense, it is important to know what the new game board will be, once the political map has been redrawn completely by this election.

On the horizon is 2021 and the midterm elections (while the mandate for President, Senators, or Head of Mexico City is for 6 years that of local and federal deputies, or mayors, is for 3 years). In a very intelligent way, López Obrador has proposed a mandate revocation via plebiscite, mid-term. That would allow him to be on a ballot in the midterm elections, which could help consolidate the results obtained in this election, from that ratification, start as he has already announced, structural reforms in the second half of his six-year term.

To this end, López Obrador, who has been campaigning as a pragmatic for most of the last 12 years, but now he must adopt another profile as ruler if he wants to go down in history as the best President of Mexico. He has already made it clear that his intention is to govern with the people and for the people. But the election of July 1 is a political moment of exceptionality. The people will withdraw little by little to their daily jobs, hoping that the rulers will fulfill the task for which they have been elected. And that’s where the figure of the party comes into play, which cannot be replaced by the State.

The new regime cannot co-opt the social struggles, it must not only allow them, but, above all, not try to replace them. It is necessary to break with the neoliberal and technocratic kidnapping of politics.

In this new stage, the left-wing political parties that initiated this transformation, especially Morena and PT, must continue to promote it, without leaving everything in the hands of the government or state institutions.

http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=243915

Source: Rebelion, translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau.