Version imprimable1. Reduce social inequality
Thirty-six years of brutal neoliberal policies have made Mexico one of the most unequal countries in the world, despite social programmes in favour of the most impoverished sectors of the population and increases in the minimum wage from the current government. Most of the wealth generated remains in the hands of the elites that control the national economy, such as the Slim, Larrea, Salinas Pliego families, etc., who continue to benefit from the privatisations carried out in the previous six-years.
The richest 10% of the population concentrates 60% of the country’s wealth (World Inequality Report, 2022). The wealth of the richest man in Mexico, Carlos Slim, is equal to that of half the population, that is, 68 million people (Oxfam, 2024). While a person from the poorest 50% of the population earns 150 pesos a day on average, Carlos Slim earns 20 million dollars. A tax reform that taxes large fortunes is urgent, as occurs in the Nordic countries.
2. Deprivatisation and nationalisation of strategic sectors
There is no nation with social welfare that has not had the support, intervention or initial control of the State over its strategic sectors of the economy. Mexico cannot be the exception. Recovering the oil and electricity industries, water, its minerals, land, air, railway and telecommunications for the Nation is vital so that their use is accessible to all, so that they are considered human rights and not commodities and so that national development can be promoted.
3. Against environmental devastation
The main threat to humanity is the environmental crisis, which affects our health every day. We must strongly mitigate global warming, that also affects Mexico, considered as a highly vulnerable country. We have just seen this threat with the surprise severity of Hurricane Otis in Acapulco.
Today, a large part of our natural areas has been lost. Fires and illegal logging by organised crime devastate the territory. Those who combat the loggers face-to-face are groups of community members and brigade members who today fight to build the National Union of Indigenous Workers for Forest Protection. It is essential to reactivate an environmental movement together with the struggle of forest workers, farmers, and indigenous peoples to defend our natural resources.
4. Defeat the Right
MORENA’s victory in 2018 has meant a turning point in various aspects of politics and the economy.
Now, the Mexican right is very indignant because the oligarchy has been forced to pay taxes; the disappearance of PEMEX and CFE has been reversed; a universal pension is granted to those over 65 years of age along with support to young people, people with disabilities and single mothers; punitive educational reform was eliminated; the minimum wage has been increased above inflation; and the enormous corruption that politicians and businessmen have carried out at the expense of the State has been limited. The intention of the right is to liquidate all these advances and once again subject the people of Mexico to the interests of a handful of capitalists. For our part, although we welcome and defend all these advances, we consider that they must be deepened by carrying out a tax reform that taxes large fortunes; that audits and ignores illegal, illegitimate and odious debt; renationalises strategic sectors of the economy; reinstitutes a decent solidarity pension system and eliminates payment of UMA’s; that is for the recovery of contractual salaries; for a fair electricity rate and access to electrical energy as a human right; resolution of existing labour disputes; among other fundamental tasks to achieve social justice.
More contradictory has been the 4T’s [Cuarta Transformación or Fourth Transformation] [1] treatment of women’s issues, since, at the same time that it detracts from the feminist movement, many government officials have advocated the fight against violence against women and feminicide. In relation to sex-gender dissidence, progress has been made in the recognition of gender identity and the fight against the criminalisation of people with HIV. At the same time, however, Mexico continues to be the second country in the world with the most hate crimes against trans people. [2]
In 2024, we are facing the largest electoral process that Mexico has ever had. The electoral forces are configured, on the one hand, in the coalition of parties of the reactionary and corrupt right that champions the neoliberal project that their organisations in power had established. The discredit of these parties (PRI, PAN, PRD) has led them to nominate Xóchitl Gálvez, who calls himself independent and even progressive, when his entire political life has been carried out alongside the PAN.
On the other hand, there is an electoral left led by MORENA, a party full of contradictions. Although López Obrador has led an incipient break with neoliberal politics, the pragmatism of this party has caused opportunists to climb into its leadership who have then given the vast majority of their candidacies to turncoats from the PRI and the PAN. The left-wing coalition made up of MORENA, PT and PV is strongly pushing Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo for the presidency and Clara Brugada to head of government of Mexico City. The Movimiento Ciudadano (MC or Citizens Movement), for its part, led by businessman Dante Delgado, wants to position itself— without success— as an alternative that drags in its wake the discontent of the other parties.
Although figures and parties with no or dubious left-wing experience have joined Sheinbaum’s campaign, the profile of the presidential candidate, as well as that of Brugada, are the closest to that of López Obrador and with the greatest possibility of continuing with the progressive project.
This is why the right is desperately exerting pressure on various fronts: media, business, magistrates and even posing as social fighters and champions of freedom, when in reality they are careerists who represent the opposite of real change. At this historical moment in which the extreme right is advancing worldwide, it is essential to stop it in Mexico; and Sheinbaum represents the possibility of keeping the ossified right out of the executive branch, despite the limitations and contradictions within MORENA.
In this sense, to deepen a line of real and radical transformation, we call not to vote for any PRIANRD coalition of the PRI, PAN and PRD or Citizen Movement candidates and to denounce the false leftist proposals within MORENA which always end up betraying (Lily Téllez, Germán Martínez, etc.). Likewise, it is important to win a two-thirds majority in the Mexican Congress with candidates committed to demand during this campaign to guarantee the progressive constitutional changes that are contemplated in the majority of the constitutional reform initiatives presented on February 5, in addition to the deprivatisation of industry, land, mines and strategic services of the nation.
5. Let’s defend our rights: health, housing, care, education and life
Social rights in Mexico such as health, housing and education, which had been hit hard by neoliberal policies for more than four decades, were severely savaged by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The health emergency deteriorated the entire global economy and, above all, nationally, immiserating the lives of large sectors of the population. During that period, hundreds of thousands of girls, boys and young people were left out of the classrooms, without the possibility of entering any educational process.
The fractured public health sector that neoliberalism left, which could not cope with the pandemic, was evident. Accessing decent housing is an increasingly major problem faced by new generations.
Instead of giving away resources intended for child care and shelters for women and children, which the government is currently doing, it has the obligation to create and finance more. The fight against violence against women and the LGBTQI communities has to not just issue declarations, but also be pro-active and fund initiatives. We need to give full support to organisations searching for missing persons and, particularly, resolve the case of the 43 missing students from Ayotzinapa.
6. Let’s totally transform the country.
In a situation of political hegemony of the Obrador movement, of little social and popular mobilisation, and in which the right, based on its political agenda, has tried to take to the streets and become rebellious, it is necessary to open a breach and to deepen an anti-neoliberal project accordingly, in which social and political actors emerge who can build upon a growing process of breaking with the ideology of the reactionary classes that long to return to government. The return of the opposition to power with its programme would imply an enormous setback, a defeat for the popular movement in general and the maintenance of social passivity.
The right in political power assumes regressive policies that will lead to social decomposition and stop the possibility of deeper change.
We must maintain and strengthen the correlation of forces that is aimed at breaking with the political and economic system that has prevailed for decades. That is why we aim to use this electoral process as a confrontation against the dominant classes, starting from promoting the most advanced proposals in the government programme and combating those positions that slow down a process of change, but with a proactive attitude that calls for large sectors of the population to vote for the left and to mobilise.
26 May 2024
Translated by David Fagan for International Viewpoint from Punto de Vista Internacional.
