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Judi Lynn

(160,219 posts)
Sun Aug 9, 2020, 01:10 PM Aug 2020

The US Left Needs Humility to Understand Mexican Politics

AUGUST 7, 2020
by BRUCE HOBSON


The recent visit to the US by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) for a meeting with President Trump has stirred a great deal of media reaction in the US and México. Nearly all US media articles about the visit characterize it as AMLO abandoning his progressive principles and shamefully kowtowing to Donald Trump, despite the latter’s obvious racism towards Mexicans, his brutal deportation and anti-immigration policies. Without exception, none of these articles considers the political and economic context in which AMLO and his Morena party are attempting to implement significant economic, social, and political reforms in México. In order to better appreciate what AMLO and Morena are attempting to do and the significant challenges they face, here are some important factors the Left, especially the North American Left, needs to consider.

1. The strategic impact for the peoples of México, Latinoamérica, the Chican@-Mexican@ people in the US, and the general struggle against US imperialism, if México were to “go left” in a sustained way. A Leftist or Left-leaning México would be much, much more impactful than even when Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, etc, went pink. This is due not only to its size, it economy, its resources, but because it shares a 2000-mile border with the US, and has a “friendly” support population of more than 35 million Chican@-Mexican@ people within US borders.

2. Morena is a very young party, barely over 5-years old. The PRI on the other hand held power for most of the past seventy years. And the rightist PAN, which won its first national election in 2000, has been around since 1939. Compared to Morena’s brief history, these two parties are deeply entrenched within Mexican society, especially with its ruling elite. It was in just 2014 that Morena’s membership decided overwhelmingly to become an official political party, thus enabling it to run candidates at all levels. Morena’s 2018 electoral victories were both comprehensive and unambiguous. They won hundreds of offices at the local, regional, national legislative, and presidential level. This reflected years of organizing, and gargantuan mass support from nearly all sectors of Mexican society, but particularly from its working classes. Morena now has to govern while in the process of consolidation — programmatically, organizationally, politically and ideologically, financially, etc. It is like a vehicle that must be driven while still being assembled. Under ordinary circumstances this would be an extremely challenging task, but it becomes even more complicated and difficult because of the COVID crisis.

3. The Mexican oligarchy remains deeply entrenched and in control of the Mexican economy, most of its mass media, major institutions (including many unions), etc. And neither the PRI nor the Pan have gone away. They, together with the oligarchy and media which they largely control, have been working since the elections to undermine and overthrow AMLO and Morena. The Mexican public is daily bombarded with mass media propaganda about the failings of AMLO and Morena.

4. AMLO and Morena have an incredibly democratic/social democratic reform program, and they have identified their two most important issues, based on consultation with the masses, as ending corruption, and ending the massive wealth and income inequality in México. This does not mean that other issues — like NAFTA 2, environment, etc., are unimportant, but unless AMLO and Morena can show progress on the priority issues, they would likely lose significant mass support.

More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/07/the-us-left-needs-humility-to-understand-mexican-politics/

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The US Left Needs Humility to Understand Mexican Politics (Original Post) Judi Lynn Aug 2020 OP
Correction: The U.S. needs humility to understand every other nation in the world. Nitram Aug 2020 #1

Nitram

(22,671 posts)
1. Correction: The U.S. needs humility to understand every other nation in the world.
Sun Aug 9, 2020, 09:47 PM
Aug 2020

Until we stop believing we are exceptionally correct about everything, we will never be able to understand anybody else. It's time we stopped relating to other countries in terms of capitalism, and started to figure out how to work to them von a personal basis to make things better.

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