Can the bourgeoisie safeguard Mexico’s sovereignty?
Article republished from El Machete
Pavel Blanco, First Secretary of the CC of the PCM
With his well-known, histrionic and aggressive style, Donald Trump is announcing some measures that he will take immediately after assuming the Presidency of the United States for the second time in January. There have already been several references to Mexico: on the immigration issue, drug trafficking, the T-MEC, and protectionist measures against capitalist China, which uses our country as a springboard for its goods to flood North America.
In an epistle to Trump and in several statements to the media, President Sheinbaum raised the issue of defending national sovereignty. It is important to remember Obrador's conduct in the six-year term in the relationship with the US to see if words and actions correspond, and to reach the conclusion of whether or not this second MORENA government has the will and capacity to oppose the interventionist attitude of the White House.
In the first months of the López Obrador administration, President Trump proposed turning Mexico into a safe third country, so that migrants could be detained in our country. Initially, the Mexican government made statements with flowery language about sovereignty, universal brotherhood, and the rights of migrants. Trump raised the tone and threatened to impose tariffs from one week to the next, which led then-Secretary of Foreign Affairs Marcelo Ebrard to travel to Washington for negotiations with Mike Pompeo, then Secretary of State.
In a ridiculous feint, before boarding the plane to Washington at Benito Juárez Airport, Marcelo Ebrard took a photo where he appeared with advertising for the Chinese monopoly Huawei, launching the unserious message that if the US did not stop its pressure, Mexico could turn to the diversification of economic and commercial relations with emerging capitalist economies led by China. From Washington, Ebrard announced –after the conversations with Pompeo– that national sovereignty was safeguarded. That same day in June 2019, President Obrador announced a massive event in Tijuana for the defense and dignity of Mexico . It was a surreal rally: there were representatives of all the churches –Obrador took advantage of the opportunity to present the evangelicals, which is the faith he professes–, the aim was to give the image of national unity and patriotic firmness; there was talk of the great stature of the Mexican delegation headed by Ebrard in Washington, that sovereignty was safe… and the human rights of migrants as well. The propaganda machine of the 4T immediately sought to inscribe this episode in the annals of Mexican patriotism. Was this really the case?
Over time, Pompeo wrote his memoirs entitled Never Give an Inch , where he recounts the conversations with Ebrard as a representative of the Mexican State, from which it can be deduced that the Federal Government gave in to pressure, and only obtained permission to present in a distorted way what really happened, to present as a victory what was an unworthy defeat. Referring, years later, to those events, Trump mockingly stated “I have never seen anyone bend so quickly” in clear reference to the Obrador Government. Neither Trump nor Pompeo were contradicted and the shameful silence of Obrador and Ebrard incriminates them. In other words, they pretended to defend sovereignty, when they were sacrificing it. The facts refuted Obrador’s “patriotic” speech. The entire national territory was turned into an immigration detention station; We went from 800,000 migrants detained during the previous Peña Nieto administration to more than 2,000,000 under Obrador, an increase of 120%; the newly created National Guard became an extension of the US Border Patrol, and the southern border at the Rio Bravo was moved to the Usumacinta River in Chiapas, the southern border of Mexico; we experienced dramas such as the murder of migrants at the Ciudad Juárez Immigration Station, and Mexican agents beating children, kicking pregnant women, dividing families, violating human rights; they violated the right to freedom of movement contemplated in the Constitution to make way for illegal detentions on highways, bus stations; raids everywhere. The first social democratic government of MORENA was therefore the most anti-immigrant in the history of the country.
Another case to consider is the renegotiation that transformed NAFTA into T-MEC. There were several months left before the end of Peña Nieto's six-year term, and in an unprecedented event, the Trump Administration called the elected government and not the one in office, that is, Obrador, to the rounds of renegotiation of NAFTA that had begun on January 1, 1994. That trade agreement, which in general terms brought profits to all the monopolies of North America, however had some points that allowed components of Chinese origin to flood the North American automotive industry through Mexico, which required protectionist measures from Trump. In general, the renegotiation took the profile of orienting the economy and trade of the US, Canada and Mexico towards the clash with China, within the framework of the inter-imperialist antagonisms between the US and China. But of course, what benefits the monopolies does not benefit the workers, the people, or sovereignty.
There is no room for sovereignty within the framework of the USMCA, and this is confirmed these days by the agrarian chapter that led to the failure of food sovereignty, and there we have the case of corn. Breaking with the USMCA is the way to conquer Mexico's sovereignty, and that is something that the bourgeoisie will not do, no matter how much nationalist demagogy it expresses.
No American government, Democrat or Republican, is right. They have been the ones who have promoted drug crops in Mexico and other countries, who have formed several of the cartels. Today the Mexican drug cartels have their counterparts in the US, without these companies their business would not be successful. It is also true that MORENA, like the PRI and PAN before them, has done little to combat drug trafficking. Capitalism and drug trafficking go hand in hand, and the end of drug trafficking is associated with the end of capitalist society. Trump's use of this threat has little to do with a sincere concern to combat this serious problem. But a part of the Mexican bourgeoisie is using Trump's position to clash with social democracy, and as in other cases, we must not let ourselves be trapped by these inter-bourgeois antagonisms, but fight for deep, radical changes led by the workers.