CHAPTER 1
I open with a categorical assertion: Mexico’s crisis cannot be confronted without first addressing corruption and and the failure to prosecute people benefiting from it, which requires regime change and the establishment of a new political order, one that is democratic, that promotes the rule of law, that is humanist and distinctively honest. The Republic that exists today is a republic in name only, not a government by the pueblo and for the pueblo. The State has come to serve a rapacious minority and, as Tolstoy once wrote, a state that does not procure justice is no more than a pack of miscreants. This definition, that of a writer, not a pundit or theorist, has clarity and simplicity and comes closest to our present political reality. In Mexico the governing class constitutes a gang of plunderers that operate throughout the country. This may seem like an exaggeration, and one might argue that it’s always been this way, but the astounding dishonesty of the neoliberal period (from 1983 to present) is wholly unprecedented. It constitutes a qualitative shift in the disintegration of the country.
The system has been utterly corrupted. The political and economic powers feed off each other, and the theft of public goods has become their modus operandi. Corruption is no longer a matter of a few isolated instances, but a systematic practice. In the so-called stabilizing development period (1930s–80s), the government dared not privatize communal lands, forests, beaches, railroads, mines, electricity, and petroleum above all; in this bitter period of neoliberalism, they have dedicated themselves, as in the Porfiriato4 period, to handing over our firms and territory and public goods, and even functions of the State, to domestic and foreign entities. It’s no longer about individual acts of dereliction, nor a web of complicity at the expense of the public; now, feeding corruption has become the principal function of the State.
The politics of pillage—more specifically, the neoliberal model—is a set of dogmas and mantras asserting that privatization is the cure-all, the sole and perfect fix to the country’s economic and social issues. Though it may seem redundant, the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy states that privatization means to make what is public private. Quite literally, “Transferring a business or public good to the private sector.” The heralds of neoliberalism call upon all sorts of falsehoods to justify this sacking. They exalt the myth of market supremacy; they assert that sovereignty is irrelevant in the face of globalization, that the State need not promote development or redistribute wealth, because wealth spreads when the elites prosper. But this is sophistry, because wealth isn’t water and doesn’t trickle down. Neoliberal propagandists have gone so far as to resurrect the old Porfirista wisdom that there will always be a wealthy elite, living in stark contrast to the vast majority, and even with every absurd justification at their disposal they still shirk responsibility for the State’s failure to provide for the people. Denying any right to justice, they condemn those born into poverty to die in poverty.
As neoliberalism spreads across the globe, this supposed “new paradigm” has been used as armor behind which to plunder the country on a scale never before seen. The Washington Consensus took shape under Miguel de la Madrid’s administration (1982–88), but its grasp was strengthened under his successor, Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988–94). During this period we saw the beginnings of a new legal framework, one that legalized pillage behind a rhetoric of selling off inefficiently run government entities. Though formally privatization bids were supposed to take place under the guise of fairness and transparency, it was clear from the start who the winners would be. One need only recall that Salinas, his brother Raúl, and the secretary of finance, Pedro Aspe, benefitted from this distribution of banks and other assets that had previously belonged to Mexico.
Thus, in thirteen months—from June 1991 to July 1992—and with an average of twenty business days per bank, 18 lending institutions were shuttered. In a mere five years—December 1988 to December of 1993—251 businesses were privatized, including Telmex, Mexicana de Aviación, Televisión Azteca, Siderúrgica Lázaro Cárdenas, Altos Hornos de México, Astilleros Unidos de Veracruz, Fertilizantes Mexicanos, as well as insurance providers, sugar mills, mines, and factories. The transfer of public goods to a select few wasn’t limited to banks and state-owned entities. Communal lands were also privatized, as were highways, ports, and airports. And with that, domestic and foreign business opportunities increased significantly for Pemex5 and the Federal Electricity Commission.
The economic system imposed under Salinas was perpetuated under Ernesto Zedillo, Vicente Fox, and Felipe Calderón, and the beneficiaries of Salinas’s spoils continued to accumulate not only wealth but political influence. Before long they became a political power in and of themselves, a power that operated beyond the reach of constitutionally bound institutions. It is these figures who determine the fate of our most pressing political questions of the day—the questions fiercely debated in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate; in the Supreme Court; the National Electoral Institute and Electoral Tribune; by the Attorney General; the Secretary of Finance; and the PRI and PAN6. What’s more, they enjoy unfettered control of the media.
These tycoons, quite understandably, are betting on the continuation of this state of affairs and have forestalled regime change through bribes and manipulation. A fruit of these efforts was the installation of Enrique Peña Nieto as president of Mexico. He’s one more puppet for the elite, a frivolous and irrelevant character. And yet this spineless, immoral, unpredictable sycophant has led the deterioration of the country in every facet of public life. Not only are we plagued by impoverishment and unemployment, but instability and insecurity are rampant. Decadence prospered because a new collective politics was not pursued; the regime instead doubled down on its grasp of neoliberal politics. In a mere two years Peña Nieto managed to impose a foreign agenda on a compliant populace. As Mexico’s elites conspired, so-called “reforms” were enacted in the spheres of labor, education, economic policy, and energy. The country’s sovereignty and the pueblo’s integrity were violated, leaving frustration, chaos, and violence in their wake.