RESPONSE TO BILL GALLEGOS

Bill Gallegos has written a moving call for a reassessment of the way the U.S. left has treated AMLO, and a valid criticism of the U.S. left for failing to understand the political and economic context in which the Mexican government functions. The possibility of a popular government in Mexico pursuing an anti-imperialist direction promises Mexicans a watershed change from years of neoliberalism, and has an important impact on U.S. politics. As Gallegos charges, the U.S. left has not faced the reality of the unequal relationship between the U.S. and Mexico, and the way it is used by our own government. The following thoughts are offered in response.

MORENA is not a monolithic party. It is an electoral alliance organized to win the last election, and a party in formation. It has roots in many places, particularly in the split in the PRD, which inherited the legacy of many parties on the Mexican left, all the way back to the CPM. When the PRD shifted to the right, and began supporting initiatives like privatizing oil and other national resources, or the PRI’s corporate education reform, AMLO left with others, and together they sought to create this new electoral vehicle.

MORENA has many different constituencies, especially because big sections of the PRI abandoned the old party and joined MORENA before the election in order to hold onto some degree of power. In that context, AMLO has put forward the political program he outlined in his two speeches when he was inaugurated. That is the program he campaigned on, and that won the election.

It is a program of radical reform, to end the neoliberal direction pursued by Mexico’s governments over the last four decades, and to create an economy to serve the people’s interests. Its goals resonated with Mexicans on both sides of the border, especially when AMLO announced that “We will put aside the neoliberal hypocrisy. Those born poor will not be condemned to die poor … We want migration to be optional, not mandatory, [to make Mexicans] happy where they were born, where their family members, their customs and their cultures are.”

Today many people on the left in Mexico point to the enormous change in direction that AMLO promises. They warn that the right is trying desperately to prevent the implementation of that program and stop this change in direction. Clearly Mexico’s corporate elite has enormous power, and that danger is very real. But in this context people on the left in Mexico also look at the actions of the Mexican government and compare them to that program. That reflects their high expectations – as Mexicans who want change and are mostly realistic, not expecting everything to be accomplished in two years. It is important for the left outside of Mexico to listen to their diverse voices, to understand where they see progress and where they don’t. It’s especially important because the biggest obstacle to progress comes from “the colossus to the north.”

The U.S. government and corporations have a long history of pressuring the Mexican government and threatening its sovereignty. This pressure, based on the U.S. economic penetration of Mexico, has existed for almost two centuries. The left in the U.S. has not responded to this consistently. In the period when AMLO has been president U.S. pressure has led to serious consequences. One was the acceptance of the refugee camps on the border, when Trump threatened to close the border to commercial traffic. The integration and subordination of the Mexican economy to the U.S. creates a vulnerability Trump understands, and he used it as a powerful source of leverage.

Then that pressure was applied again. In March U.S. State Department officials, the ambassador, and powerful U.S. defense and auto companies forced AMLO to agree to resuming production in the maquiladoras that supply the Pentagon and auto assembly lines. Production had been stopped by AMLO’s own order, by popular pressure, and especially by strikes by workers themselves, reacting to a wave of COVID-19 deaths in the plants. Relaxing the order and allowing production to resume put the lives of workers at risk, and some have died as a result.

The left in the U.S. has a responsibility to help people here understand the terrible consequences of the huge power the U.S. exerts over the Mexican economy, and to fight for solidarity with Mexican workers and farmers. During the 1990s many U.S. unions and activists took that responsibility seriously, and developed a cross-border movement with their sisters and brothers in Mexico. That movement has largely dissipated, however.

Instead, over the past year most of U.S. labor, the trade coalitions and part of the left criticized Mexico endlessly for labor violations, and for failing to quickly implement reforms to its labor law. The rhetoric was mostly a justification for supporting the sham “labor protections” in the new trade treaty. The U.S., with a much worse labor record, was not held to the same standard. The only reform underway to U.S. labor law is the right-wing’s continued evisceration of it. Yet the left never pointed out the treaty’s complete lack of any “protections” for U.S. workers’ rights, or called for any.

At the same time, labor and the left did very little (the USW excepted) to help workers in Mexico under attack. The most recent example was the lack of any outcry in the U.S. when Grupo Mexico forced the USW to end its strike and return to work in Arizona copper mines, while prolonging the strike of Mexican miners in Cananea – a strike which has gone on for 13 years. While the company belongs to a wealthy Mexican family, it has deep ties to U.S. corporations. There was hardly any coverage in the U.S. left press of the strikes or support efforts for strikers on both sides of the border. It’s also fair, however, to ask why MORENA hasn’t acted against this corporation’s anti-worker offensive, especially since Napoleon Gomez Urrutia, head of the Mexican miners’ union, is now a MORENA Senator from Sonora.

This is the complex context in which AMLO went to Washington DC for a state visit with Trump. A big part of the outcry about it came from organizations of Mexicans here in the U.S., from FIOB to AMEXCAN in North Carolina. These are the communities that deal most directly with the impact of Trump’s anti-Mexican rhetoric. They’re also the organizations in the U.S. that gave AMLO the most support, because of his promise of change. Their anger and resentment when AMLO then traveled to DC to meet Trump is not surprising.

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