A primer on neoliberalism in Mexico: The SEZs

Introduction

Neoliberalism in Mexico: The SEZs

SEZs A plan to counter resistance

SEZs Criminality embedded in law

SEZs and AMLO

AMLO, development, immigration, the national guard and the new plan to steal the ejidos (soon).

The War on Drugs

SEZs and the War on Drugs

References

Notes

Introduction.

Here the light will be shone on what is happening as the development plans progress at the local regions while surveilling the political and corporate maneuvers. It will take you to the the rain forests of Chiapas: where 40% of the nations drinking water resides, the Istmo: a resource rich strip of land in Oaxaca that holds the key to linking the resource rich southeast of Mexico to the world, and inside the corporate boardroom, political office, or military base. There will be investigations into the corporate actors that stand to make a fortune while the Mexican government stands by proclaiming the wonders of development as an answer to the drug war they benefit from. How the government will borrow billion of dollars to pay their friends to bulldoze unspoiled land and steal the nations resources to feed the appetites of global capital looking to make a killing. But also, and most importantly, reports of those impacted, and their struggle to fight against this imposition; to save their homes and environmental riches that surround them.

Neoliberalism** in Mexico: The SEZs*

SEZs first arrived in Mexico in the late 1960s with the launch of the Maquiladora program, a factory sized version of a SEZ, that would later flourish and prepare Mexico for its insertion into the north American economy through NAFTA in 1994.

NAFTA was promoted and sold to the Mexican public by President Salinas, but his influence in embedding neoliberalism into the Mexican state goes far deeper. Dating back to the 1970s before his fraction, the United States (U.S.) trained Technocrats, took over the commanding heights of the Mexican state in 1982. A take over that was assisted by the debt the nation defaulted on that year, after the Volker shock, leaving them no option but to go to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), the main players of the international financial institutions (IFIs), for a bail out which came with serious long-term ramifications. These were the imposition of structural adjustment policies (SAPs) that demanded the neoliberalisation of the economy: privatisation, light touch regulation, and massive reductions in the welfare state. The Technocrats, of course, were only too happy to comply as they were trained in the same orthodoxy while studying in the U.S.

The changes transformed Mexico into an export-oriented economy (EOI) reliant on foreign direct investment (FDI) to repay its IFI debts while ideologically and systemically locked into a policy of neoliberalism. But while power and wealth became ever more concentrated in the political class and the leading business sectors for the ordinary people of Mexico the story very different. less wages in real terms, a stagnant economy, over 50% still living in poverty in 2018 and growing inequality. Of course, under these conditions the historical resistance to Mexican state policy has continued into the new century.

SEZs - A plan to counter resistance

While NAFTA and the Maquiladora sector successful integrated north/central Mexico into its northern neighbours economy the southeast of the nation has so far refused to go along with the plan. The most famous act of resistance was the Zapatista resistance against NAFTA in 1994, but it did not stop there to the chagrin of the those wanting to exploit the regions resources: the Mexican elites and global capital (the transnational capitalist class [TCC]). More recent attempts to develop the region include the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP) from 2000, later reconceived as the Mesoamerica project, both firmly rejected by the public.

But in 2012 Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN), from the same fraction as Salinas, was elected president with a new neoliberal reform agenda, that would include the SEZs justified under the pretext of security, to overcome the historical resistance in the country.

SEZs - Criminality embedded in law

Since the SEZ program was announced EPN’s government has flown into action passing the SEZ law and a whole host of local decrees to facilitate their roll out.

The law has serious issues in terms of loss of national sovereignty to corporate power, massive financial subsidies to the corporate sector in terms of reduced or zero taxes, infrastructure programs to facilitate access to world markets, the transfer of public land to the corporate sector, and the appropriation on the cheap of private/indigenous lands along with irreversible environmental damage.

In terms of security, the law frames the state response only in conditons of maintaining “internal peace”: which primarily means the repression of anti-SEZ activities such as demands for full labour law compliance. Failure to do this results in the entrance of Mexican security services. Alternative strategies for resolving labour, land issues or indigenous/local problems are limited to government consultations. Which the Mexican government is notoriously bad at. While the zones' technical councils have limited community/worker consultation being stacked with pro-government unions, pro-business academics, and corporate representatives. In addition, the 2018 Internal Security law gives the Mexican security services additional powers with which to defend the SEZs against local resistance.

The SEZ administrator themselves will manage the zone based on corporate social repsonsibility (CSR) strategies: a dubious model that obscures corporate criminality. Developed to appease activists in the northern developed nations and improve corporate image rather than to end corporate exploitation

SEZs and AMLO (cancelled November 2019)

AMLO, the current president elect, and his team have so far voiced their approval of the SEZs. This also includes the promotion of infrastructure projects in region, such as in the Istmo in Oaxaca, that are intrinsically linked to the SEZs and other economic proposals that appear to reinforce the neoliberal orthodoxy.

AMLO, development, immigration, the national guard and the new plan to steal the ejidos (soon).

The War on Drugs

Lets be straight forward, the drug war is only nominally a war on narcotics; it should instead be seen as a low-level counterinsurgency (COIN) against anti-capitalist elements. One look at the drug war statistics show that it has not succeeded at its publicaly stated aim. For example the U.S. still remains a very large drug consumption market with any reductions re-balanced by the continuing growth of the global consumption market. A global market that continues to be supplied by the main producing nations like Colombia, cocaine, and Afghanistan, heroin; two nations with a strong U.S. military pressence

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But in terms of the state being able to criminalise anti-capitalist elements it has no competitor. Mexico, for example, has a long history of leveraging anti-drug operations to criminalise activists starting with the U.S. promoted Operation Condor in the late 1970s.

Neoliberal development and the War on Drugs

In terms of the development, the drug war can assist capital in various ways as it creates an environment where anti-development activists can be illegally suppressed. First it allows the state to criminalise activists as narcos on little or no evidence. The presence of narco groups in the countryside also pacifies activists by making it dangerous to protest due to ongoing conflicts between groups. Activist can be assassinated by state/corporate interests with responsibility appointed to the narcos. The list goes on, but briefly the insecurity of the drug war creates an environment that obscures and facilitates the criminality and violence of neoliberal development as it removes barriers to capital accumulation.

Further Reading:

This is a good overview of neoliberalism in Mexico since 1965 up to about 2004.

These are the best books to read about the drug war.

Notes:

* The Mexican government launched the new SEZ program in late 2014 proclaiming it as a new approach. Only half true, SEZs have been a feature of the Mexican economy as the Maquiladora since the 1960s; though the new versions of SEZs are much larger with new dangers in terms enabling corporate power.

** Despite most commentators dating neoliberalism back to the early 1970s, what Harvey calls the neoliberal turn, it would be more accurate to see it as a U.S. directed ongoing financialization of the global capitalist economy that began in those early days of the Cold War.