Mexico’s President-Elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (a.k.a. “AMLO”) represents a significant step toward fascism. His July 1 landslide victory was forged by a capitalist coalition seeking to impose greater discipline on a famously corrupt ruling class. His fake-leftist campaign misled millions into an electoral process that justifies massive inequality and daily attacks on workers and students.
Lopez Obrador’s reforms will sacrifice workers in the name of deadly all-class unity. Since his election he has championed a national “reconciliation”: “I call on all Mexicans…to put above their personal interests, however legitimate, the greater interest, the general interest. The state…will represent all Mexicans, rich and poor….” (New York Times, 7/1). Populist rhetoric aside, nationalism always serves the needs of the bosses’ state. Only communism can serve the needs of the working class.
Industry and inequality
Today’s political crisis in Mexico has been building for decades. From 1929 to 2000, the Mexican bosses controlled the country through a decaying single-party system, the cynically named Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. The brazen theft and infighting by PRI politicians culminated in the deeply unpopular regime of President Enrique Pena Nieto: “[V]iolence has surged, the economy has stagnated, and corruption has dominated the headlines” (North American Congress on Latin America, 7/4). While half the Mexican population lives in poverty, Mexico has 30 billionaires (Forbes, 4/17/17) and at least 145,000 millionaires (WealthInsight, 2015).
The collapse of the PRI and the rise of Lopez Obrador and his populist MORENA party reflect a split between the biggest thieves—the industrial bosses who rely on Mexico’s export trade versus small-time capitalists who steal and skim local resources. When Mexico’s economy was mainly agrarian, the big capitalists were content to plunder from the nation’s oil reserves and the early telecommunications industry. But over the last 20 years, under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mexico has developed a huge manufacturing economy. They did this on the backs of the industrial working class, a source of cheap labor and high profits:
With a daily minimum wage of only $4, Mexican labor has a significant cost advantage over the US and Canada. Mexico has become the world’s largest exporter of flat-screen televisions; it’s also home to the world’s seventh-largest automotive industry, and it has a $6 billion aviation sector (JPMorgan Chase, 10/10/2016).
As they seek to build a national highway system and other critical infrastructure for their factories, the big rulers can no longer tolerate local police, politicians, and drug bosses siphoning off billions of pesos. At the same time, they need to enlist the patriotic loyalty of a working class that regularly takes to the streets “to protest impunity and economic mismanagement” (NACLA, 7/4). For all his attacks on “the mafia of power,” Lopez Obrador persuaded the big bosses that he is ready to serve them. He has promised to contain the national debt, maintain close relations with U.S. finance capitalists, and promote “a border economic zone that would encourage more foreign investment” (Washington Post 6/29).
False promises and fascism
As a firebrand mayor of Mexico City from 2000 to 2005, Lopez Obrador gained a reputation for progressive reform. But he also hired Rudolph Guiliani, the arch-racist ex-New York City mayor and now a shill for U.S. President Donald Trump. He partnered with Carlos Slim, the richest person in Mexico, to gentrify center-city neighborhoods recovering from the 1985 earthquake, pushing out workers to usher in the wealthy (Brookings Institute, 7/3). Now he is promising universal pensions, a national scholarship fund, and a revived healthcare system, with no plan to fund them aside from a vague promise to end corruption. But a number of AMLO’s “high-profile political allies have in the past been linked to corruption and electoral fraud” (LAT, 7/10).
“Today AMLO is a much more moderate, centrist politician who will govern the business community with the right hand, and the social sectors and programs with the left,” said Antonio Sola, who created the effective fear campaign that branded Mr. López Obrador as a danger to Mexico in the 2006 election he lost” (NYT, 7/1). Notably, AMLO has backed down from earlier opposition to a 2013 reform to open up Mexico’s national oil company, PEMEX, to private and foreign investment (Washington Post, 7/2).
In short, Lopez Obrador’s populist appeal lays the basis for a mass fascist movement. MORENA offers the biggest capitalists a potentially powerful force to attack smaller bosses and any workers who fail to fall in line with the rulers’ program.
AMLO and inter-imperialist rivalry
As the U.S. declines relative to China, its main rival imperialist superpower, Lopez Obrador is hedging his bets. He is expected to roll back exports of crude petroleum for refining in the U.S. and to build PEMEX’s processing capacity. According to Rocio Nahle, AMLO’s top energy adviser, Mexico needs “to consume our own fuels and not depend on foreign gasoline”—a clear threat to U.S. oil profits, for which Mexico is the  leading foreign market (Reuters, 2/22).B
Both Lopez Obrador and Trump sould be loath to destroy NAFTA, a source of super-profits to bosses on both sides of the border. Still, any weakening of Mexico-U.S. trade relations could open the door to further Chinese economic inroads in North America, a huge problem for the main section of the U.S. ruling class. In October 2016, China promised to “elevate military ties to [a] new high and described the possibility of joint operations, training, and logistical support” for Mexico. Since then, Mexico has sold China access to large deep-water oil fields off the coast. Meanwhile Carlos Slim partnered with a Chinese car company to make SUVs in Mexico (The Atlantic, May 2017).
López Obrador and other MORENA leaders “have been vocal about expanding their trade partnerships with countries like China” (Politico, 1/7). After Lopez Obrador’s election, China congratulated the victor and pledged “to work with Mexico to build up mutual trust, deepen cooperation, bring benefits to both peoples and contribute positive energy to the international community” (Xinhua, 7/2). With Mexico’s oil reserves potentially up for the highest bidder, the bosses’ economic competition will inevitably lead to armed confrontation and global war. This fight will likely center upon control of oil and gas, the raw materials essential to the capitalists’ militaries and industries.
Workers can win
Whenever the bosses fight over profits and resources, the working class gets caught in the crossfire. But we can take inspiration to fight back against this deadly system from the workers of Valle de Chalco, Mexico. In early 2017, when gas and electricity prices skyrocketed, they organized occupations, marches, and road blockades. They broke the bosses’ rules to make their own connections to the electrical grid and guarantee power for the masses.
These workers gave us a glimpse of how the working class can organize and run the world for its own needs. When workers around the world organize across borders, smashing the bosses’ nationalism, we can win the communist world we need. Join Progressive Labor Party.