[Whatever the shortcomings of AMLO’s answers, his attempt to
break with neoliberalism cannot easily be dismissed.]
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THE AMLO PROJECT  
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Edwin F. Ackerman
June 5, 2023
Sidecar/New Left Review
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_ Whatever the shortcomings of AMLO’s answers, his attempt to break
with neoliberalism cannot easily be dismissed. _

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Wikipedia

 

The Mexican political system was shaken on 1 July 2018, when Andrés
Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and his new party MORENA achieved a
resounding electoral victory, winning 53% of the votes in a four-way
race – a thirty-point lead over his closest contender. This was by
far the widest margin since the country’s ‘transition to
democracy’ at the turn of the millennium. The parties that had
dominated the political field throughout the neoliberal period were
suddenly reduced to rubble. Today, the president’s approval ratings
remain in the sixties, despite a relentlessly hostile press, a global
pandemic, its accompanying economic crisis and inflationary pressures.
Longstanding rivalries between the opposition parties have been
shelved, with the PRI, PAN and PRD forced to come together or forfeit
any possibility of succeeding at the ballot box.

The idiosyncrasies of AMLO’s left-populist presidency have pitted
him not only against the neoliberal right, but also against the
‘progressive’ cosmopolitan intelligentsia and
neozapatista-adjacent autonomists. These groups have variously accused
him of ‘turning the country into Venezuela’, peddling
‘conservativism’ and acting as a ‘henchman of capital’. Yet as
his six-year term reaches its final lap, a closer look at AMLO’s
record reveals a much more complex picture. His overarching project
has been to move away from neoliberalism towards a model of
nationalist-developmentalist capitalism. To what extent has he
succeeded, and what can the left learn from this endeavour?  

As a general rule, transitions from neoliberalism must take place in a
structural setting shaped by neoliberalism itself: the erosion of the
working class as a political agent and the dismantling of state
capacity. It follows that the basic historical task of the
contemporary left is the reignition of class politics and the
relegitimation of the state as a social actor. We can therefore assess
AMLO’s administration based on three fundamental criteria: the
reinstatement of class cleavage as a primary organizer of the
political field; the effort to reconcentrate the power of a state
apparatus hollowed out by decades of neoliberal governance; and the
break with an economic paradigm based on institutionalized
corruption. Let’s consider each of these in turn.

_1._

In May 2020, as the first right-wing protests erupted against AMLO’s
government, a viral video made the rounds on social media. It shows
throngs of upper-class demonstrators engaged in a march-by-car on a
major avenue in Monterrey, Nuevo León. From the window of a public
bus, an anonymous passenger begins to harangue the motorists:
‘_This_ is what moves Mexico!’ he says. ‘The workers…the
workers move Mexico!’ For many, the scene captured the return of
class politics to public consciousness after a long absence.

Just a few months into his presidency, AMLO declared the death of
Mexican neoliberalism. It was a bold statement, more of an aspiration
than a _fait accompli_. The first signs of its realization were
rhetorical. Previously, political discourse focused on the division
between a vaguely defined ‘civil society’ and the state. Public
officials increasingly conceded the necessity of increasing ‘citizen
control’ over ‘governance’. Class antagonism had all but
disappeared from mainstream commentary. Yet under AMLO it reemerged in
Laclauian guise: as a confrontation between ‘the people’ and
‘the elite’ (_fifis_ and _machuchones _as he mockingly calls
them), the latter defined by their wealth, meritocratic self-delusion
and disdain for working-class culture.

This verbal shift was matched by a stark process of party realignment.
In the 2018 election, working-class votes were scattered across
different parties, including the neoliberal bloc, while AMLO had an
edge with middle-class professionals. At that time, 48% of voters with
a college degree supported MORENA’s congressional candidates. In the
2021 mid-terms
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by contrast, that figure fell to 33%. The inverse occurred at the
bottom end of the educational attainment bracket: 42% of people with
only elementary school education voted for MORENA in 2018, while 55%
did so in 2021. Recent polling
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that those most supportive of AMLO are ordinary workers, the informal
sector and peasants, while his most vociferous opponents are
businesspeople and college-educated professionals. The ‘Brahmin
Left’ phenomenon, which increasingly characterizes voting patterns
in Europe and the US, has evidently been reversed in Mexico.

What explains this turnaround? The past four years have seen an
avalanche of pro-worker reforms. The formal rights of domestic workers
have been recognized for the first time, and precarious hiring
practices have been eliminated. As a result, last year 2022 a 109%
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in _reparto de utilidades_: profit-sharing payments to which all
workers are formally entitled, but which employers could previously
circumvent by ‘outsourcing’ their hires. Under AMLO the process
for forming new unions has been considerably simplified, statutory
vacation days have doubled, and legislation is currently on the docket
for a forty-hour work week (down from 48 hours). His administration
has instituted the largest minimum-wage increase in more than forty
years. Before the economic crisis that followed the Covid-19 shutdown,
the poorest section of the population saw their income grow by 24%
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These shifting sands have resulted in the tentative re-emergence of
the working class as a political actor. Perhaps the clearest evidence
is the _maquiladora_ workers’ uprising in Matamoros, Tamaulipas,
where tens of thousands of employees launched the largest wild-cat
strikes in the sector’s history. Energized by minimum-wage hikes,
they demanded increases to other benefits, refusing to accept the
employers’ attempts to stop bonuses from rising in line with
salaries. The movement yielded new and successful unionizing efforts,
and propelled one of its leaders, Susana Terrazas, to a congressional
seat on MORENA’s ticket.

AMLO’s focus on social programmes has further strengthened this new
class politics. Cash transfers
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reach 65% more people than under previous governments. In 2021,
despite the economic crisis, social spending as a percentage of total
government expenditure reached its highest level in a decade. This
welfare model operates under a wholly different logic to the previous
neoliberal one, moving away from micro-targeting and means-testing
towards a more universal approach. While cash transfers are still
reserved for broad subgroups (people over 65, students, the disabled,
and so on), conditions for accessing them are minimal. Welfare
programmes have been enshrined in the Constitution, cementing their
status as entitlements rather than ‘hand-outs’, rights rather than
charity.

On the other side of the political spectrum, the parties displaced by
MORENA have formed a coalition that openly proclaims its fealty to big
business. Tycoons like Claudio X Gonzalez and Gustavo de Hoyos, former
head of the employers’ confederation, have played a crucial role in
financing the opposition and dictating its talking-points. As well as
denouncing AMLO’s labour laws, the business sector has fiercely
resisted his new approach to taxation. Although the government
generally takes an orthodox line on macroeconomic issues, it has made
a concerted effort to increase the state’s tax collection capacity,
which has historically lagged behind OECD and LAC averages. Without
altering the current tax structure, these enforcement measures have
had a significant redistributive impact. According to official
figures, the government increased tax collection from the richest in
the country by more than 200%. (Hence the _FT_’s description
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Raquel Buenrostro, AMLO’s former Secretary of Tax Administration and
current Secretary of the Economy, as an ‘iron lady’ cracking the
‘whip on multinationals’ taxes’.)

At the same time, the loss of sections of the credentialled middle
classes from AMLO’s support base reflects their symbolic demotion in
the grand narrative of the nation, which the president has been
constructing in his daily press conferences. Whereas under previous
governments, a cabinet stocked with elite-university-trained figures
signalled respectability and authority, appeals to ‘expertise’ are
now seen as empty political marketing ploys. Ministers are praised for
‘being close to the people’, not for their titles and accolades.

AMLO has come in for criticism in socially liberal circles,
predominantly composed of the credentialed classes, for his lack of
interest in advancing the rights to gay marriage or abortion. He has
refused to take a position on these issues, proposing instead that
they be put to popular referendums; yet this is mostly a moot point
now that there has been significant progress on such matters at the
state level (interestingly, the most meaningful gains have been made
in areas where MORENA controls the local legislature).

The president also stumbled in response to the combative feminist
movement that emerged in 2019 to contest Mexico’s persistent
femicides. From the outset, AMLO seemed more interested in
‘unmasking’ it as a campaign orchestrated by the right (which has
indeed tried to highjack the uprising) than in listening to its
demands. He has criticized the direct-action tactics of recent
mobilizations and praised the work of female caregivers, in what many
saw as an instance of male condescension. Although AMLO has stuck to a
strict policy of gender parity in the selection of his cabinet,
feminist detractors understandably see his presidency as
insufficiently concerned with the country’s gendered hierarchies.

_2. _

One of the main priorities of AMLO’s administration has been to
reverse the hollowing out of the state. This process has taken various
forms. First, there has been a push to recentralize government
functions that had been outsourced to private and semi-private firms.
The subcontracting of public services has been abolished, with the aim
of reintegrating these into centralized state institutions. The
government has also gotten rid of trusts that administered public
monies in an opaque and highly discretionary manner, bringing such
funds within the remit of government ministries.

This programme has been butressed by a series of state-led
infrastructure ‘mega-projects’, the cancellation of private ones
like the Texcoco airport, and the public expropriation of parts of the
railways. AMLO’s flagship construction schemes include the Felipe
Angeles airport, the Maya Train around the Yucatán peninsula, a
transportation corridor connecting the Gulf of Mexico with the Pacific
Ocean, a rural road-building project and a major reforestation plan.
Such undertakings are touted as means of creating employment through
public works and rejecting the failed doctrine of _laissez-faire_.

Energy sovereignty has received special attention from AMLO’s
government, which has tried to revamp the productive capacity of the
state-owned petroleum company, PEMEX, and turn it into an engine of
growth. It has also worked to curb, however modestly, the power of
foreign mining companies. A new Hydrocarbons Law opens up the
possibility of revoking permits to private firms that commit certain
violations, while an Electricity Industry Law aims to increase the
power generated by CFE, the state-owned electricity company, by
limiting the requirement that it purchase electricity from the private
sector. Both measures strive to enhance the relative position of the
public sector and roll back the tide of neoliberal reform. The
government recently reaffirmed this commitment with the purchase of
thirteen power plants owned by energy company Iberdrola.

The prolonged period of state atrophy that preceded AMLO’s tenure
has inevitably obstructed some of his most ambitious policies. The
state has not yet shaken its dependency on private-public
partnerships. It has been forced to use the administrative
infrastructure of Banco Azteca, owned by the media mogul Ricardo
Salinas Pliego, to implement its cash transfer programmes. While there
is a plan for public banks to take over these responsibilities, the
transition has been slow. AMLO’s signature infrastructure project,
the Yucatán train, is owned by the state, but it will include
public-private venture components. Previously outsourced government
services like child care have been shut down with the intention of
taking them in-house, but not all of them have been replaced, which
means that people must use state vouchers to purchase essential
services on the private market. Lacking real administrative capacity,
AMLO has become increasingly reliant on the military to build and
operate many of his infrastructure projects.

The need to recover the power of the state is also evident in the
persistence of severe drug cartel-related violence – an issue that
prompted AMLO to create a new National Guard, composed of members of
the army (and additional new recruits), retrained to carry out police
work. Critics claim this represents the militarization of public life.
They also point to AMLO’s use of the repressive apparatus along the
country’s southern border, where migrant caravans from Central
America are often met with force. These actions are largely a
capitulation to the US’s perennial demand (before and after Trump)
for Mexico stop the flow of asylum seekers. Like his predecessors,
AMLO has accepted such constraints on national sovereignty, perhaps
because it can be used as leverage in negotiations with his northern
neighbour. He has devoted considerable energy to preventing caravans
from reaching the US: offering Mexican work visas, calling for a
‘Marshall Plan for Central America’, and turning a blind eye as
police engage in brutal pushbacks. His overall record in this area is
dismal – although one important exception was his refusal to
countenance Trump’s attempt to declare Mexico a ‘safe third
country’, which would have prevented virtually all Central American
refugees from seeking asylum in the US.

_3._

In his inaugural speech as president in December 2018, AMLO asserted
that ‘the distinctive feature of neoliberalism is corruption’.
Neoliberalism, as he sees it, is not merely the contraction of the
state but its instrumentalization in the service of the market. This
process has transformed Mexico into a sort of reverse rentier economy,
in which a network of private businesses siphoned money from public
coffers through a series of legal and illegal mechanisms:
privatization, outsourcing, the sale of overpriced services and the
creation of ghost companies designed to take advantage of state
contracts and tax evasion opportunities.

The notion of neoliberalism as a political economy of corruption has
informed AMLO’s public spending objectives. The flagship concept of
his government is a counterintuitive one: _austeridad republicana_,
or ‘republican austerity’. In practice, this means the ongoing
reorganization and recentralization of public spending with the aim of
‘cutting from the top’. Since Mexican neoliberalism forged
extensive links between the state and private enterprise, austerity is
seen as a means of breaking such connections – casting off parasitic
companies whose profits rely on government largesse.

In the long term, strict adherence to _austeridad republicana_ may
make it difficult if not impossible to create a robust welfare system.
Yet, for the moment, it has succeeded in relegitimizing the state
after decades of cronyism and clientelism. Fears that it would result
in mass layoffs have dissipated. In addition to large-scale spending
on public works and cash transfers, sectors such as science
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their budgets increased, albeit minimally. The most urgent problem
with AMLO’s fiscal restraint is that it undermines the case for
far-reaching tax reform, as it implies that the left can realize its
aims solely through more efficient spending: rebalancing the books
rather than redistributing wealth. 

In theory, AMLO’s left critics could acknowledge his advances while
mounting a sound critique of his gender politics, border policies and
austerity programmes. Yet in practice, they have missed an opportunity
to build a serious alternative to MORENA. So far, left-wing criticism
of AMLO has been largely monopolized by the ‘progressive’
intelligentsia, which has in turn been absorbed by the elite-dominated
opposition bloc. The autonomist movement, meanwhile, remains
uninterested in capturing state power. It abandoned this terrain long
ago and focused instead on opposing developmentalist projects, with
little to show for it.  

Any assessment of AMLO and MORENA must recognize the difficulties of
restarting a welfare state with a dilapidated administrative apparatus
and reinvigorating a working class that has been all but defeated as a
collective agent. The current administration is, of course, afflicted
by many more uncertainties and contradictions beyond the scope of this
brief survey. How viable is neo-developmentalism in the context of
climate crisis? Can progressive taxation succeed in the midst of
stagnant growth? How rapidly can a country wean itself off foreign
investment? These are questions for the left worldwide. Whatever the
shortcomings of AMLO’s answers, his attempt to break with
neoliberalism cannot easily be dismissed.

_EDWIN F. ACKERMAN is assistant professor of sociology at Syracuse
University, and visiting fellow at the Weatherhead Center for
International Affairs at Harvard._

_SIDECAR is the the New Left Review blog. Launching in December 2020,
Sidecar aims to provide a space on the left for international
interventions and debate. The NEW LEFT REVIEW is a British
bimonthly journal covering world politics, economy, and culture, which
was established in 1960._

* AMLO
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* Mexico
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* Neoliberalism
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* worker rights
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* Politics
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* big business
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* infrastructure
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* corruption
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