Introduction: Salient Characteristics of Mexico’s Neoliberal Turn and Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Critique

• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20953102
• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Author: Steve Ellner
• Date: 01 November 2020
• Subject Matter: Introduction

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https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20953102

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 235, Vol. 47 No. 6, November 2020, 4–19

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20953102

© 2020 Latin American Perspectives

Introduction

Salient Characteristics of Mexico’s Neoliberal Turn and

Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Critique

by

Steve Ellner

Migration, human rights violation, gender inequality, environmental

destruction, and other phenomena discussed in this issue need to be placed in

the broad context of globalization and neoliberalism for their full significance

to be grasped. At the same time, an examination of the specificity of the Mexican

case is essential to appreciate their full scope. Neoliberal rule in Mexico

extended for much longer than elsewhere in Latin America. In many countries

the heyday of neoliberalism began in the 1990s and ended with the advent of

pro-leftist Pink Tide governments in the early years of the twenty-first century.

In contrast, in Mexico neoliberalism dated to the aftermath of the debt crisis of

1982, when President Miguel de la Madrid accepted formulas imposed by the

International Monetary Fund, and continued under presidents Carlos Salinas

de Gortari (1988–1994), Ernesto Zedillo (1994–2000), Vicente Fox (2000–2006),

Felipe Calderón (2006–2012), and Enrique Peña Nieto (2012–2018). Mexicans

elected a progressive president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in 2018, when

the rest of the Pink Tide had been removed from office or (as in the case of

Venezuela) had suffered harsh setbacks and was on the defensive. The full

implications of the neoliberal policies of 1982–2018 and the concurrent aban-

donment of what was perceived to be the essence of the Mexican Revolution

form the backdrop for the topics explored in this issue and for the presidential

triumph of López Obrador in July 2018.

The tenacity of the legacy of the Mexican Revolution explains in large part

the popular rejection of and resistance to the political establishment in twenty-

first-century Mexico. Two aspects of this legacy are particularly relevant. One

was the Constitution of 1917 and specifically Article 27, which underpinned the

justification of government control of mining and particularly the oil industry

and the expropriation of large estates. Subsequently, state control of strategic

industries became a leftist banner throughout Latin America, and only by the

second half of the century did it gain wider acceptance in the continent. The

Steve Ellner taught economic history and political science at the Universidad de Oriente in

Venezuela from 1977 to 2003. Among his publications are Venezuela’s Movimiento al Socialismo

(1988), Organized Labor in Venezuela, 1958–1991 (1993), Rethinking Venezuelan Politics (2008), and (as

editor) the recent issue of Latin American Perspectives titled Pink-Tide Governments: Pragmatic and

Populist Challenges from the Right (2019). The collective thanks him for organizing this issue.

953102LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X20953102Latin American PerspectivesEllner / Introduction

other2020

Ellner / INTRODUCTION 5

second aspect of the legacy was the nationalization of the oil industry by

President Lázaro Cárdenas in 1938, which resulted in the creation of the state

oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex). Those who affirmed the symbolic

importance of the presidency of Cárdenas viewed his actions as a continuation

of the wars for independence initiated by Miguel Hidalgo in 1810 (Vázquez

Mantecón, 2009: 195).

The Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary

Party—PRI), which remained in office until 2000, cultivated an image as the

heir to the Mexican Revolution in order to enhance its legitimacy and compen-

sate for its status as a perpetual ruling party without real competitors (Vázquez

Mantecón, 2009: 197). The neoliberal policies enacted beginning in the 1980s,

however, clashed with the revolution’s legacy of state intervention in economic

and social spheres. The failure to live up to the legacy generated a legitimacy

crisis that intensified during the closing years of the twentieth century and the

early years of the following one. In the case of Cárdenas, in the words of the

political scientist Verónica Vázquez Mantecón (2009: 202), his “heroic image

increased in the context of the disillusionment and delegitimization of the gov-

ernment.” A leftist political current within the PRI that morphed into the

Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Party of the Democratic Revolution—

PRD) invoked the example of the Mexican Revolution and was fittingly led by

Cárdenas’s son Cuahtémoc Cárdenas (Knight, 2009: 31–32). Upon breaking

with the PRI, the dissident current began to view the figure of Lázaro Cárdenas

as “the symbol of the ideals betrayed by the system” (Vázquez Mantecón, 2009:

186). Carlos Salinas and his closest allies reacted to this challenge by question-

ing the “doctrinaire conceptions of nationalism” of the Cárdenas legacy. They

argued that the model Cárdenas supported was valid for his era but needed to

be modified in accordance with contemporary imperatives. This “essentially

ahistorical ideology” clashed with the PRI’s traditional reverence for the revo-

lution (O’Toole, 2010: 56–57).

The rise to power of the Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party—

PAN) with the election of Fox and then Calderón intensified the legitimacy

crisis. The PAN never shared the ideals of the Mexican Revolution, having been

founded in 1939 in reaction to Cárdenas’s nationalization of the oil industry

and land expropriation, which it considered a violation of private property

rights (Vázquez Mantecón, 2009: 193–194). It also opposed the model of a strong

central government embodied in the Constitution of 1917.

It is not surprising that the PAN, being a party closely associated with the

Catholic Church, rejected the legacy of the Mexican Revolution, with its anti-

clerical strain. Nevertheless, the attempt to undo that legacy went beyond reli-

gious controversies, as it was driven by the neoliberal offensive spearheaded

by the PRI and PAN leaderships. The conservative backlash against the Mexican

Revolution legacy relied on code words such as "paternalism" and “state con-

trol of the masses” to strengthen the case for privatization and the neoliberal

model in general (Vázquez Mantecón, 2009: 203). An example of the omission

of direct reference to the Mexican Revolution by those who defended neoliberal

precepts is the publications coauthored by Jorge Castañeda, foreign minister

under the PAN government of Fox, and the journalist Héctor Aguilar Camín,

which claimed that Mexico was a “prisoner of its past” (cited by Ackerman,