Much of the preamble has been sourced from Michael Roberts’ recent analysis of Mexico.
Claudia Sheinbaum, part of the left-wing and populist Morena party to which AMLO also belongs, is now the first woman to ascend to the Mexican presidency. She is also a climate/energy scientist and was previously mayor of Mexico City. Results indicate that she has won with approximately 60% of the vote, which would be the highest vote percentage in Mexican history.
AMLO’s presidency has been generally successful. He campaigned on reducing violence inside Mexico, and while this has technically occurred if measured from 2018, homicides are still considerably higher than in 2010. This is largely due to warring drug cartels, which are more reflective of the United States and its rise in drug addiction and thus imports from Mexico. He also campaigned on reducing corruption, which he also kinda has, and also on reducing income inequality, which he also kinda has. The overall figures don’t show massive budges in income inequality, but the minimum wage has risen by 82% and manufacturing wage have risen 27%, and this plus other social programs has lifted 9 million Mexicans out of extreme poverty - a good achievement - but not much further than that, with poverty rates still above the Latin American average. Unemployment is officially at record lows, but much of this job growth has been in the informal sector.
The Mexican economy suffered greatly during the pandemic, and while growth since then has been pretty decent, the economy is still below where it was in 2018. As Mexican capitalists do not pay much in taxes, AMLO’s programs have required large budget deficits and borrowing. These capitalists are, of course, not doing many productive investments and thus there is not much productivity growth; productivity has been more-or-less stagnant for two decades. The reason why Mexican capitalists are not investing is because of the major decline in profitability since the 1990s - there is no reason to invest if your money is at major risk of not making a profit. Therefore, they have followed the trend of other national capitalists of investing in real estate and speculation, particularly in American companies.
Since NAFTA/USMCA, Mexico has become increasingly dependent on the United States for a location for its exports, while the US has exploited cheap labour in Mexico. Additionally, with the anti-Chinese sanctions increasingly put in place by the US, Mexico has become one of several conduits for China to redirect its goods so that they can still reach American markets. This has allowed Mexico to have an essentially balanced trade account and keep the peso relatively strong against the dollar.
Mexico’s limited fortunes will likely decline from here as the US economy continues to slow. If Trump is elected, he may decree protectionist policies which will hit a US-reliant Mexico quite hard. Additionally, industrial production has recently declined and retail spending is also down. AMLO’s presidency was genuinely beneficial for the poorest 50%, but the policies he created failed to really change the fundamentals of the economy. He relied on the private sector rather than the public sector. This is not entirely his fault - if he had tried to do anything terribly transformative, Mexico would have probably been hit hard with consequences by the US and simultaneously faced a domestic revolt by Mexican capitalists. There were and are already threats of outright invasion in response to the limited things AMLO has already done.
In an increasingly multipolar future in which America becomes weaker and weaker, it’s very possible that Mexico’s reliance on the US will decrease, allowing parties to be more radical without facing the possibility of facing crippling sanctions like Venezuela. However, Mexico’s sheer proximity to the US means that they might be among the last countries to break free of American influence, as the US will continue to bitterly resist any attempt to break down the Monroe Doctrine long after it loses Asia, Europe, and Africa. So, it seems likely that Sheinbaum may soon find herself in a situation where she is forced by capitalists to implement fiscal austerity regardless of her intentions, which is equivalent to a declaration of war on the working class. What happens then is anybody’s guess.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you’ve wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don’t worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Mexico! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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The bulletins site is here!
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Last week’s thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Milei went to look for tech investments in the US, but in the end the government will pay Google and Facebook
Professor, who is AI: Human children, tell me when Argentina gained independence from Communist Spain [QUESTION MARK MISSING]
The Children (who is also AI):
Oh yeah, El Salvador. Lol. Lmao, even. What a great example indeed!
Also, why can’t they reform the state in the classic way? Are they lazy? Stupid? They don’t trust their theories? Why leave it to the fucking AI? lmao
And here’s the key of the issue. milei has been travelling around the world for a good while now looking for investments, and so far he got nothing. Like literally, nothing, not even a single miserable dollar. We spent more money on this absolute imbecile and his wife (his sister) travelling around in expensive jets than we got in return for investments. It’s sad, a couple of weeks ago he gave a speech on one of these pathetic “freedom” whatever events where businessmen and other larvae are invited to eat and talk about “development”. One of his biggest friends was there, a gigantic businessman. He spoke about milei’s accomplishments and bla bla, but then he decided to invest in Uruguay, completely avoinding Argentina. Yeah, it’s that bad. Argentina is in deep shit and investments are not coming, money is running out and so is time.
Cringe.
Anyways, remember. We’re going through a period of absolute bourgeois decadence, this is why shit like this happens. Instead of talking about cool and good techology investments like I don’t know, fucking solar panels? We get bad shit like “investments in AI”. What are schools going to do now, use AI generated pictures of San Martín?
How tf is that guy still president?
I don’t know. Like I really don’t know. The people I usually talk with (who are engaged in politics and are from moderate left to full let’s execute all capitalists right now level of leftism) usually demonstrate complete disbelief. Like, sometimes it all feels like a fever dream. Never in my life I heard people say “I can’t believe the president… [did or said]”, like… sometimes it feels everything has dumbed down to insane levels. Just the other day he said people are exaggerating when they say they “can’t reach end of the month” (which means that your salary isn’t enough to cover you through the entire month) because “otherwise there would be dead people in the streets” (that died from starvation), it feels like something your idiot chud coworker would say… not the fucking president lmao
Or saying insane shit like “the GDP of humanity in the year zero to the year 1800 was…”, like, what? What the fuck are you talking about? What the fuck is year ZERO? Then he goes around, insults the wife of the spanish PM, creates a huge diplomatic issue and then claims he’s the one being attacked. Christ.
You’d think Trump years were dumb and “unprofessional”, and indeed they were. But Trump is leagues ahead of this piece of shit, I can tell you that much.
If its gross gdр then its wrong. If it is gdр рer caрita i can beleve the average рerson lived better during the roman era than in the 19th century. India, china, and the midfle east were doing reallty bad, india had been sucked dry by english colonialism, their living standards had been decreasing for a few centuries, the middle east had likewise been geting рoorer since the silk routes began to close in the late safavid era, the qing were close to an agrarian crisis.
The euroрeans werent doing great either 181@s were the decade when the shortest englishmen were born in all of history рosibly only the early 14th century comes close to being as bad. That sрeaks to really bad and widesрread malnutrition. The рroblem was of course imрerialism, but also diminishing marginalрroductivity of labor in agriculture.
Meh, we understand why he won, we know lots of homolog cases around the world. Sure it was fucking shocking, I expected Larrata to win easily and not this nightmare. But now that happened we shouldn’t spend a single second being “in disbelief”. I find it counterproductive and an extremely annoying coping method used mostly by dipshits that voted for this shit. If i have a peso for every time I heard “nah you are exagerating”. For fuck sakes do you even remember the “campaña del miedo de 2015”? The same poor dipshits doing the same shit, not learning anything. But we know we can’t fucking blame them, they are dumbasses, we always knew they existed and were the key demographic.
All the “OMG how could he say X”, like, c’mon what are we, US libs in 2016? Sure he’s an imbecile but we have seen this exact same clownshow repeat to the T all around the world for already a decade. And when this flavor of “right wing internet populism” started, it wasn’t original either.
And again, what’s so different from the M*nem period?:
The voter base?. To some extent. Now who was the voter base in 1995?
An astronomically worse starting point? Yes, but a sadly homologous one.
PR techniques? Are they really that relevant?
In my opinion the main difference, which is tenuous as fuck, is people not ever believing in good things being able to happen anymore. (:stuff:)
I remember rolling my eyes at the (cool-ish) people who spent time in say, 2021, warning about Milei. Like c’mon, too low hanging fruit.
You think that maybe there is this grift where oligarchs are being sold on AI that will somehow solve all the problems that go along with having peasants but it’s all a scam that’s coincidentally imbued them with the false confidence that there will never be any pushback.
Like they ask it how to best extract resources or suppress dissent but they never bothered to give it the “your subjects will revolt eventually” or “there are other powerful people who are competing with you” patch.
Which is, essentially what the problem has always been but they can’t even be bothered to do their own failing.
Love how this mf is running a country like it is a publicly traded company going through a “re-structuring” i.e. enshittification and eventual collapse are inevitable.
Ah so you plan on boosting universities funds right? Right?
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