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Five months after his overwhelming
victory at the presidential elections, the "fourth transformation"
announced by Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) is underway now that
the leader from Tabasco has received the presidential sash in a
ceremony carefully designed to reflect that historical moment.
He presented a discourse full of moralizing and anti-neoliberal declarations in
the parliamentary premises, an indigenous purification ritual and the handing over
of the baton of command and, finally, a harangue before the crowd gathered at Mexico
City’s Zócalo, in which he listed, one after the other, his 100 government
commitments.
As was evident on his inauguration day,
AMLO embodies change in the political climate of a country overcome with a
social crisis generated by three decades of sustained neoliberal policies, which
the last 12 years of unrestrained criminal and political violence has only made
worse.
In this context, AMLO’s leadership generates hope, expectations and even
a certain mystique among significant sectors of the subordinate classes.
He won
30 million votes not only because he pragmatically moved towards the center or
because of the weaknesses of his political adversaries (the Institutional
Revolutionary Party, the National Action Party and the Democratic Revolution
Party), but also because he achieved representation through national-popular
identification, and not through commendation or technocratic delegation, as was
usual in neoliberal democracy.
In effect, “common”, “ordinary” people recognize and trust AMLO because he is honest and austere, because he speaks in plain colloquial language, because he despises the glitter of power.
In effect, “common”, “ordinary” people
recognize and trust AMLO because he is honest and austere, because he speaks in
plain colloquial language, because he despises the glitter of power. Precisely
because of this and because of his humble origins, he is despised by the
classist and racist oligarchy.
It is to these people that a series of gestures
of great symbolism and political impact are dedicated, such as turning the
presidential residence of Los Pinos into a public museum, putting the
presidential plane on sale, giving up General Staff protection, and the cutting
of salaries and perks for the President and high public officials.
Many of the promises made in the Plaza de la
Constitución point in the same direction: the crusade against corruption, putting
an end to neoliberalism, recovering energy and food sovereignty, extending
scholarships and subsidies, raising lower salaries, increasing education and
work opportunities, respecting the environment.
"The poor come first, for the good
of us all", reads the motto that has accompanied AMLO since 2006. He
insisted on this in his inauguration speech.
Between the poor and us all, the boundaries
of the "fourth transformation" are marked by the developmental
tradition, the reestablishment of State intervention and its redistributive
role, within a scheme in which the initiative is still fundamentally in private
hands and driven by foreign investment.
Guarantees have been given to these guardians
of capitalist dynamics that changes will be made ensuring
full continuity and even increasing profits, as sanctioned both in the small
print of the electoral program and in the composition of the government alliance,
as well as in the statements by the new president and his main ministers and
collaborators.
In the case of Mexico, to a greater
extent than with other Latin American progressive experiments, the obstacles to
passing to a post-neoliberal stage are obvious since, aside from the avowed intentions,
the timing for such a move is rather late, coinciding with a juncture which, as
AMLO himself admits, is quite unfavorable given "the country is
bankrupt".
To this we should add the political context in the region,
where North and South wind blows from the right. The process also comes late to
the extent that AMLO’s access to power does not correspond to a cycle of
anti-neoliberal mobilizations, as in the first half of the decade of 2000, but simply
to a widespread rejection of the ruling party elites which only give rise on
occasion to protest and social organization dynamics.
This is why, and not only for electoral
calculation purposes, the composition of the National Regeneration Movement
(Morena) and even more so the coalition that supported AMLO's candidacy and
that makes up his government, is moderate and quite conservative.
As far as Morena is concerned, it was emptied of its leftist character by its electoral program; it is a party that responds to a vertical logic which is consistent with a caudillista-presidentialist culture.
As far as Morena
is concerned, it was emptied of its leftist character by its electoral program. It is a party that responds to a vertical logic which is consistent
with a caudillista-presidentialist culture
and is structured as an electoral machine, which was built around AMLO’s
candidacy in 2012 and which has now been geared to filling in posts in public
institutions.
At the same time, pragmatism and moderation presided over the formation
of the government, through the allocation of quotas among the allies, political
groups and figures who represent or simply offer guarantees to business sectors
and other powers that be.
Even in these circumstances, it can be
argued that, much as what happened in other countries in the region, it is
relatively easy for the new government’s performance to be a distinct
improvement from the previous "oligarchic-neoliberal-corrupt"
governments, on the appalling shortcomings of which AMLO has insisted, implicitly
comparing them to his own personal track record since the late 1980s.
At the
same time, his bombastic rhetoric about the historical scope of the
"fourth transformation" and the promises he has made are placing
popular expectations at such a high level that they can hardly be contained within
the framework of a simple comparison.
An evidence of this likely overflow of
hope are the 27.500 requests received at AMLO’s Campaign House in the five months
following the elections.
Apart from these particular requests,
the vote of confidence for AMLO was not so much a vote against neoliberalism
but a vote based on the hope that he will address the crossover problems of
corruption and insecurity, which have become identified with the previous
governing parties.
In both areas, the measures announced by AMLO are committed,
but their reach is quite uncertain. The scope of fight against corruption will
not be retroactive and, thus it is based on the simple threat of future legal
sanctions.
On the other hand, the fight against organized crime depends on
prevention, in other words social policies, while a repressive scheme similar to
the current one is to be maintained, even though it is relatively inefficient.
A militarized National Guard will be created, to replace the Army and the Navy which
are currently carrying out the task.
Some other sensitive issues that have cropped
up in this five-month transition should be added, for they define the immediate
agenda: the Mexico City airport and the Mayan Train project and the
corresponding popular consultations, the initiative to limit excessive bank
charges, the repeal of the educational reform, and trade union democratization.
It is by no means certain, moreover,
that the sectors of the dominant classes which are currently giving AMLO the
benefit of the doubt will not decide to withdraw this sooner rather than later,
and that the other sectors, as well as the PRI, the PAN and the PRD and the
legal and illegal interests they represent will keep quiet for long.
This is why AMLO is taking advantage of
the favorable moment to push his hegemonic plan through the construction of inter-class
consensus, both in relation to his allies and opponents.
This can be described
as a balance between transformation and evolution, a balance that recalls previous
historical experiences and the old, traditional PRI political culture, which kept
on expanding and reproducing itself in the opposition, left and right, surrounding
it.
It is by no means certain that the sectors of the dominant classes which are currently giving AMLO the benefit of the doubt will not decide to withdraw this sooner rather than later.
Indeed, each of the three historical transformations which AMLO refers to as
the basis of the one he intends to promote – independence, reform, and
revolution – had its own dose of evolution.
Conservative realignment, particularly
focused, as Antonio Gramsci pointed out, on draining the leading groups of the
subordinate classes in order to integrate them in the State apparatus as a
prior step to their absorption in the conservative camp as operators of the
necessary and strictly sufficient reforms to guarantee the substantial
continuity of the relations of domination and exploitation.
In Mexico, the reforms including those
derived from a social revolution, went through the sieve of ambiguous and
contradictory forms of political readjustment that have been called
Bonapartist, populist and passively revolutionary.
This was the case in the
first three decades of the twentieth century and in the 1960s and 70s, when the
push from below and was felt in a much sharper way than in the current
conjuncture.
In this sense, apart from the issue of the tension between
authoritarianism and democracy – which deserves a specific treatment and is an
issue straining the discourse and practice of obradorismo.
It is the popular developmentalist reform that links
the National Revolutionary Party (PNR) of the 1930s, to the left of the PRI
that extended from the late 1950s to the 1970s, PRD of the decade of 1990 and
to the Morena of our days.
In conclusion, in the midst of
recurrences and historical ambitions, the dynamics of this new government led by
AMLO appears to be creating a precarious balance between progressive and
regressive tendencies, between transformation and transformationism.
This article is published in the framework of our collaboration with Nueva Sociedad. A previous verison in Spanish and can be read here