Por Eve Ottenberg
 |
| Photograph Source: Eneas De Troya – CC BY 4.0 |
In less than two years, Mexico’s first woman president has instituted numerous social welfare improvements, while her rhetoric on foreign policy – even if her actions have in some cases lagged – consistently supports Global South nations such as Cuba and Venezuela, as they face barbaric assault from the world’s hyper-capitalist, would-be hegemon, the U.S. Claudia Sheinbaum gave Mexico the women’s well-being pension, universal education scholarships, “In-Home Healthcare Outreach,” worker rights and wages enhancements, which, among other things, upped the minimum wage, gender equality protections, universal healthcare expansion and constitutional enshrinement of social rights. These are not minute or insignificant contributions to the well-being of ordinary people. Each of these improves life immensely. Taken altogether, they add up to a social welfare revolution for Mexico’s poor and middle class.
According to Stephanie Brewer, writing for the Washington Office on Latin America on October 1, 2025, Sheinbaum aims to expand her excellent predecessor’s, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s (AMLO’s) ruling party’s agenda. This plan is called the “Fourth Transformation.” Scheinbaum’s first annual report “demonstrated continuity in government priorities and showed that [AMLO’s party] MORENA’s policies have brought progress in poverty reduction.” Brewer adopts a critical tone toward some of AMLO’s policies, saying, “a year later, we can conclude that Sheinbaum has not changed course on these [supposedly regressive for democracy] policies.”
This article, cleaving to a U.S. media platitude in re AMLO, worries about the separation of powers, as if here the American model, which has failed so miserably in the arena where AMLO combated poverty, even when all those powers were quite separate, were some sort of holy grail. Maybe for some people it is. But for a country like Mexico, experiencing not merely extensive poverty but actual widespread destitution when AMLO took power, the issue is and was a matter of priorities. And AMLO’s priority was food, clothing, jobs, education and medicine for the poor – a priority that resulted in 13.4 million Mexicans surfacing from poverty during his administration. This was the emergency room issue. AMLO cannot be blamed for stopping the bleeding. And neither can Sheinbaum.
Brewer does note, however, that “Sheinbaum has had to devote a disproportionate amount of her first year to responding to…Donald Trump…the cyclical threats and partial implementation of tariffs, as well as the possibility of the United States taking military action in Mexico as part of the so-called ‘war on drugs.’” Sheinbaum had to insist to Trump on Mexican sovereignty and that her nation “will not allow unilateral actions on its territory.” You may recall that Trump threatened to deploy the U.S. military against cartels within Mexico’s borders. In fact, when he ascended to power the second time, Trump’s rhetoric indicated that he viewed Mexico like Canada or Greenland, namely as available land to be appropriated according to his whim.
Sheinbaum responded by stationing “thousands of additional Mexican military personnel to the shared border; [with] the transfer to the United States of dozens of Mexican nationals sought by the U.S. justice system…and efforts to show that Mexican authorities are seizing more fentanyl.” She also boosted bilateral cooperation between the two neighboring nations. Regarding Trump’s pet bugaboo, immigration, Sheinbaum detained more migrants and accepted “the return of non-Mexicans from the U.S.” So in other words, Sheinbaum, like AMLO, understood she was dealing with a mercurial despot and handled matters as diplomatically as possible.
The universal education scholarships that Sheinbaum instituted benefit public school students, per google. Starting in 2025 with secondary students, these grants now include primary students. The women’s well-being pension helps women aged 60-64, before the 65-year-old qualification for the universal seniors’ pension. As for enshrining social rights in a reformed constitution, these guarantee senior and disability pensions as inalienable social rights. Sheinbaum also created the Ministry of Women and secured equality for women “and the right to a life free of violence.” Regarding worker rights and wages, she implemented “explicit pay equity guidelines to close the gender wage gap,” and reforms “that recognize the right to adequate housing for all workers.”
In all of this, she builds upon AMLO’s sturdy foundation. According to AI’s list, he instituted universal pensions, youth and educational scholarships, paid apprenticeships, “provided monthly cash payments to rural famers and landowners who planted and maintained timber and fruit-bearing trees on their property,” and minimum wage increases. On March 31, 2024, the World Socialist Web Site ran an article analyzing his cash transfer and minimum wage policies, and criticizing AMLO and his “pseudo-left supporters.” This, to me, is silly. Lifting 13.4 million people out of poverty is nothing to sneer at, nothing to ignore. Just as, in recent years, China raised 850 million people from poverty into the middle class, AMLO’s accomplishment comes within the context of REGULATED capitalism. Considering that we here in the United States are the often wretched subjects of tyrannically UNREGULATED capital, it’s difficult to get upset about leaders who obviate this awful system, modify it or use it to advance social welfare. They may not be revolutionary, they may recognize limits, but they manage to improve ordinary people’s lives. No small accomplishment.
So Sheinbaum inherits AMLO’s legacy and continues it. To the dismay of Mexico’s oligarchs and of billionaires everywhere, there will be no rupture with the past, an important Latin American country of 131 million people will remain on its trajectory of social amelioration and a continuum of what might be called socialism with Mexican characteristics. To the chagrin of a far-right U.S. media and elite political class, Sheinbaum adroitly manages her government’s relationship with a difficult Donald Trump, no doubt having learned from AMLO that confrontation with such a ruler is best avoided and the less one has to do with him, the better. Like AMLO, she is neither flamboyant, trendy, nor a celebrity leader. She, like her predecessor, gets the job of her people’s welfare done, and if that means caution when the loose cannon to the north takes criminal aim at fraternal nations farther to the left, caution is what you get, though not at all in words, to the displeasure of those who insist her actions must match those words.
Writing in that WSWS article, Jesus Ugarte argued that AMLO’s policies, especially the cash transfers to the working poor, were “designed to ensure that the Mexican working class continues…as a pool of cheap labor for capitalist exploitation, as Washington steps up its economic warfare against China in the predatory drive for a new redivision of the world. And second, [the cash transfers] are aimed at keeping the rising class struggle in check.” Ugarte goes on to quote Mexico’s richest man, Carlos Slim, praising AMLO: “There is social peace, there is no confrontation.” Very likely the Zapatistas in the south agree with WSWS, and I’m not saying they’re wholly wrong, but overall, these cash transfers to poor working people are an unmitigated good. And good is so weak in the world that it deserves praise wherever it’s bold enough to act. If these cash grants dampened the fire of social revolution, that’s because they met a need; the largest, a pension for the elderly, benefitting roughly 11 million people. Among AMLO’s other programs: pensions for the disabled; support for children of working mothers as a cash transfer; Benito Juarez scholarships; minimum wage for unemployed people ages 18-29 enrolling as apprentices; direct funding for school infrastructure and maintenance and other initiatives.
I see nothing to quarrel with here, nothing, and it’s self-evident why these programs are so popular and AMLO so beloved. Sheinbaum traverses the same path he cut through the capitalist jungle; the working poor and other disadvantaged groups will applaud her. You should too.
Eve Ottenberg is a novelist and journalist. Her latest novel is Old Man Alone. She can be reached at her website.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário