The fight against corruption
According to the NGO Transparency International, which publishes an annual corruption perception index for 180 countries, Mexico ranks 126th in the world in 2022, and last among the 38 OECD member countries. For 87% of Mexicans, the police are the most corrupt institution, followed by political parties and the judiciary. The Bank of Mexico estimated in 2015 that the cost of corruption to public finances (embezzlement, waste of public funds, etc.) represented 9% of GDP, or the equivalent of 80% of national tax resources! The fight against corruption has always been AMLO's hobbyhorse. During his populist morning press conferences (the famous mañaneras), the president never fails to denounce this scourge which affects all strata of society. Among recent cases, three former presidents of the Republic (Enrique Peña Nieto, Felipe Calderón and Carlos Salinas) were implicated in August 2020 by the former head of Pemex (himself accused), in bribes paid by Odebrecht, the Brazilian construction giant, in return for public contracts. Will they ever be convicted? Investigations will continue unabated, and opposition leaders will continue to be on the judicial radar as long as AMLO is around. AMLO is well aware that to reduce corruption, poverty and social inequality must be tackled first. Disparities are such that it's easy for a criminal to bribe a police officer to make a body disappear, by paying him the equivalent of a few weeks' salary.
Reducing poverty and inequality
Mexico has been in a tricky situation since the financial crisis of 2008. According to the IMF, Latin America's second-largest economy, on the brink of recession in 2019, saw its GDP grow by around 6.2% in 2021, after falling by 8.4% due to the pandemic. In August 2022, headline inflation accelerated to 8.62%, its highest level in over twenty years. While Mexico's economic recovery plan in response to the Covid-19 crisis has been effective overall, and the country's economy has gradually rebounded, the pandemic has pushed millions of Mexicans into poverty. The number of people living below the poverty line rose by 3.8 million between 2018 and the end of 2020, to 55.7 million (43.9% of the population). According to the February 2021 report by Coneval (the national poverty assessment body), the economic crisis linked to Covid-19 could push 9.8 million more people into poverty (56.7% of the population) and 10.7 million more into extreme poverty, meaning that more than a quarter of the population will not have enough income to eat every day (16.8% before the crisis). The government has opted for rapid decontamination to halt the collapse of the economy and the destruction of millions of jobs. Almost 60% of Mexican workers work in the informal sector, earning their living on a daily basis and with no social security cover. Fortunately for some families, remesas (money transferred by the Mexican diaspora from abroad, mainly from the United States) have cushioned the impact of the crisis. In 2021, they reached a record level of over $51.5 billion, an increase of 27.1% on 2020, which had already set a new all-time record.
Uncontrollable cartels?
Between the start of the war against the cartels in 2006 and the end of 2020, Mexico recorded 80,000 disappearances and almost 300,000 deaths, including 35,000 in 2020 alone! In 2022, the country was ranked 23rd among the world's most violent nations. According to research by Mexico's National Statistics Institute, there were almost 32,000 murders in 2022, 9.7% fewer than in 2021. What's more, the homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants will have fallen from 28 in 2021 to 25 in 2022. The country is also one of the most dangerous for journalists, women, migrants and students, as illustrated by the case of the 43 Ayotzinapa students who "disappeared" in 2014 (implicating the police, the army and a criminal gang). The military crackdown on the cartels has been counterproductive. The arrest of major capos, such as "El Chapo" Guzmán Guzmán, only served to divide the clans and generate more violence. It is no longer the State that wages war on the narcos, but the cartels who attack the State when it gets in their way. The "laissez-faire" option, as it was before 2006, with a non-aggression pact between criminal groups and political authorities, is no longer an option today, as local players have become too powerful. The cartels are no longer content with drug trafficking; they also resort to other forms of trafficking (human trafficking, oxygen cylinders during the pandemic!), kidnapping, racketeering... So, how do we stop this dynamic? AMLO has decided to fight head-on against corruption and poverty, the breeding grounds of criminal gangs. He has also created a National Guard, a new corps supposedly purged of corruption. But contrary to the demilitarized approach he had announced in his campaign to fight crime, the National Guard is headed by a military officer, and many of its recruits are drawn from the federal police and army... A glaring failure of the institutions supposed to protect the citizen, which engenders a general feeling of impunity, giving way to all kinds of excesses, including petty crime: and weapons of war are arriving by the millions from the United States (in this respect, the neighbor to the north is less reluctant to close the border than for migrants arriving in the opposite direction!). So it's going to take time for Mexico to keep its idle youth away from the cartels, and time too to clean up its deeply infiltrated institutions. Once again, it seems that the fight against corruption is one of the most effective weapons against the power of the cartels.
The migration issue at the heart of Mexico-United States relations
Political, economic and cultural relations between the United States and Mexico have always been very close. Economically, the two countries are bound by the United States-Mexico-Canada Free Trade Agreement (U.S.-Mexico-Canada FTA), which replaced NAFTA in July 2020. Over 80% of Mexican production is exported to the United States, not to mention the tons of drugs (south-north) and millions of weapons (north-south)... Some 36 million Mexicans live in the United States (nearly 10% of the American population), making them Uncle Sam's largest foreign community. Millions more (and not just Mexicans) would like to join them, to escape the misery and violence in their neighborhoods. Migration is a key issue in Mexico-US relations. With Donald Trump coming to power in January 2017, relations have hardened. The man who called Mexicans drug traffickers and criminals had a wall built along the border and even asked Mexico to finance it when he realized he didn't have the budget to build it... In the end, Mexico didn't give a penny, and out of the 735 km of wall built (out of 3,152 km of border). Trump was more effective with his economic pressure, threatening Mexico with tariffs on Mexican goods if it failed to cooperate in the fight against immigration. With no room for manoeuvre, given the importance of the North American market for a Mexico already in bad shape economically, AMLO had to stop the migrant caravans, which came by the thousands from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The new National Guard was deployed at the southern border (Guatemala) and some 200,000 migrants were sent back to their countries of origin. Obliged to stop migrants on behalf of the United States, Mexico has tried to set up alternatives to the repressive approach, with development aid for Central American countries. The inauguration of President Joe Biden in January 2021 has created a sense of optimism among migrants and revitalized the relationship between the two countries, whose representatives now share more similar values. Among Biden's first actions was the decision to abandon construction of the border wall. Biden also announced a migration reform to regularize the 11 million illegal immigrants on American soil (half of whom are Mexicans). He is also willing to work with Mexico on development aid to Central America, in order to contain the migratory exodus in the long term. However, at the end of August 2022, just over 2 million illegal immigrants had been arrested in just eleven months: an all-time record. This impressive number is partly due to the economic impact of the pandemic in Latin America.
A repositioning of Mexico in regional geopolitics
The arrival in December 2018 of a left-wing party in power, after three decades of neoliberal policies, will undoubtedly have geopolitical consequences in Latin America. One of AMLO's first moves was his country's withdrawal from the Lima Group, a multilateral organization created in 2017 to find a solution to the political crisis in Venezuela. The Aztec country's second landmark intervention was the offer of exile to Bolivia's former president, Evo Morales, in the post-election crisis of October 2019, which had forced him to flee the country. Here again, by supporting Morales, Mexico is demonstrating a position opposed to that of the Organization of American States (OAS). Nevertheless, despite political fluctuations, AMLO enjoys a robust approval rating in 2023, in excess of 60%. As we enter the final year of AMLO's term, the focus is already on the July 2024 presidential election. As Mexican presidents are not eligible for a second term, the debate is focused on succession. In this respect, Mexico's political landscape could see a historic first. Claudia Sheinbaum, former head of government of Mexico City, has positioned herself as the Morena party's favorite for the 2024 elections with 39% of electoral preferences, ahead of Marcelo Ebrard, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, who garnered 26%. If current trends continue, Claudia Sheinbaum could become the first woman to govern Mexico, a feat unprecedented in the country's history. The forthcoming elections therefore promise to be crucial for Mexico's future, and could consolidate the Morena party as the country's dominant political force. Beyond these domestic issues, Mexico's position on the regional geopolitical chessboard remains to be monitored, testifying to the country's ability to reconcile its diplomatic tradition with the demands of a constantly changing world.
