Mexico City, a magnificent metropolis with more than 20 million inhabitants—sitting atop the ancestral grounds of the Aztecs' own dazzling capital of Tenochtitlan—testifies to the cultural power of the Mexican people.

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hy do we often forget how powerful Mexico is?

On the international level, in 2011 Mexico’s Augustin Carstens was narrowly edged by France’s Christine Lagarde for the head of the International Monetary Fund, which is the 2nd-most important global finance post. Carstens would have been the first non-Western IMF chief. Clearly, the neoliberal West’s version of their best and brightest mullahs/Chinese Communist Party members - central bankers - respect Mexican ideas for solutions in the 21st century.

And yet it feels like mighty Mexico is often an afterthought in geopolitics?

Conversely, no “Canadian Power” movement is needed: one can easily spot a Canadian abroad because they tattoo their luggage, clothing and even their bodies with maple leaf flags. They say it is to differentiate themselves from hated Americans - fine… but it also shows that Canadians are vocal nationalists with a chip on their shoulder. The global banker elite aren’t likely to back a Canadian for a top post - such a nominee would either be a willing lapdog of the US, England, France or all three. But despite Canada’s comparatively reduced potential, importance and global impact, Western sociocultural perception undoubtedly values Canada higher than Mexico.

After Donald Trump was elected I wrote that a certain consequence would be the rise of a “Mexican Power” movement. There was certainly going to be a major backlash to “build the wall” and other anti-Latino rhetoric. Of course, the root of Trump’s Brownbaiting success was not hillbilly racism, but anti-capitalist discontent caused by unenforced worker rights, no wage guarantees and no protections on prices - the Western Mainstream Media can never discuss any of these anti-neoliberal ideas.

The arrival of Trump was, I reasoned, certain to lead a movement which would declare: The reality of Mexican Power can no longer be denied, because denying it would lead to massive imprisonment, violence, sociocultural shock, US economic and agricultural turmoil, etc.

My claim made total sense, because there is so very, VERY much to discuss about “Mexicans” in the US (for many in the US, all Latinos are “Mexicans”… just as all East Asians are “Chinos” to many in Mexico, according to Mexican commentators.) Latinos are 17% of the population, yet they are almost totally absent from US popular and political culture, like Kurds in Turkey. It is not 1919: go to any small town in any part of the US - not just the southwest anymore - and you can now find some Latinos… yet there is no “Mexican Power”.

It often takes a fascist/reactionary shock to galvanise the silent majority, and the US silent majority is undoubtedly talking to, working with, dating, marrying and being friendly with Latinos. In early 2017 I predicted that the US was going to out-leftist France with my hypothesised “Mexican Power” movement: if France chose another mainstream politician in their upcoming presidential election - which they did in Emmanuel Macron - France’s Muslims could not benefit from this very necessary type of “shock” to the French Muslims’ similarly-delayed civil rights improvement. France remains ensconced in their velvety self-conceit… even as Yellow Vests are beaten weekly.

But are Mexicans in the US doing any better?

I was not overly optimistic nor overly militant two years ago - pro-Hillary mayors and voters boldly talked of creating “sanctuary cities”, and of defying any and all of Trump’s anti-Mexican proposals. They were going to defend their Mexican neighbors!

But 2.5 years into Trump’s presidency, it is clear that I have been largely disproved.

Eleven random reasons to explain why I was wrong

Hispanics are often illegal aliens, who reflexively shrink from government and media sunshine. Conversely, US Blacks in the 1950s and 1960s had nowhere to go (like the Vietcong) and that made them more radical and more demanding for “Black Power”.

Under Trump the MSM all of a sudden started doing major reporting on governmental abuses of Latino immigrants… not as a way to advance “Mexican Power”, but solely as a way to denigrate Trump. Disgustingly, they said nothing when Obama set records as the “deporter in chief”. The MSM would rather endlessly masticate sour grapes over Trump’s victory than reassess their totally class-devoid worldview. They are thus manipulating Mexicans for their own ends, and the focus on immigration abuses is actually taking potential column inches away from the larger issue of broad Latino empowerment.

The post 9/11 militarisation of local US police forces makes resistance technologically daunting and militarily impossible. I’d rather face the dogs and water hoses of the 1960s instead of tanks.

SIDEBAR
Point of Information
Mara Salvatrucha, popularly known as MS-13, is an international criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles, California, in the 1970s and 1980s. Originally, the gang was set up to protect Salvadoran immigrants from other gangs in the Los Angeles area. Over time, the gang grew into a more traditional criminal organization. MS-13 is defined by its cruelty (the gang's motto is “rape, control, kill”), and its rivalry with the 18th Street Gang. Although MS-13 is basically Salvadoran, racially it is indistinguishable from Mexican, Guatemalan, and Chicano gangs, as Central American nations were all part of Spain's colonial Mexico domain, and the indigenous inhabitants, despite tribal divisions, had longstanding blood interactions. The prevalence of full-body tattoos among many gang members makes them look like Maori and other South Pacific islanders. (Images: Above, main image: An MS-12 gang member. Below, left (smaller) a Maori islander.  The fiercely "alien" look of many Mexican and Central American migrants is a source of prejudice, fear, and rejection among a racially conscious US population.

Just as Stalin robbed banks to fund the anti-monarchy & pro Socialist Democracy resistance, and just as Los Angeles gangs aided their Black Power brothers with a few shotguns and rifles, the emergence and dominance of an incredibly tragic drug trade has depoliticised Hispanic “criminal-radical” elements. Crystal meth is not conducive to serious political reflection (or so I have read). The difference between a facial-tattooed MS-13 member with a 1960s Nation of Islam member in Detroit or a bold soul brother in Oakland, appears to be rather vast.

American anti-Roman Catholicism is a hugely underreported phenomenon. A Catholic friend of mine asked me to try and find a pro-Catholic story in The New York Times and I am still looking many years later (and now so will you). Conversely, US Blacks were overwhelmingly Protestant, which gave them a real cultural advantage over today’s Latinos. This advantage is as important as it was for the Christian Syrians who allied with the colonising French in the 19th century - the result is referred to as “Lebanon”. The MSM’s distaste for Catholics is also why the US can never promote a Catholic “Father” Martin Luther King” to arrive as the figurehead of a Mexican Power movement - only a “Reverend” is permitted.

US anti-Catholicism notwithstanding, Western secularism - especially in Europe - has only grown more entrenched since the 1960s. Thus the Catholic Church (even in the increasingly rare instances when their also increasingly-secular clergy want to be involved) - has not been permitted to be as publicly involved in Mexican Power, whereas the Protestant Church played a hugely vital role in maintaining the Black civil rights movement. Even with the rise of the US evangelical movement, the public face of political secularism has only increased - clergy must be quiet.

Great muralist Diego Rivera depicted many moments of the 1910 Mexican revolution. This one is called En el Arsenal.

Anglo-Saxon multiculturalism, which the US practices, is more culturally and personally agreeable than French assimilationism, but it effectively promotes a divided tribalism (as opposed to a conservative, backwards-looking nationalism in France); both of these Western approaches are total failures compared with leftist classism, which rejects identity politics. The Political Correctness movement, which did not exist for Blacks in the 1960s, may have given more superficial “respect” to Latinos, but Political Correctness has absolutely no ability to increase unity - only to increase awareness. Sadly, many US fake-leftists believe that “awareness” - and annoyingly pushing said “awareness” - is the absolute pinnacle of leftist political action. It is not - Mexican Power is far higher.

Islamophobia has proven to be the best political retardant in centuries. A “Mexican Power movement” necessarily implies the existence of a parallel “anti-US imperialism movement”. This existed in the 1960s for Vietnam, and obviously fed righteous political criticism against Jim Crow policies. But because the US public is so overwhelmingly supportive of their Islamophobic-based “war on terrorism” in the 21st century, jingoism and unreflective racism in the US are at a historic peak; the intellectually-pathetic Russophobia campaign is proof of this. Anti-Islam has been thus even more galavinizing for reactionaries than anti-socialism was in the 20th century: Islamist candidates do not exist in the West, whereas a socialist candidate once got millions of presidential votes in even the US. Islamophobia is nearly as politically stultifying as anti-Black slavery, and the consensus that US Whites simply must wage an anti-American Indian genocide/segregation campaign. The success of the Islamophobia campaign has thus reduced any talk of a Mexican Power campaign.

AMLO is billed as a leftist, but he is much closer to the social democrat mould, and so far largely co-opted by the US and the local bourgeoisie and his own rather timid moves.

The arrival of Mexican President AMLO ignored: After the failed scaremongering campaign to keep him from getting elected, I never read anything about AMLO in English. The math is clear: because he is a leftist politician, he must be ignored. Similarly, we heard much less about the Yellow Vest in the Anglophone media after the initial burst: it was leftist, so it must be ignored. By ignoring AMLO’s presence and advances Mexican Power is certainly not aided.

Language barrier: 1960s Blacks did not have this “safety valve” which all us immigrants do. Cursing at Trump in a foreign language feels rather good, but from a political-cultural standpoint it is a regression.

This requires the least comment as it is the most obvious: US leftists [understood as mostly rather affluent centrist liberals in the top 10%, and usually Democrats] are fake leftists, and the agenda of US "leftism" extends only to the rights and needs of Whites in the upper-middle class.

So when is Mexican Power going to take off? This column is long enough - you tell me.

Are Mexicans and Latin-Americans the same? No, but they all appear to be punching below their weight in the US-dominated world - this is why I may have been wrong, so far, about a “Mexican Power” movement, but I certainly haven’t given up on it.

Just look at the numbers, gabacho (specifically, #2 here to understand that word): Mexican Power is a historical inevitability which Trump cannot stop, and there are still 1.5 years left for him to spark the fuse.

This is part of a series of dispatches by correspondent Ramin Mazaheri

All photos by the author

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]fter decades of stagnation, corruption and deadly dependency on the United States, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is considered by many ordinary people, as well as by intellectuals, to be the last chance for Mexico.

Two important news developments are circulating all over North America: US President Donald Trump will not attend the inauguration of the Mexican left-wing President elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO). And yes, despite all tensions and disagreements, the new deal to replace NAFTA has been reached. It is called the USMCA – the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Author with Irma Sandoval-Ballesteros

Paradoxically, if Obrador is to fulfill at least half of his electoral promises, it would inevitably lead to a clash between Mexico and both the United States and Canada. The US absorbs around 80 percent of Mexican exports. Various Mexican intellectuals believe that their country was, until now, nothing more than a colony of their 'big brother' in the north. Canadian mining companies are brutally exploiting Mexico's natural resources, and united with local politicians and paramilitaries, are tormenting almost defenseless native people.

After decades of inertia and decay, Mexico is ready for dramatic, essential change which, many argue, will this time not arrive directly under red banners and through revolutionary songs, but with the carefully calculated, precise moves of a chess player.

Only a genius can break, without terrible casualties, the deadly embrace of the United States. And many believe that President-elect Obrador is precisely such leader.

'Not a poker player, but a chess player'

Mexico is in a 'bad mood', despite the victory of a left-wing leader. Hope is in the air, but it is fragile hope, some even say ‘angry hope’. Decades of stagnation, corruption and deadly dependency on the US, have had an extremely negative impact on the nation.

John Ackerman, US-born, Mexican naturalized legendary academic at UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico) explained during our encounter in Coyoacan:

"This has been a long time coming. Throughout Latin America there has been great transformation, except in Mexico. Mexico has been the same since 1946 since PRI was created… Education, healthcare, serious commitment to social system, infrastructure; he promises to improve all this… in terms of working-class population, he expresses great interest in the union democracy, which could be a true vehicle of revolution … unions could be used to create democratic participation in the country."

Construction of US-Mexico wall.

We both agree that Obrador is not Fidel, or Chavez. He is pragmatic and he knows how dangerous the proximity of Mexico to the US is. Governments get overthrown from the north, and entire socialist systems get derailed, or liquidated.

Professor Ackerman points out:"Obrador is not a poker player, like Trump; Obrador is a chess player."

He is extremely well informed; on his own and through his wife, an accomplished Mexican academic from a prominent left-wing family, Irma Sandoval-Ballesteros. She will soon become Minister of Public Administration in the Obrador administration, which means she will fight against endemic Mexican corruption.

This will be, no doubt, one of the toughest jobs in the country.

Gang land in Tijuana.

Among the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries Mexico has the second highest degree of economic disparity between the extremely poor and extremely rich. According to the government, about 53.4 million of Mexico's 122 million people were poor in 2016.

Crime is out of control, and so is corruption. According to Seguridad Justicia y Paz, a citizen watch dog NGO in Mexico, five out of ten cities with the highest homicide rates in the world are located in Mexico: Los Cabos (1), Acapulco (3), Tijuana (5), La Paz (6), and Ciudad Victoria (8).

Some 460,000 children have been recruited by the drug rings in Mexico, according to the incoming Minister of Public Security of the Obrador government. As bodies are piling up and insecurity grows (recently, at least 100 dead bodies have been found in the state of Jalisco), the Mexican police continues to be hopelessly corrupt and inefficient. But it is now everywhere, ‘true reason for astronomic crime rate’, say many.

Misery everywhere

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t is all elegance and style at one of an old hacienda, lost in time in the middle of jungle, in the State of Yucatan. Some twenty years ago I used to live very near this place, working on my novel, in self-imposed-exile. Even then, Yucatan was poor, conservative, and traditional. But there was pride and dignity even in the poorest of the villages.

Revolutionary days

Things changed dramatically, and not for the better. Now naked misery is everywhere. Just two kilometers from the hacienda Temozon, traditional rural houses have holes in the roofs, and many dwellings have already been abandoned. People are not starving; not yet, but that is mainly due to the fact that in Yucatan, there is still a great sense of community and solidarity.

Don Alfredo Lopez Cham lives in a village of Sihunchen. Half of the roof of his house is missing. He is blind in one eye. He is dirt poor. I asked him how things have been here, since I left. He just nodded his head, in despair:
"You just saw my house, there… You can imagine how it is…I cannot fix anything. For years I did not have any work. And now I am old."

Don Alfredo Lopez Cham and Doña Consuelo.

Senora Consuelo Rodriguez, his neighbor, jumps in. She is an outspoken, tough but good-hearted matron, always surrounded by a flock of chickens:

"Look, he has really nothing! Here, we are trying to help those in need, but ourselves we have close to nothing. Few years ago, the government sent some people to help to fix our houses, but they never came back again."

In theory, Mexico has free education and health care, but in practice, it is just for those who hold government or good private jobs. President-elect AMLO  is promising to fix all that, but people all over the country are skeptical, including Senora Consuela.

"If we get sick, we have to pay, unless we have insurance from our work. And most of us, here, don't have any steady job."

Do people here have faith in the new government? She shrugs her shoulders: "We will see."

This is what I hear everywhere, from coast to coast of this enormous and potentially rich country, which is the 15th largest economy in the world. There is very little enthusiasm: the majority of people adopted a 'wait and see strategy'.

His only hope is Obrador.

Don Rudy Alvarez who has worked for more than 20 years at one of the luxury hotels in Yucatan, is only cautiously optimistic about the future. "Even we who have permanent jobs at the multi-national establishments, cannot dream very big. I can feed my family well, and I can send one son to study law at the university. But no bigger dreams. My family would never be able to afford a car or any other luxury. We hope that Obrador (AMLO) will change things. Here, many people feel that Yucatan has been sold to tourists as the 'Mayan Disneyland', with very little respect for our culture."

Mexico is the second most visited country in the Western hemisphere, right after the United States. But income from tourism very rarely brings a better life for local people.

Crime and drug wars are far from being the only concerns. In the center of the indigenous and historic city of Oaxaca, the armed forces are blocking the entrance to the Governor's Palace. Why? The graffiti protesting against disappearances and extrajudicial killings of the activists, as well as forced evictions of indigenous people by the multinational companies.

National Folkloric Ballet of Mexico.

Ms. Lisetta, who lives with many others, as a protest, in a tent right in front of the palace, explained: "For 9 years we have no home. Paramilitaries and the government forces came and threw us out of our dwellings, in San Juan Copala. Some people were killed, women raped, many disappeared. We are here to demand justice." She showed me her bruises.

"Recently, police came, broke my cell phone, and then injured my arm…"

Revolutionary mural by Pablo Orozco in Guadalajara

At night, live bands are playing old ballads, all over the city center. People are dancing, drinking and promenading. But displaced men, women and children living in the tents are brutal reminder of real Mexico, of true suffering of many poor and almost all native people.

I found Sra. Lorena Merina Martinez, Spokesperson of the Displaced Persons from the Autonomous Community of San Juan Copala, Oaxaca State. She spoke to me bravely, coherently and with passion:

Spokesperson for indigenous people displaced and now struggling in Oaxaca.

“In 2007, San Juan Copala declared autonomy and became autonomous municipality. There was much peace and tranquility in our community. Then in 2009 the PRI-led government of Oaxaca started making noise as San Juan Copala is the ‘head’ of 32 communities of Trique District. The PRI-government did not want autonomy of San Juan Copala, thus unilaterally finished it in 2009. From 2010 we resisted for 10 months so that we could bring food to our children. They had blocked our roads. We didn't have anything to eat anymore. They were killing our colleagues, but also children. Women were raped as they went looking for food and brought it back to their children. They cut off their hair as well. I am talking about the rape of a 65-year-old community member, for instance. Another woman was gravely injured. The attackers and rapists all escaped. For ten months we resisted with no water, no food, no electricity as the PRI-government had cut us off from everything. The date of 16 September 2010 was when PRI-backed paramilitaries entered our community, first to the municipality building, and used big microphone to tell us to leave our houses. We were not given any time at all to leave. Because they saw smoke come from houses, which was basically because we were cooking, they were shooting at our houses and us. We just had to escape with nothing and were forced to find a way to survive with our children, with nothing at all, not even our id cards. We needed to make sure to escape with our children because we were warned that if we didn't, then they would burn alive our children. By 18 September 2010, PRI-backed paramilitaries started entering our houses, burning and destroying them. We fled as by then they had killed another community member who had been resisting forced displacement. This is when a group of women started demanding the State Government to intervene in our community. The State nor Federal Government ever intervened. We demanded that something is done, so that we could safely return to our community. Since September 2010, we have been here. But they have never done anything to let us return, nor to get rid of those who displaced us because they were the accomplice of those paramilitaries who made us forcibly displaced.”

I asked her why it happened? Were multi-national companies involved?

“Yes, there are mineral resources. The government wants to take charge of this community. We have very futile lands. Lots of water, vegetables, fruits. The government wants to suck everything from our community.”

I recalled massacres in Chiapas, that I covered some two decades ago and later described, under different name in my revolutionary political novel Point of No Return (Point of No Return - ebook).

At the Center of Photography Manuel Alvarez Bravoin Oaxaca, Mr. Leo (who only gave his first name), confirmed: "It is terrible what happened to those people. Imagine that you are at home, and suddenly someone comes, with armed forces, and kicks you out. But in Mexico it's normal, and not only in this area. Multinational companies, particularly Canadian ones, are controlling around 80 percent of the mining in this country. People, particularly indigenous ones, are treated brutally. Mexico suffered terribly from the Spanish colonialism, but it often feels that things didn't change much. We are not in full control of our country!"

Sra. Leticia facing the wall.

And the new administration of Obrador? Leo and his colleagues are only moderately optimistic.

"We are not sure he would dare to touch essential problems: the dependency of this country on the North, and the horrendous disparities between the rich and poor, between the descendants of the Europeans and the majority, which consists of the indigenous people. Until now you can see it everywhere: Westerners and their companies come and do what they want, while the native people are left with nothing."

But many others remain hopeful. AMLO's left-wing Moreno Party will soon govern in a coalition with PT (Partido del Trabajo) and the conservative Social Encounter Party. Again, it is unlikely that Mexico will follow the path of Cuba or Venezuela, but the Bolivian model is very likely. It could be a silent revolution, a change based on an extremely progressive and truly socialist constitution of the country, remarkably dating back to 1916.

A Mexican academic, Dr. Ignacio Castuera who teaches at Claremont University in California, explains: "I believe Obrador has to bring several factions together to implement some of what he wants to achieve. No individual alone can solve the problems of a nation. I hope many rally around him, if that happens then significant changes can be brought about. The long shadow of the US policies and corporations will continue to exert major influence."

*

In Tijuana I witness absolute misery, I visit multinational maquiladoras that pay only an equivalent of $55 USD per week to their workers, I manage to enter gangland, and I see how the US is building a depressing wall between two countries.

I spend hours listening to stories of Sra. Leticia, who lives just one meter away from the wall.

"They are cutting across our land, and it harms many creatures who live here. It also prevents water from circulating freely."

"All this used to be Mexico. North Americans had stolen several states from us. Now they are building this wall. I visited their country on several occasions. And let me tell you: despite all our problems, I like where I am, at this side!"

Then, late at night, I listen to a man who knows his country from north to south, from east to west. We are sitting in a small café; sirens are howling nearby, another murder has just taken place. He faces me squarely and speaks slowly:

"Mexico has its back against the wall. This situation cannot continue. This is our last chance – Andrés Manuel López Obrador. We will rally behind him, we will help him. If he delivers what he promises, great; then Mexico will change and prosper. If not, I am afraid that our people will have no other choice but to take up arms."

*

This is extended version. Essay was originally published by RT. Source: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/440491-mexico-future-obrador-us/