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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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.
Poverty climbed to 55.5% in first quarter, according to UCA
This is the most fucked up thing this government has done thus far, in a sea of many fucked up things. The situation for Argentina's poorest has been agonizing for many years now, and it will only get worse with these motherfuckers in charge. What do I even need to say here? Am I going to waste time saying that denying food to people is a crime? It's more than that, even. There's nothing to explain to all of you. However, milei is on the record saying that "People are not stupid, they will not allow themselves to die of starvation, they will find ways".. and he is right. Of course, he thinks poor people will use "market mechanisms" to find food, but in the end poor people WILL find a way to get food, oh, they will.
They seem to be advancing at a rapid pace, they seem to be spreading the markets and it's logic through all spheres of social and political life, they seem to think they're going to discipline the poor. They seem to be winning, it might appear to some that they are indeed winning. But they're not, quite the contrary: They're creating the conditions for their own destruction. The entire system is doing this as we speak, we're seeing it at an accelerated pace in Argentina. But if you look closely, wherever you are, you will notice it. Just as Marx said.
Now, of course we have to give it a little push and organize. We don't want all of this to conclude in something more sinister than it already is..
I don't know a lot about Argentina's history, but I know it's had some serious problems in the past. How does the current situation compare to previous eras? Is this as bad as it's been in a long time?
Well we've had governments that carried out clandestine tortures and executions, kidnappings, disappearences and distrubition of stolen babies. That was during the US-backed civic-military dictatorship of the mid 70s and early 80s. We haven't reached that far down yet, althrough the current government is well aligned with the former dictatorship in ideological principles, our vice-president in fact is a genocide denial activist and has several links with these particular military circles.
The issue is that now we're facing a huge social, political and economic crisis (that we have faced before), but we're in a different context. In the 70s, the State wasn't completely defunded, and it still carried the great wealth it was able to accumulate during the "happy periods" of Peronism, the welfare state, so typical of these days. So, while the damage was tremendous, we still had (somewhat) the capacity to recover, as we did in 2003/05. Now the story is diferent, because the entire society (including the state) are impoverished. Our material conditions have degraded by a large margin since the last years of Cristina's government, the terrible neoliberal presidency of Macri, the awful return of Cristina as a VP of Fernandez which had COVID in it and was incredibly weak when facing capital and now milei. There has been a constant degradation on pretty much all fronts. The available tools and resources for a recovery are very limited, on the other hand, the bourgeoisie has changed as well, this one is much much worse than the ones we used to have in the last century (even though we never had a proper national bourgeoisie like say, Germany, France or Brasil, that managed to develop one), they are more or less absentist and don't give a single flying fuck about their country, at all.
So yeah, since the "return of democracy" (1983, used to periodize our history) it's the worst we've ever been. The huge problem at hand is that there is no end on sight and we haven't reached the bottom. Yes, it'll take a lot of organizational effort to pull out of this one on our two feet, but I'm afraid the possible outcomes are very, very dangerous. Some even speak of governmental acephaly, which directly leads to the disappearance of the country as an entity. Well, I don't know, maybe.. who knows. We live in very troubled times after all and this country has seen periods of civil war and "anarchy" in the past so..
Didn't the air force bomb a public rally and kill like 400 civilians?
Yes, in 1955. The attack was carried out mainly by the Navy (a cesspool of hardcore fascists) with some elements of the Air Force participating as well, the target was Casa Rosada where Perón was supposed to be in. The pilots never ever cared for collateral damage, the square in front of Casa Rosada (Plaza de Mayo) was packed with people. The coup failed and by September of that year another coup was launched that forced Perón out of the country and began the era of proscription, the Justicialist Party being banned until 1973. Unfortunately, the Communist Party supported the coup. We somehow avoided a civil war because Peronism was HUGE and very mobilized, but Perón opposed no resistence, ordered his people to stand down and left for Paraguay then francoist Spain (where the super fash persona of Perón developed).
It is important to look at the viciousness in which Peronism is often attacked, Justicialist Party members who couldn't flee were caught and executed, the Navy also bombed their own soil to force Perón out, famously bombing the coastal city of Mar del Plata (attacking oil installations) with cruisers (One of which was the famous ARA Belgrano, sunk in the 1982 war) and threatening to destroy the large YPF Oil Refinery near Buenos Aires city. They even went as far as reactivating the almost decomissioned WW1 era battleship "ARA Moreno", which trained it's main battery of 305 mm guns at the city it was in to destroy whatever pro-Peronist elements they might find.
The history of Peronism is interesting because it tried to create a true national industrial-focused bourgeoisie, this in turn collides directly with the traditional ruling class that is rural, which are staunch enemies of Peronism. And while today the reality is mixed up (there is an industrial bourgeoisie), the rural elites have more or less prevailed since ever and conduct the destiny of this country. The rural elites, due to their roots as being gigantic landowners and merchants during the spanish colonial period and era Argentinian state period, have traditionally focused on exports and have became de-nationalized in some sort of way, they have always opposed big efforts to industrialize and used all their available tools (coups and killings included) to keep the country as a primary products exporter only.
Have these policies actually improved anything for the Argentine bourgeoisie? It seems like he's just shooting himself in the dick with this libertarian nonsense.