La Cartita - News

The Profit Motive For Containing Mexican Nationalism (03/13/2015)


Aerial View of Maquiladora, Photo Credit: infranetlab.org

La Cartita (03/13/2015) -- Over the course of 30 years, Mexico has become a global laboratory for neoliberal economic experimentation. Mexico is not the only such laboratory in the world. However, the scale of this economic change and the militarized drive to condemn Mexico to near total privatization is without precedent in North America. Furthermore, the basic process of inverting the role of producer to consumer through specific targeting of import substitution policy is a model extended globally by the US and allies. Mexico's current destitution is a flagship policy and we believe it is the model that serves as the impetus for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), which extends NAFTA-like policies into Asia.

Mexico now imports iconic food staples like corn and chile. The price of necessary food items both processed and unprocessed has skyrocketed: eggs, milk, tortillas, flour, protein, and the most crucial of all: water are all targets for inflation and privatization. Mexico, once a global producer, is now a 'squeezed' consumer.

What is left of the public sector: education, health and a very anemic oil industry is now explicitly targeted by the Peña Nieto government for privatization and foreign control. In parallel to its aggression against the Ayotzinapa students, the Mexican government was working overtime to scale back the breadth and depth of the National Polytechnic Institute's academic programs (IPN). EPN's drive to dismantle the IPN's curriculum and his tacit acquiescence of the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students denotes a readiness to go to extreme lengths for privatization.

2.0. Mexico & US: Implementing Shared Economic Policies --

The Mexican government must deliver results to the US. Luis Videgaray Caso, the current economic planner in Mexico and MIT trained economist, must administer the continued depletion of the public sector through oil shocks. At every turn, Videgaray exposes Mexico to global oil shocks. He forces the public to incur the cost of global oil markets it was once independent from. The resulting disarray is the central motivation for austerity. The dynamic allows Videgaray, Peña Nieto and Osorio Chong to deliver with economic, political and educational policy that is complementary to US policy because they are receiving technical and military assistance from the US. This backing, termed 'the Merida Initiative', is one of the few things that maintains Enrique Peña Nieto's (EPN) government in power.

2.1. EPN Signals The End Of Technocratic Regimes --

Frankly, the political dynamic in Mexico is not one that evokes common statesmanship or even a dictatorship. Rather, EPN's political process more closely resembles a colonial sacking, rats abandoning ship or criminal looting.

Peña Nieto is not just a corrupt president. Instead, he is likely actually involved in narco-trafficking. This is unsurprising since the rise of most status-quo politicians in Mexico is linked to narcotrafficking. However, the fact remains that most past presidents were simply servile technocrats. If EPN is an actual narco-trafficking figure, then the logic governing his cabinet is quite distinct from past presidents. He may have the direct connections to engage in strongman actions.

The extent of his own criminality reflects in EPN's personal life too. The details play out publicly; the death of his wife, the recent 'White House' scandal and the manner in which he is connected to the lower level details of the Atenco massacre in Estado de Mexico come to mind. Obscuring these obvious facts necessitates a great deal of propaganda to control public opinion.

2.2. Mexico & US: Implementing A Common Propaganda Campaign --

Propaganda is key for constraining the intensity of organized mass action. If EPN can successfully define and contain the Mexican reaction to the Ayotzinapa case through military force, then he can maintain the vote of confidence American investors have granted him through the Merida Initiative. This requires two propaganda campaigns; one executed in Mexico and another in the US.

Since the start of mass protests in favor of the 43 students, a federal campaign of omission and outright lies aimed at the parents of the missing 43 has been waged by EPN's administration. Another campaign has been aimed at the Mexican public in the US. For the latter task, EPN has help in the United States: Univision.

To justify the aggression against public resources, the Mexican & US government have developed a broad propaganda campaign targeting the main victims of neoliberal economic policy. The US has an ample history of passivizing and simultaneously attacking a restless Mexican public that seeks legal and political agency. Mainstream media depictions present Mexicans as servile, inept and generally too weak to stand up against inevitable dominance by white people (think 'House of Cards' portrayal of a restaurant manager). Otherwise, Mexicans are portrayed as extremely aggressive and synonymous with 'illegal' (NPR's recent 'American Crime' review, 03/04/2015) and the 'Twins' in Breaking Bad.

In the US, an integrationist policy that subordinates working class Mexicans to entrenched Puerto Rican & Cuban interests has yielded no tangible results for the advancement of any migrant community in the past decade. A corollary is that militancy and dedication to the Chicano movement is at an all time low, but state repression through the elimination of Ethnic Studies programs is at an all time high.

2.3. Common Interests--

The Mexican interests represented by EPN and their US counterparts have interests that tend to benefit reciprocally from Mexican subjugation - they are also ideologically similar. These interests favor private business, identify with the US political system, participate and exploit in a very tightly constrained representative democracy and opine within debates reducing the importance of national identity. Furthermore, in the US, the presence of Televisa through Univision literally connects Enrique Peña Nieto to a Mexican audience escaping his party's economic policies. In this time of massive privatization and social strife, a Mexican public oriented towards independent economic nationalism would not be very convenient to EPN. Therefore, there is a significant and common overlap in the race to wield influence over Mexicans; corporations are looking to expand the 'Latino' demographic and create a captive market; the US government needs to influence and control a growing non-white majority; the Mexican government wants Mexicans abroad to not wield influence over Mexican politics.

Adherence to these basic constraints is what define Univision and Televisa's coverage over Mexican topics in the US - subsidiaries follow suit. Wherever possible, explicit reference to Mexicans is eliminated in topics that are central to them. In this context, the word 'Latino' is collocated whenever an emotive idea or political event centers around some theme in Mexican politics. The recent push to displace Mexican activists from the Ayotzinapa topic is just one example. The shooting deaths of multiple Mexicans, including that of Michoacano, Antonio Zambrano, being rebranded as 'Latino' deaths is another.

Propaganda is difficult to evaluate, but once observed, the intent behind manipulated narratives becomes clear (see: Latino: Manufactured Consumer (07/04/2014) ). Statements within a propaganda or 'marketing' campaign are essentially made for a very particular, tangible economic and political benefit. If the aim is to subvert Mexicans, then why not make them ignore their ever growing number of problems by imposing an identity that does not overtly associate them with grassroots politics. Specifically, the branding and demographic term 'Latino' appropriates Mexican culture to propagate a "fundamentally neoliberal discourse"(Calli Tlahcuiloque, personal communication). The ubiquity of the term masks this process of cooptation effectively, and crystalizes the notion that Mexicans may not own their identity and politics in the US.

2.4. Cross Border Subjugation of Mexicans --

U.S. manipulation of the Mexican economic and social process has expanded far beyond tariff & wage controls. The mass export of people to the US allows for systematic manipulation of Mexican society through corporate propaganda administered primarily by self-identified Latinos. Mexicans, their lifeblood (wages made in the informal economy) imported and entire experience in both countries are commodified en masse. In short, Mexicans have two distinct governments attacking their autonomy and two businesses classes exerting their will over them.

As a consequence of this cross-border subjugation, those displaced into the US are de facto stripped of agency in the social & economic sphere. Geographical distance to US media and political institutions is not enough to insulate those Mexicans who never leave Mexico from their influence. Those who stay must deal with the consequences of US intervention. Under these conditions, all Mexican society is well within reach of US domination be it through political propaganda or drug-war induced violence.

3.0. The Motive For Making Mexicans Passive Consumers In The US --

'Latino' reigns supreme in the North Eastern US. Placing our attention on the actual media industry, we find mainly Cuban, Puerto Rican, Venezuelan and Colombian owned media groups that operate under the umbrella organization 'Hispanicize' with the explicit goal of creating and expanding Español speaking markets in the US.

The goal of 'Hispanicize' can be inferred from the actual name. The business collective represents a numerical minority - a particular class and ethnic intersection comprised of the aforementioned groups - which imposes a national agenda over Español speaking people residing in the United States. They target all ethnicities grouped under the 'Latino' term but focus on (e.g. 'appropriate'/'coopt') the issues of Mexicans because they obviously comprise the numerical majority. Looking to bolster their own numbers, the material benefits of calling everyone formerly colonized by Spain 'Latino' is simply too enticing for an honest conversation about the term. However, the skewed demographics present a technical problem: how can a group commandeer the culture and resources of another much larger one without force, and do so for profit? The answer seems to be 'by redefining Mexican implicitly' through propaganda.

Even with deceit, the task to manipulate the Mexican identity is not easy. Mexicans are outpacing the growth of most other demographic groups, ethnicities or conglomeration of ethnicities everywhere in the US. For example, from 2000 to 2010, Mexicans increased their numbers in New York City by more than 50 percent going from 186,872 to 319,263. On the other hand, the Puerto Rican population remained stagnant in growth over this same time period. Other communities also uncomfortably lumped into the 'Latino' demographic remained stagnant as well. That's quite a change given that New York City is not geographically connected to the official borders of Mexico.

Thus, the common phrase that the US is becoming more Latino is extremely inaccurate and purposely so. The truth is the US is becoming more Mexican. This means newfound power for a population made superflous by two governments. The change is being desperately contained by businessmen, statesmen and security forces, but unlikely to be reversed.

placeholder image

B&H Abuses Mexican Labor

B&H continues to engage in anti-labor laws. Now they are headed into a lawsuit citing workplace discrimination against primarily Mexican workers in Brooklyn.

placeholder image

Activists Slandered by Mexican Government

México's General Consul in New York, Sandra Fuentes Berain, publicly accused the group "Somos Los Otros NY" of an act of vandalism.

placeholder image

Deported Mexicans In Danger of Drug War Recruitment

Several Non Governmental Organizations are warning that deported Mexicans are in danger of being recruited into narcotrafficking organizations.

Mexican Not Latino

Violence Increasing in Guerrero, Dozens Dead Over Weekend

The violence in Guerrero is steady climbing, with dozens dead during the month of March, 2017.