Civilizational Conflicts and a Parenthesis for Mexico

 Civilizational Conflicts and a Parenthesis for Mexico

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

The situation in the Middle East has created an unexpected scenario for Mexico, allowing it to safeguard the country from conflict with Donald Trump. The conflicts in the Middle East reveal that the United States' problem is not Mexico, but the lack of war. The conflicts with Mexico are important, but less profitable than the conflicts with Arab countries. This suggests that US foreign policy is driven by strategic and economic interests. The tragedy of war saves Mexico from being Trump's center of attention.

In this context, Mexico faces an important challenge: to take advantage of this pause to organize its internal problems and strengthen its economy, while maintaining a prudent and strategic foreign policy. History has shown that Mexico can benefit from complex situations, but it also faces significant risks if not managed properly.

Despite the risk of nuclear energy in conflicts, the attacks on Iran immediately led to a rise in oil prices, a condition that offers the Mexican government resources to address its problems. The Mexican automotive industry remains ambivalent regarding the energy transformation. However, the question arises as to whether the government's current capacity to seize this opportunity and address some of its challenges. The Mexican opposition is reduced to hoping that Trump will once again consider the indirect benefits of the US productive apparatus for the Mexican informal economy; meanwhile, Morena is satisfied with Trump's new commitment to supporting the war in the Middle East.

The current situation raises questions about the future of Mexico-US relations and how Mexico can seize this opportunity to boost its economic and political development. The answer will depend on the Mexican government's ability to partner with the United States in a more open and direct manner. As in the case of Vicente Fox, external circumstances suggest that the problem is not yet solved.

The attention of the American electorate is now focused on problems with the Arab world, which could benefit the Democratic Party and supporters of progressive protest groups.

MAGA Has Fallen in Los Angeles

MAGA Has Fallen in Los Angeles

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero 

The emergence of various social groups in some of California's major cities in response to the US federal government's intervention by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has further discredited Trumpism globally.

The reaction of the Hispanic community in Los Angeles, California, in particular, may represent a breaking point for Trump's MAGA movement and signal that the United States' techno-feudal neoliberalism cannot exclude migrants working in the informal economy.

California has been the starting point for mobilizations within North America and around the world to challenge Donald Trump's administration.

California is one of the world's most important economies; in addition to the impressive civil resistance of the Hispanic community, there have also been strong demands from various business owners, landowners, and industrialists expressing the economic damage that the mass deportation of immigrants would cause, according to MAGA's approach.

Donald Trump's nativist economic proposal requires a costly restructuring that cannot be based on reactive impulses.

Removing migrants from workplaces and production chains, as Donald Trump is proposing, will disrupt important economic structures and generate greater problems than those Trumpism seeks to solve.

The attacks on migrants by ICE and the various security forces promoted by the Republicans have ultimately incentivized activism among various groups opposed to the American far right, and the country is becoming polarized in ways that are inconvenient for Donald Trump.

If the Republican Party is considering winning the midterm elections and retaining the presidency of the United States, it might consider tempering Trumpism.

The various demonstrations in American cities and the global criticism of WASP conservatism are elements that strengthen Democratic voters and will complicate partisan competition in the immediate future.

Donald Trump's first presidency failed to produce the expected results. It left his country deeply divided, and the confrontational mood, which some consider bordering on civil war, is not conducive to the Republican Party's tendencies.

Furthermore, the abuse of Trumpist measures against the American civilian population will also be an element that will affect the legitimacy of Donald Trump's second presidency.

California has become the Waterloo of Republican Trumpism.

The Calexit forces a rethinking of MAGA and American exceptionalism, and the idea of ​​a North America that includes Mexico and Canada on equal terms is increasingly consolidating.

Artificial Right-Wings in Mexico

 Artificial Right-Wings in Mexico

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

With the exception of openly pro-Cuadro-teist news programs, almost no one takes into account the developments of political movements such as those led by Raúl Tortolero, Eduardo Verástegui, Mexico Republicano, and FRENAAA. After the elections for the judiciary, as well as the local elections in Veracruz and Durango, the country's Hispanic and neoliberal right-wing movements have held back, ceding public opinion to right-wing groups that present themselves as extremists but, in concrete reality outside the internet and social media, lack impact.

Mexican politics, influenced by a culture of masks and co-optation, always tries to incorporate traditional ruling elements through a form of transformation where the economic, political, and social hierarchy remains the same. Morena has been integrating too many opposition figures into its political structure and marginalizing pure and faithful elements.

The extreme right in Mexico represents more of a spectacle than a reality; However, it serves to paralyze the neoliberal right, which, in effect, lacks the arguments to oppose Morena and, likely, faced with the need for specialists and technocrats increasingly demanded by the Fourth Transformation regime, is waiting their turn to join López Obradorism, as has happened with the most diverse hegemonic taxonomy.

Figures without followers, with minimal social structures and a more than radical austerity, suddenly generate quasi-fascist messages to try to reach the presidency of the republic and promote a revolution against the regime. Offline, none of this happens. The Mexican far right is a virtual right, lacking resources and a variant between the Catholic clerical structure and the ruling political class of Mexico and the United States. The messages of the far right, no matter how radical they may present themselves, do not seem to have any binding effect or mechanism in society. Even the Pink Tide mobilizations have been left adrift.

The neoliberal democratic project that the PRIANRD and middle-class civil society groups had sought to build during the transition period through competitive elections no longer shows any signs of life. Lopezobradorism has imposed itself by default and has been aided by extremist figures who have displayed a Nazi-like right wing in Mexico, but one that is practically harmless.

The Mexican right wing is clientelist and, as in the recent past, will be incorporated into the hegemonic model of political control in order to function. Meanwhile, like Salvador Borrego in María Auxiliadora, the followers of the neoliberal technocratic PRIAND will experience permanent starvation.

Culture of Authoritarian Poverty

Culture of Authoritarian Poverty

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

Latin American populism, whether left or right, always ends up drawing on the culture of poverty that distinguishes the primitive social complexity produced by the economic structure.

Jaime Castrejón Diez, focusing on the analysis of the types of civilization that make up Mexican society, found that the elements of the primitive and basic social fabric were predominant in our country.

The foundation of Mexican society is primitive given its marginal economic level.

The failure of neoliberals to change the Mexican order would have logically resulted in the triumph of populism—left or right—sooner or later.

The liberal democratization of Mexico depends on the construction of a middle class, which, until now, is more a wish than a concrete reality.

The reaction of the opposition to Morena in the face of a populist wave that continues unabated in the country is ironic. What did they expect? José Antonio Aguilar Rivera—like Loris Zanatta—has described the enormous difficulties that liberal culture faces in Latin America due to the social and historical context.

Indeed, the liberal commitment—high civilization—suddenly appears to be a lost adventure in Mexico.

Foolish republics become eternal and multiplying.

However, the bill for civilizational failure must be imposed not only on society but primarily on its elites.

This regression not only condemns us to backwardness and poverty in political evolution, but also to a series of problems that will complicate governability: caracoles are slow but impetuous.

Carlos Salinas had to make twice as many authoritarian decisions as Lázaro Cárdenas is credited with in order to achieve neoliberal modernization. Fox lacked the courage to cut the umbilical cord with the PRI, and Calderón led the country into a war that had been corrupted and negotiated as a defeat since Los Pinos.

The authoritarian poverty of the elites is worse than that of society.

The social primitivism of the people that terrifies Zanatta and Aguilar Rivera—as it did with Tocqueville—is less than the part that concerns the elites.