Mexico 2060: Was Friedman Wrong?

Mexico 2060: Was Friedman Wrong?

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

Dr. Samuel Schmidt, a prominent Mexican political scientist and one of the most respected voices on topics such as geopolitics, governance, power networks in Mexico, the far right, and natural resources, was recently awarded an honorary doctorate at a ceremony held at the El Carmen Cultural Center in Tehuacán, Puebla, as part of the Mexico in the 21st Century academic seminar organized by CICAP (Centro de Investigación Científica, Académica y Postgrados) and various academic institutions.

Samuel Schmidt long deserved this kind of recognition, given his impressive academic and social career; he has made significant contributions to the understanding of the country's political and social phenomena.

Furthermore, his approach to studying the future, particularly in relation to Mexico, challenges conventional methods and enriches the academic debate.

Dr. Schmidt's career combines his training in Political Science from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), North America, and Israel; It reflects a constant dedication to research and the struggle for a more informed and just society.

Therefore, any institution that recognizes his work not only honors a high-caliber intellectual but also dignifies the academic and social history of Mexico.

Within the debate, Samuel Schmidt's proposal for studying the future was addressed, with a special emphasis on the situation in Mexico.

His approach is innovative and, in some aspects, contradictory to the conventional method proposed by George Friedman in the Mexico 2080 scenario.

In The Next 100 Years, George Friedman imagined an uncomfortable future for the United States: by 2080, Mexico would have acquired enough economic, demographic, and political power to become a strategic challenge for Washington.

His hypothesis seemed extravagant when it was formulated in 2009.

However, seventeen years later, it is difficult to dismiss.

Friedman wasn't necessarily right about the timing or all the mechanisms, but he did identify a profound transformation: the destinies of the United States and Mexico would become increasingly intertwined through geography, demographics, the economy, and migration. His main insight was understanding that Mexico could not be considered a subordinate periphery indefinitely.

North American integration would produce a paradox: while the United States tried to control the border, it would increasingly need Mexico's economy, labor, and strategic position.

This contradiction is evident today.

Mexico has become an essential component of American production chains, and the trade uncertainty caused by Donald Trump demonstrates both Mexican vulnerability and reciprocal dependence.

Friedman, however, was wrong about some crucial elements.

His vision of Mexico's future relied too heavily on population growth and a population that would become a permanent source of power.

Mexico's demographic transition has altered that premise.

The Mexico of 2080 will likely be older and will have to maintain its influence through productivity, technology, capital, energy, infrastructure, and knowledge.

Nor does a war between Mexico and the United States seem inevitable.

Interdependence makes an open rupture too costly.

Here, the critiques and alternatives of Samuel Schmidt and Mexican foresight become important.

The Mexico 2060 exercise attempts precisely to escape linear prediction and envision alternative futures, in which Mexico can become the agent of its own transformation.

The possibility of a closer relationship with China, new forms of economic sovereignty, and the growing strategic importance of water constitute a valuable intellectual provocation.

But, so far, these scenarios belong more to the realm of possible futures than to that of dominant trends.

The reality of 2026 is less romantic.

Mexico trades with China, seeks to diversify its relationships, and can take advantage of the competition among the great powers, but its economic structure remains deeply intertwined with the United States.

And Donald Trump has demonstrated that Washington possesses sufficient instruments to exert extraordinary pressure on Mexico through tariffs, trade, migration, and security.

The recent trade uncertainty makes it clear that Mexico still lacks strategic autonomy comparable to its interdependence with the United States.

That is perhaps why Friedman was not fundamentally wrong.

His mistake was imagining the conflict as a confrontation between two national powers that would end up fighting over North America.

The real challenge may be more complex: building a relationship in which Mexico gains greater power without turning that power into a threat to the United States, and in which Washington understands that economically crushing Mexico could end up weakening the very North American platform it needs to face China.

Samuel Schmidt and Guillermina Baena’s forward-looking analysis of Mexico is right to envision that the country can be much more than it has been.

China can offer alternatives, but it cannot replace geography.

Nationalism can provide dignity, but not productivity.

Sovereignty is indispensable, but it does not mean isolation.

To envision desirable futures, one must possess the capabilities to realize them through government and educational institutions.

The most plausible future for "Mexamérica" ​​is neither a Mexican conquest of the United States nor an apocalyptic decline of North America.

It is an integration that is conflict-ridden, unequal, and progressively inevitable.

Mexico will have to learn to negotiate from a position of greater strength; the United States will have to learn that its neighbor can become a strategic partner without becoming a subordinate.

If both fail, interdependence will be a constant source of conflict.

If they cooperate, the very integration Friedman envisioned as the source of a crisis could become North America’s greatest geopolitical advantage.

Friedman, then, may not have been wrong.

What remains to be decided is whether Mexico and the United States will turn their shared destiny into a threat or an opportunity.

The Centenary of the Cristiada: Religious Memory or Political Resource?

 The Centenary of the Cristiada: Religious Memory or Political Resource?

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

Television programs on Canal Once—specifically "Sacro y Profano" and "Los Periodistas"—have analyzed the outbreak of the Cristero War a century later. The question arises once more: what does it mean to remember that conflict?

The question should not be limited to determining who was right—the government of Plutarco Elías Calles or the Catholic hierarchy.

There is a more uncomfortable contemporary issue: who needs to reclaim that memory today, and for what purpose?

Mexico remains predominantly Catholic.

The 2020 Census recorded that 77.7% of the population identified with that religion. However, this national figure masks significant regional differences.

Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacán, and Zacatecas maintain Catholic populations exceeding 88%, whereas in other states, the Catholic population is considerably smaller.

This leads to an initial hypothesis: the memory of the "Cristiada" does not necessarily hold the same political significance across all of Mexico.

The problem arises when a religious memory ceases to be merely historical and begins to function as a political identity.

To demonstrate that this is happening, it is not enough simply to point to bishops speaking about the "Cristiada" or Catholic organizations honoring its martyrs.

One must observe which symbols are being revived, which contemporary enemies are associated with them, which actors are promoting this memory, and what political objectives are linked to its use.

The centenary of the Cristero War may be creating an opportunity for certain conservative sectors to transform a regional religious memory into a tool for mobilization. The Mexican Episcopal Conference itself states that the commemoration is not intended to glorify violence or to place that memory at the service of any political or partisan agenda.

It even acknowledges that the conflict involved political calculations, erroneous decisions, and instances of culpability within the Church itself.

Therefore, it would be insufficient to claim that the hierarchy is simply manipulating that memory. If the memory of the Cristero War remains confined to religious acts, pilgrimages, lectures, and historical tributes, we will see evidence of a revival of religious memory, but not necessarily of a political maneuver.

However, if we begin to observe—the identification of contemporary political adversaries with the Church's historical enemies, the use of Cristero symbols in political campaigns or movements, and a concentration of such mobilization in regions with large Catholic populations—then more solid evidence would emerge of religious memory transforming into political identity.

A commemoration can bolster the public authority of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, but it can also benefit conservative organizations, right-wing movements, or political actors seeking to portray themselves as defenders of a threatened religious tradition.

For this reason, the centenary of the Cristero War should be studied less as a dispute over the past and more as an experiment regarding the present.

The question is not merely who won that war, but who can gain political power by defining what it means to remember it a century later.

The evidence must be sought beyond commemorative speeches: in patterns of mobilization, political messaging, participating organizations, territorial distribution, and, above all, in the response of the citizens themselves.

Felipe Gaitan, Fernando M. González, and Roberto Blancarte agree that the Catholic hierarchy has consistently manipulated sociopolitical processes to weaken the Mexican State; this fact should also be part of the historical assessment.

The Catholic Church has been a systematic adversary of the Mexican State and its liberal development; now, amidst the political maneuvering of the "Fourth Transformation," the eternal game of invisible power resurfaces to hinder national modernization.

It is curious that, during this centenary, the Catholic Church is a key player in the federal government's disarmament campaigns, and that President Sheinbaum has requested a visit to Mexico by Pope Leo XIV.

The influence of Benito Juárez on the "Fourth Transformation" has been diminished to an incredible degree—a phenomenon explicable only by the populist, progressive, revolutionary conservatism of the current era.