Monday, March 17, 2025
Mexican People's Fight for Sovereignty
Breaking the Noose That Wants to Hang Us
Mexican
President Claudia Sheinbaum led a mass rally of 350,000 people in
Mexico City's Zocalo on March 9, 2025, saying that the country's
dialogue with the U.S. is addressing trade issues. She said that Mexico
will continue to collaborate with the U.S., particularly in the fight
against fentanyl consumption, while the U.S. must prevent arms
trafficking into Mexican territory. She laid out a five-point national
development plan to: strengthen the domestic market; expand food
self-sufficiency; promote public investment to boost job creation;
promote domestic production for the domestic market; and strengthen
social welfare programs.
The arbitrary measures taken by the U.S., headed by Donald Trump, against Mexico and the negative effects they will have on the Mexican economy and population, clearly show the level of subordination and dependence in its integration into North America to which Mexico has sunk. This project of integration, initiated by President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994), had the supposed aim to move Mexico into the "First World." On the contrary, the neo-liberalism promoted by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the National Action Party (PAN) opened the way to neo-colonialism, to the domination and interference of the neighbouring country in our lands.
The fact that Mexico depends on sending 80 per cent of its exports to the United States makes it extremely vulnerable and violates all the principles of a healthy economy, which must first focus on the domestic market and diversify its foreign market.
It is well known that the Mexican economy must be based on its own strengths, because without economic sovereignty there is no political sovereignty. The external market must be a mere complement to, not the centre of, our productive efforts. It is a priority to promote national productive development so that all our potentialities may flourish. Once domestic needs are satisfied, the foreign market must be attended to without depending on a single country, seeking -– however difficult it may be -– various destinations for our goods.
However, with the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, Salinas de Gortari put Mexico in competition with the U.S. economy, 20 times its size, causing a debacle for our agriculture and industry. In addition, he gave full entry to foreign companies that arrived, attracted by Mexico's cheap labour, fiscal facilities and zero environmental controls. Currently, 60 per cent of "Mexican" exports are not from the country but from foreign corporations established on Mexican soil that exploit the working class. These maquiladoras are concentrated in key sectors such as manufacturing, electronics and automotive industries.
The neo-liberal model promoted by Salinas, which favoured foreign and national corporations, reduced Mexico's annual economic growth to around two per cent compared to six per cent in previous decades, in addition to the migration of more than 10 million Mexicans.
Today, the disastrous actions of Salinas, who initiated an economic integration that later became political and military with Presidents Zedillo, Fox, Calderón and Peña during the PRI's term in office, are clear to see. This cursed inheritance must be reversed.
The current situation shows how disastrous the free trade agreement between Mexico, the United States and Canada (CUSMA, or T-MEC in Mexico), signed during the first Trump administration, has been. It has stopped the transformation of Mexico's agricultural model to one of recovering its food sovereignty, given that Mexico imports almost half of its food and buys around 20 million tons of corn annually. The agreement has also torpedoed Mexico's 2023 prohibition on imports of transgenic corn, with the U.S. filing a trade dispute under the agreement.
The model promoted by Salinas to integrate Mexico into North America, has greatly affected its sovereignty, placing it at the service of "the region," that is to say, the United States. With all the costs and no advantages for our country, it has caused low growth, migration, unemployment, low salaries, indebtedness, a collapsed health system, educational setbacks, exaggerated extractivism and damage to Mother Earth.
Since the signing of NAFTA, drug trafficking and organized crime have skyrocketed, leading to the "globalization of crime" promoted by the U.S., which arms the cartels and buys drugs from them. These the U.S. distributes in its territory, launders the money and uses the issue as a pretext for interference in other countries, as Trump is doing today.
The solution for Mexico and its people is sovereignty, because we have a hard-working and qualified population, enormous natural resources and great wealth provided by nature. It is not convenient to be bound to a decadent and declining empire, with irreconcilable internal divisions that wants to tie us to its war chariot.
In the "multipolarism" that is imposed today, the U.S. seeks to negotiate with Russia, abandon Europe and concentrate on taking over the entire Americas -– from Greenland, Canada and Mexico to South America and the Caribbean. Following the Monroe Doctrine, "America for the Americans," the U.S. is preparing to confront China, forcing us to "integrate" ourselves into its plans for war and world domination.
For Mexico the situation is dangerous because in the new division, Mexico is to submit to total domination by the United States. Therefore, the Mexican people must defend their sovereignty and full independence, and supercede the "North American region," "multipolarism" and "integration." Mexico must not be an appendage of anyone, least of all of the Yankee power.
The Wall Street Journal, citing Mexican officials, reported on February 28 that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned senior Mexican officials that the U.S. Army is prepared to take unilateral action inside Mexico if Mexico does not comply with the Trump administration's demands regarding border control and the fight against drug cartels.
There are multiple reasons to abandon not only CUSMA but all military treaties with the U.S. that threaten our sovereignty: neither NAFTA nor CUSMA have helped to have a healthy, growing economy, with jobs, living wages, and respect for nature; and economic integration has led to political and military integration. Trump has broken with the free trade agreement that he himself promoted, in addition to the constant threats of invasion of Mexican territory.
Mexico is in a national emergency and it is necessary to strengthen federal finances to address the serious repercussions that are coming due to the wave of deportations and the economic crisis arising from Trump's policies.
There is a solution to have the necessary public finances and face the situation. The payment of the public debt should be suspended and audited to renegotiate it for our own benefit, and progressive tax reform carried out so that large corporations, mining companies, banks and those with large fortunes pay what is due. In this way, the federal government will be in a position to strengthen the federal budget to address urgent needs and have funds for jobs, women, health, vaccine production, traditional medicine, food, and lithium exploitation, and to promote national and small producers' production.
We must develop our science and technology, national industry, the agricultural sector, and our services, in each region, in each community, throughout the country. No! to the integration of Mexico with the U.S. and Yes! to political, economic and military sovereignty. Food, energy, health and vaccine sovereignty, without dependence on foreign countries that cause addictions, violence and war.
In the face of Trump's plans and demands, the people of Mexico must develop their own program and unite around their own demands. They are a people who have been forged in a history of struggles for transformation, who have grown up in resistance, who have solutions and must develop their political power to implement them, countering external threats.
Broad mass action and forceful social mobilizations must be developed to push the government to take emergency measures that address the agenda of the people and not that of the foreign oligarchs.
The Mexican people's struggle for progress is multifaceted and integral to who we are. Let us promote popular sovereignty, the basis of national sovereignty. Let us fight for full political, economic, cultural and military sovereignty; for food and energy sovereignty, the basis of economic sovereignty; for regional and local sovereignty, which sustains national sovereignty. From the communities and throughout the country, now more than ever the people must affirm their rights and demands.
In the face of Trump's threats, Mexico's strength lies in its working class and organized people. The people must decide, build their own agenda, push for ever stronger actions, act for the right measures to be taken and fight for their rights. The unity and organized collective resistance of the people is what will give impetus to and form the basis of the consolidation of Mexico's sovereignty. It is up to the people to propose a nation-building project! The people are the ones who must decide!
The broadest unity must prevail in actions that bring together organizations from many fronts of struggle and people from all walks of life, of all origins, religions, nationalities, ages, genders or lifestyles to defend our Homeland. In Mexico there are thousands of scattered movements. It is time for organization and resistance, for the people to have their say; it is time to unite and fight for sovereignty.
Pablo Moctezuma Barragán is Secretary General of the organization Mexteki and national spokesperson for the Congress for Sovereignty
(Photos:
L. Alcalde, E. Villendas)
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Website: www.cpcml.ca • Email: editor@cpcml.ca