by Ellen Mass
This article is Part Four of a series on Mexico’s history and economic development. You can read Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
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While natural resources extraction increases by national and foreign companies, newly elected Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo maintains that fossil fuels are an economic pathway for Mexico’s self-reliance. Her policies maintain a sustainable national infrastructure for export benefits in order to maintain the needed social structure to benefit all of Mexico. Environmental observers and scientists are voicing their concern as to whether fossil fuel extraction, with its side effects of pollution and climate damage, is necessary. This is especially relevant in light of Sheinbaum’s scientific professional stance, as an Environmental Engineer and author-participant in the United Nations Climate Report (UNFCCC). The rapidity and size of energy production, such as the planned Saguaro liquified gas plant in the state of Sonora, is heavily dependent on the use of methane for various functions and has raised concerns from environmentalists especially small towns like Puerto Libertad whose coastline abuts the Gulf of California UNESCO has called this Gulf, a “Natural World Heritage Site,” as endangered because of its rare Blue Whale and Whale Shark populations. While such projects as Texas based Mexico Pacific engender deep worries, ambitious climate goals are made official and public. The Presidenta plans land restoration for 20 percent of Mexico’s barren lands. With 42 percent of Mexico’s land considered “degraded,” Sheinbaum and her predecessor AMLO have designated 232 protected areas, requiring 50 per month to be implemented.
One of Mexico’s largest megaprojects is an increase in the delivery of potable water by building pipelines throughout the country where fresh and non-polluted water is non existent, especially in the water starved north. For the first time since US-Mexico’s 1944 water agreement, requiring Mexico to provide water to South Texas, Mexico was unable to comply because of an ongoing severe drought. However, an agreement was reached for 1 million acre feet (about 325 billion gallons of water) to start now, with full compliance expected to resume by the fall. Perhaps as a result, the US denied the large city of Tijuana access to water from the Colorado River, but there is still time to reverse this harsh measure. Mexico’s National Water Project, as part of the “Mexico Plan” of 2025,, will be a central infrastructure priority of the Sheinbaum Administration.
Another megaproject begun under President AMLO, and attempted by previous administrations, is Mexico’s largest sea trade project, the Yucatan ports. Changing traditional South American trade routes using its newly constructed railroad, the Interoceanic Corridor, it usurps some of the Panama Canal traffic passage between the Atlantic and Pacific. In a pilot test this week hundreds of Hyundai cars, made in Mexico, have been loaded from Oaxaca’s Salina Cruz Port on the Pacific side to travel through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to the port of Coatzacoalcos in Veracruz on the Atlantic side. From there they will be sent by Mexican transport ship to Florida and ports in Asia, with plans for 5,000 cars per week.
The “Mexico Plan,” begun by AMLO in 2018, includes planting a billion trees as part of stringent environmental and ecological restoration plans. It is also an ambitious alimentation program for the increased production of food staples. While AMLO forbade the importation of transgenic corn, the US-Canada Trade Commission ruled against Mexico’s ban. Mexico removed the ‘ban’ language, but substituted another means of restricting transgenic varieties.
President Sheinbaum has determined that by 2030, Mexico will have tripled its natural maize production, mostly coming from Yucatan, with similar increases elsewhere in the production of beans, cacao, honey, and other farm products. With the appointment of former Foreign Affairs Minister Alicia Barcena as the new Secretary of the Environment, an official well versed in climate change science,, environmentalists hope to raise standards for extraction and environmental protection. Today Mexico has a growing renewable energy sector with projects in hydropower, solar, wind, and geothermal power. They now aim officially for 33% renewable electricity by 2030 with ambitions to increase that share. President Sheinbaum strives hard, as did AMLO, to separate the Mexican economy from all vestiges of former neo-liberal policies which produced corruption, price gouging, and profit hoarding. In one example the Presidenta accused the Vulcan Mining Company of these illegal practices. Vulcan, one of the largest mining companies in North America, was forced to halt operations that were damaging shorelines and polluting cenotes in order to make cement for US markets. Mexico has offered to buy them out and is presently negotiating with the Vulcan.
Decision-making transparency in finance and the news of the day is a daily practice at Sheinbaum’s press conferences at the Palacio Nacional in Mexico City. The public accountability model ‘La Manana,’ a daily 2 hour press conference held by the president, was implemented by AMLO. It brought social consciousness and cohesion to the country’s understanding and raised the political consciousness. President Sheinbaum has expanded the practice, the diversity of the journalists who challenge her. On issues from cartel violence to the distribution of social benefits,. journalists from the United States and Europe join with their Mexican colleagues, coming for the latest local, regional, and national news. They then transmit up to date reports to people around the world, as well as to Mexicanas and Mexicanos, with information on public projects, economic growth, and crime.
In Mexico, women are well represented in government. Many of Mexico’s Supreme Court members are women. They are Senators and Deputies. Forty three percent of Magistrates and Judges are women. Half of the Chamber of Deputies and over half of the Senate are women. Thirteen of thirty-one Mexican state governors are women, an increase of 4 after the election of Claudia Sheinbaum
The head of the Bank of Mexico with its board of directors, helps determine national fiscal policy, and is responsible for the great leap forward in generous funds invested from ‘Bienestar’ banks, the Spanish word for welfare, that began in 2019 under AMLO. Sheinbaum’s campaign mantra, ‘No progress without the poor first’ has prioritized women and educational access with becas (scholarships) for every primary and preparatory aged Mexican youth. Two hundred thousand cards for scholarships will be given out this month together with 19 thousand pesos (around $925 US dollars) per eligible family which participates. Also, the expansion of free University admissions, “Youth Waiting for the Future,”’ is covering 3 million students. There are 9 million more University level places planned for Bienestar Benito Juarez University whose extensions are in all states including the Yucatan Peninsula.
North American nations are at a crossroads between choosing civil and human rights as their social and political foundations, or the hegemony of profiteers and military control as governing options. Mexico is helping to make that determination for the continent by continuing its people’s democracy pathway ‘from the bottom up.’. Economic and political reverberations of success from the Fourth Transformation are reaching far beyond Mexico. It is now becoming a model and partner with other leaders in the Global South from the Grenadines to Brazil and Venezuela.
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Ellen Mass is a member of MAPA’s Latin America and Caribbean Working Group.