Homework answers / question archive / Read the article below and answer the following questions:  On January 1, 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, a group of  indigenous rebels in Mexico, seized public buildings in towns and cities across Chiapas, the country’s poorest, southernmost state

Read the article below and answer the following questions:  On January 1, 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, a group of  indigenous rebels in Mexico, seized public buildings in towns and cities across Chiapas, the country’s poorest, southernmost state

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Read the article below and answer the following questions: 

On

January 1, 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, a group of 

indigenous rebels in Mexico, seized public buildings in towns and cities

across Chiapas, the country’s poorest, southernmost state. On that day,

the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had gone 

into effect, heralding a new era in economic integration and freedom of 

trade across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, eliminating tariffs 

among the countries and symbolizing a new post-Cold War consensus on 

free markets and trade. But for the Zapatistas, NAFTA represented the 

recolonization of their country, and they sought to give voice to their 

protest through armed struggle. The Mexican military put their uprising 

down swiftly, and the Zapatistas retreated into autonomously governed caracoles,

or communes, where they live to this day, rejecting government aid and 

living largely on proceeds from San Cristóbal’s NGO-run tourist industry

and wealthy supporters abroad.

 

Twenty-three years later, backpackers, activists, and academics,  still descend on San Cristóbal de Las Casas, a jewel of a city in the  highlands of Chiapas, to celebrate the Zapatistas, who became instant  icons of the nascent alter-globalization movement. Yet as visitors fill  the rebel-themed cafes and art galleries in the city’s colonial center,  they are notably less attracted to its notorious “Misery Belt” on the  outskirts, an area of unpaved streets and crumbling shacks. Here, young  men and women migrate from the countryside to work in the informal  street-vendor economy or head north to Mexico City and the assembly  plants along the U.S. border that NAFTA helped create, seeking not  revolution, but gainful employment in the capitalist economy. “We came  here to make a fresh start … because work was scarce in our village,”  Miguel Gómez, a flower vendor in San Cristóbal’s municipal market, told  me. His three siblings have already migrated north to seek work, he  said. “But it’s not easy. In this city, everything depends on tourism.”

 

Today, officials from Mexico, the United States, and Canada, are gathering in Ottawa for the third round of talks to renegotiate  NAFTA. The prospects for such an upgrade are uncertain. President  Donald Trump initially threatened to terminate the agreement, declaring  it the “worst trade deal … maybe ever,” citing U.S. job losses and a  growing trade deficit; he has since accepted the need for a relaunch.  Canada wants to reform dispute settlement mechanisms and secure improved  labor and environmental standards. The Mexican government has also  called for an improved deal that takes into account its newly opened  energy and telecoms sectors, along with other upgrades.

NAFTA’s impact on Mexico has long been a subject of debate. For many,  it represents the “two Mexicos”—one increasingly industrialized and  affluent, the other largely rural and impoverished—and the widening gap  between them. With Mexico set for a crucial presidential election in  July 2018, it is on this issue, rather than Trump’s border wall, that  the real debate over the country’s future lies.

NAFTA coincided with a wider period of change for Mexico as the  country sought to rebuild after its infamous “Lost Decade.” By the time  the Latin American debt crisis, spurred by a collapse in commodity  prices, struck in 1982, Mexico’s economy looked much like Venezuela’s  today, trapped in a cycle of oil dependence, debt, and inflation. Amid  the string of political and economic reforms that followed, its de facto  one-party state, run by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI),  crumbled. In 2000, democracy was consolidated by the election of  President Vicente Fox from the pro-market National Action Party which  governed until 2012; under the current administration of Enrique Peña  Nieto, the Mexican congress has passed market reforms touching nearly  every sector of the economy from education to energy.

These changes have fundamentally transformed Mexico. Exports have  grown by more than 500 percent since 1993 thanks to growth in  manufacturing. Mexican universities are increasingly producing  high-skilled workers while firms in the aerospace, tech, and the  financial industry, are innovating at a rapid clip. The country’s middle  class grew by 11 percent between 2000 and 2010. Meanwhile, NAFTA’s integrated legal framework, which strengthened property rights and dispute mechanisms, has enhanced the  rule of law in a private sector long hamstrung by political  interference. “This has been one of the most understated achievements of  NAFTA,” Valeria Moy, an economist at the Autonomous Technological  Institute of Mexico, told me. “The market has helped usher in changes  that the Mexican government couldn’t.”

Yet the results have been uneven. Foreign investment has  overwhelmingly clustered in states like Chihuahua and San Luis Potosí,  which tout their well-designed infrastructure and easy access to the  U.S. border. The removal of tariffs and subsidies on agriculture,  notably corn, caused massive job losses in the country’s rural south,  prompting both migration and social unrest. According to Mexico’s  official statistics agency, while 60 percent of the population of Nuevo  León, the country’s wealthiest state, per capita, which borders Texas, are middle class, 80 percent of those living in Chiapas dwell in poverty.  Referring to this divide, Macario Schettino, an economist at the  Technological Institute of Monterrey, said: “Latin America begins not at  the border with the U.S., but [halfway down] in Mexico City.”

 

Schettino and many other observers cite four key reasons for the gap.  Mexico’s tax system, long dependent on dwindling oil revenues,  currently brings in just under 9 percent of the country’s GDP from  non-petroleum sources (compared to 26 percent in  the United States). Mexico’s public-education system has long been the  worst among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development  nations. Vast geographical discrepancies—Mexico stretches across 761,606  square miles—mean that many citizens live in isolated mountain regions,  cut off from infrastructure and public services. Finally, and  crucially, an adequate rule of law continues to evade the country.

Chiapas remains a microcosm of such challenges. Its government recoups a measly 1.5 percent of  its budget in taxes, due to the fact that 80 percent of the local  population works in the informal labor sector. Regulation and cronyism  continue to hamper many industries, stifling entrepreneurship. The  state’s education system, one of Mexico’s worst, was virtually paralyzed  for three years as teacher unions violently protested a 2013 reform.  Cash-transfer programs are frequently used to buy political support.

The argument on the left has long been that neoliberalism—or, the  absence of the state and supremacy of the market—is to blame. In 2016,  however, Chiapas boasted the fifth-largest budget of Mexico’s 32 states.  Since the Zapatista uprising, it has received billions of additional  dollars in the form of federal aid. Yet extreme poverty has only  increased in that time while the state ranks fourth nationally in infant  mortality and first in illiteracy.  

The reasons for the situation in Chiapas are various. Chief among  them is what political scientist Sarelly Martínez, a native of Chiapas, described as an “auction pyramid” in  which political parties selectively distribute aid to resolve local  conflicts and social leaders protest violently to secure more funding.  In rural parts of the state, the blocking of highways and hijacking of  municipal buildings are commonplace. Politically motivated  assassinations, often barely reported amid Mexico’s drug-related  violence, are increasingly frequent. The murder in  2016 of the mayor of San Juan Chamula, an indigenous municipality  popular with tourists, was one of the few cases to draw national  headlines. Political changes have failed to break the cycle. In 2006,  the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party won Chiapas for the first  time; debt increased, as did poverty and social strife. The story has  been repeated under current governor Manuel Velasco of the Green Party,  who, in 2015, oversaw local elections condemned by opponents as among  the most corrupt in Mexican history.

Blame is frequently directed at the federal government for failing to  impose order. Yet political necessity and the lack of an independent  anticorruption system—currently the subject of an endless congressional  fight—highlight the fact that since the 1980s Mexico has prioritized  growth and political stability over consolidating the rule of law.  Analyst Carlos Mota has argued that the two  Mexicos are also reflected in the Mexican state: one known  internationally for world-class economists whose talents are sought  after by the World Bank; the other gripped by the clientelism of old.

 

Given the stark inequality that continues to plague Mexico, the  debate over the role of the market versus that of the state that NAFTA  provoked in 1994 is unlikely to disappear. Much like the United States  and Canada, Mexico needs both a strong, transparent government that can  uphold the law and lure investment (as is currently happening with the  country’s burgeoning tech sector in Jalisco State) and dynamic markets  that can incentivize talent and innovation. The parts of Mexico that  have begun striking this balance have thrived; those that haven’t have  fallen behind.

The debate will continue when Mexicans go to the polls in 2018. With  the current administration marred by both corruption scandals and  mediocre growth, the frontrunner is leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador,  or AMLO, who favors greater state intervention in the economy and has  vowed to hold referenda on the country’s market reforms. AMLO is  frequently compared to both Trump and Venezuela’s late Hugo Chávez for  his outspoken views and cult-like following. Yet while some view him as a  radical in the Chávez vein, he most closely resembles Mexico’s leaders  of the 1970s who used populist rhetoric to justify heavy spending while  showing little appetite for genuine reform.

If elected, however, AMLO would inherit a very different Mexico from  the one of 35 years ago. The country’s democracy is increasingly  competitive, as evident in the way citizens fought for the passage of a  grassroots anticorruption bill in recent  months. Its media is more independent. Its people travel more widely  than ever before. AMLO would also lack the compliant congress and high  oil revenues of prior administrations. Popular in the country’s southern  and central regions, yet far less so in the north, AMLO, too,  represents the two Mexicos. Regardless of the outcome of the NAFTA  talks, which may yet provide a boost to the country’s economy, it is how  Mexico resolves its divide that will ultimately determine its future.

 PAUL IMISON is a freelance journalist based in Mexico City.

Identify and explain why the Zapatistas rebelled in 1994.

Explain how NAFTA and market reforms under President Pena created "two Mexicos."

Explain why it was predicted that AMLO would have a difficult time governing if he won the Presidency in 2018

MEXICO’S  POPULIST president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has proposed a  constitutionally dubious referendum to validate his presidency halfway  through its six-year term. He says it could take place alongside  mid-term elections in June, when Mexicans will be voting for the 500  seats of the lower house of the national congress and, in almost half  the 32 states, for their congresses and governors.

Whether the recall referendum goes ahead  or not, the elections could spell trouble for Morena, the party AMLO  founded. Mask-free and hug-happy, months into the pandemic, AMLO and his  government have badly mishandled it. Mexico entered 2021 trailing only  the United States, Brazil and India for the number of deaths from  covid-19. (The government admits the official figure may be a gross  underestimate.) As children elsewhere returned to school in September,  Mexicans started television education.

Mexicans are getting poorer, too. The  economy is in its worst slump for 80 years. It probably shrank by at  least 10% in 2020; more than 1.1m people lost their jobs between March  and June. AMLO, a fiscal conservative, has continued to tout austerity,  ignoring advice that he should ride out the covid-19 crisis with  spending. Decisions taken before the pandemic hit, such as cancelling a  new airport, worth $13bn and already half-built, have led to less  investment and more capital flight.

Security is also worsening. In the first  six months of 2020 Mexico registered a record 17,349 murders, a 1.7%  increase on the same period in 2019—in other locked-down countries,  crime fell. In June 2020 Mexicans were rattled by a drug gang’s  assassination attempt against Mexico City’s police chief. It was  unusually shocking both for being so brazen and for taking place in a  posh area of the capital.

However, AMLO may not pay at the polls for  his blunders. His approval rating dropped from 80% at the start of 2020  to around 60% by mid-year, and support for Morena has fallen, too. In  May only 19% of people said they would definitely vote for the party in  2021, less than half the proportion in December 2018.

Yet AMLO’s appeal, like that of other  populists globally, rests more on personality and patrimony than  prowess. Many Mexicans see him as one of them: he stops to eat tacos at  roadside stalls and mingles with workers. Others see him as their  saviour. Many credit him with projects such as the expansion of pensions  and training programmes for youth.

AMLO’s clean reputation helps. Even his  detractors admit that he is not personally corrupt, a rare quality among  the country’s leaders. That has been conveniently highlighted by a huge  continuing corruption scandal in which a former head of the state oil  company has made serious accusations against high-level Mexican  officials, including three former presidents.

The opposition parties could club together  to wound Morena. So AMLO may emerge with less of a mandate and a  diminished ability to proceed with his grandiose plan to purge  corruption, erase wealth inequality and promote national  self-sufficiency—dubbed ”a fourth transformation” of Mexico.

One outcome in 2021 is clear: as in many  countries around the world, not least Mexico’s neighbour to the north,  elections have little power to heal divisions amplified by a polarising  head of state.

NOTE:  The Mexican Supreme Court ruled that the referendum  be placed on the ballot in August rather than during the elections to determine if 5 former Presidents should be investigated and  prosecuted for corruption.

The president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, was not on the ballot, but Mexico’s  mid-term elections, held on June 6th, were largely a referendum on his  polarising performance. Voters selected representatives to the lower  house of the national legislature and 30 of the 32 state congresses, as  well as governors of 15 states and thousands of local posts. Although Mr  López Obrador’s party, Morena, and the parties in its coalition won a  majority in the national legislature’s lower house, it lost its  two-thirds super majority. The results are a blow to the president’s  ambitions to transform Mexico.

Parties in power tend to lose seats in  mid-terms, so the result is not entirely surprising. Morena dropped from  256 of 500 seats in the lower house to around 198. Even with the help  of its allies, it falls well below the 334 seats needed for a super  majority. More gallingly for Mr López Obrador, the coalition of  established parties did well: the National Action Party ( pan),  which held the presidency from 2000 to 2012, will be the second-biggest  political force, followed by the Institutional Revolutionary Party ( pri), which ruled the country for seven decades until 2000.

1. The president will now have to negotiate  with other politicians to pass laws. That could put constitutional  reforms beyond reach, since he would need around 40 opposition lawmakers  to side with him. The party also suffered losses in Mexico City, long  considered a bastion of leftism. Still, Morena remains the most popular  party, bagging the most seats in the legislature. It also won 11 of the  15 governorships, and most of the state congresses. This suggests the  party has a future after Mr López Obrador’s term ends in 2024.
2. It is likely that Mr López Obrador’s  agenda will remain much the same, thinks Carlos Elizondo Mayer-Serra,  the author of a book on the president. He can easily ignore the  disapproval of urbanites. (He accepted the results overall but blamed  Morena’s battering in the capital, where he was once mayor, on a “dirty  war”.) And enough people still support Morena for him to feel he has a  mandate. Outside a polling station in Mexico City’s posh Roma  neighborhood, María Teresa Crespo, a pensioner, says she is “very happy  with the government”, as she feels it is tackling corruption.
3. Morena and its allies’ majority in the  lower house will allow the president to continue to set the budget. Mr  López Obrador can still dole out funds for pet projects, such as social  programs to support the young, who are given a stipend while they  complete an apprenticeship, or to old folk in rural areas, who are paid  to plant trees.

But the lack of a two-thirds majority will  limit Mr López Obrador’s chances of enshrining in the constitution his  energy policy, which seeks to boost state-owned firms. It also curbs his  ability to damage Mexico’s institutions, such as the electoral body,  which he has threatened to disband altogether. Indeed, despite a violent  campaign—at least 36 candidates were murdered—Mexico’s largest-ever  elections were a success. At least 53% of more than 93m eligible voters  turned out, the highest for a mid-term election in this century.

Some fear that Mr López Obrador may try to  advance his agenda by calling for small referendums, or by going after  judges. He has called for investigations into a judge who ruled against  one of his energy initiatives. On June 7th the government enshrined in  law its controversial extension of the term of the Supreme Court’s chief  justice, who is considered friendly to Mr López Obrador. The president  is unlikely to tone down his divisive rhetoric, which distinguishes  between the people and the elites. He will continue to scold his critics  in his rambling daily press conferences.

The fact that Mr López Obrador will have  to compromise and work with other politicians is undoubtedly a good  thing. Indeed, many who voted for the opposition said they did so for  this reason alone. However, the opposition’s lack of focus will  complicate matters. The pan and pri formed  a coalition to compete in the elections, but on a platform of curbing  Mr López Obrador rather than to advance shared policies. In fact, the pri may  yet work with Morena. That would raise eyebrows, but Mr López Obrador’s  desire for power could trump his political principles. ?

Using information about AMLO in "Mexico's AMLO" (On August 1st he  held a referendum on whether to prosecute his five predecessors and only  7% of voters turned out, far short of the legally binding 40%)  and the election results described in "AMLO's Clipped Wings",  explain why you think it would be wise or unwise for AMLO to continue to  call small referendums to pursue his policy agenda.