Mexico is sometimes referred to as a "narco-state". What does this mean? "Neoliberalism y crimen organizado en Mexico: El surgimiento del Estado narco" (Fronteras Nortes, Vol. 25, No. 50: 7-34) by Luis Solis suggests, as the title of the article implies, that the narco state in Mexico has emerged from the convergence of neoliberalism with organized crime. Solis examines the consequences of neoliberalism: these include the disarticulation of the livelihoods associated with import substitution and the dominance of transnational capital within the Mexican economy, employing only 20% of the workforce, and the stagnation of national economy outside the circuits of transnational capital. This is obviously because the national economy was systematically dismantled under the weight of structural adjustment and Mexico's accession to NAFTA, which both deepened and "constitutionalized" neoliberalism in Mexico. Solis points to a crucial consequence of this transformation when he remarks that "the chronic atrophy of the peasant economy and the marginal participation of the state in the reproduction of labor power has resulted in the hypertrophy of the informal sector."
The informal sector in Mexico did not originate with neoliberalism. It was rooted in what Ferdinand Cardoso and Enzo Faletto refer to (in their classic Dependency and Development in Latin America) as the internationalization of the internal market, a process that began in earnest during the 1950s as multinational corporations, facing the tariff barriers associated with import substitution industrialization, jumped over these barriers by means of direct foreign investment in the territories of Latin American countries. These investments provided foreign capital and technology which could drive the process of import substitution industrialization by means of the formation of productive alliances between domestic and transnational capital. This became the basis of what Cardoso would later refer to as "associated dependent development."
The difficulties associated with this pattern of development were several. The transnational sector imported capital intensive productive technology, which had the effect of limiting the capacity of the manufacturing sector to absorb labor power released by huge waves of immigration from the countryside. In the case of Mexico, rural to urban migration had multiple determinants: the limited reach of the Mexican land reform, the lack of state investment in maintaining the viability of the campesino sector, the enormous demographic increase of the rural population and the impact of the Green Revolution, which, similar to the TNCs, substituted capital intensive for labor intensive production. Both immigration to the United States and the burgeoning informal sector in Mexico served as an escape valve from the social conflicts associated with emergence of increasingly exclusionary patterns of development.
With the turn to neoliberalism, all of these processes reach new thresholds. TNC investment went from being a partner in Mexico's internal development to dictating the terms of Mexico's insertion into the global economy. With NAFTA, this process entailed the wholesale destruction of the campesino sector. The hypertrophy of the informal sector became associated with the expansion of the criminal economy, which had previously been contained within the corporatist structures of the PRI under the so called "Pax Mafiosa."
What has remained firmly anchored in place during the course of neo-liberal change in Mexico are the corporativist and clientelistic structures of the state through which the drug cartels emerged as powerful economic and political actors in their own right, capable of penetrating the state apparatus at all levels - the municipal, the state, the federal. A similar point might be made with respect to Mexico's political parties: both the PRD and the PAN were pulled into PRI-based patterns of clientelism and corruption. Neither opposition party has managed to function as a transformative political force with respect to Mexico's authoritarian state. It remains to be seen if Morena, the party that appears poised to be swept in to power, can fair any better.
The expanding influence of the cartels is not the only reason why Mexico became a narco-state. As Solis remarks, there was also an ideological transformation at work, which was rooted in Mexico's so far failed transition to democracy. Democracy contains within it the idea of rule of law, provided by "un Estado de Derecho" (a state of law or right). Under neoliberal authoritarianism in Mexico, the state of law has become a fiction to the extent that Mexicans no longer recognize themselves as a part of the state - which is to say, as members of civil society whose members are free and juridically equal citizens. They are rather a subject to the arbitrary power of the state.
Solis's contends that such a recognition might have constrained the social violence that has exploded in Mexico, particularly since the Carderon sexenio. A state of law might have precluded the collusion between the business elite, the cartels and the political classes, which Solis argues, lies at the very heart of the nacro state: "...this symbiotic relationship between the political regime of neoliberalism and organized crime, which reshapes the entire apparatus of the state and with it the relations of dependency and domination that link state and nation." . What this represents (once again) is the re-articulation of corporativism and clientelism so that it can function in terms of neoliberalism. This is not pure neoliberalism, but hybrid, opportunistic neoliberalism which operates - and replicates itself - through whatever the institutional structures it finds at its disposal.
The informal sector in Mexico did not originate with neoliberalism. It was rooted in what Ferdinand Cardoso and Enzo Faletto refer to (in their classic Dependency and Development in Latin America) as the internationalization of the internal market, a process that began in earnest during the 1950s as multinational corporations, facing the tariff barriers associated with import substitution industrialization, jumped over these barriers by means of direct foreign investment in the territories of Latin American countries. These investments provided foreign capital and technology which could drive the process of import substitution industrialization by means of the formation of productive alliances between domestic and transnational capital. This became the basis of what Cardoso would later refer to as "associated dependent development."
The difficulties associated with this pattern of development were several. The transnational sector imported capital intensive productive technology, which had the effect of limiting the capacity of the manufacturing sector to absorb labor power released by huge waves of immigration from the countryside. In the case of Mexico, rural to urban migration had multiple determinants: the limited reach of the Mexican land reform, the lack of state investment in maintaining the viability of the campesino sector, the enormous demographic increase of the rural population and the impact of the Green Revolution, which, similar to the TNCs, substituted capital intensive for labor intensive production. Both immigration to the United States and the burgeoning informal sector in Mexico served as an escape valve from the social conflicts associated with emergence of increasingly exclusionary patterns of development.
With the turn to neoliberalism, all of these processes reach new thresholds. TNC investment went from being a partner in Mexico's internal development to dictating the terms of Mexico's insertion into the global economy. With NAFTA, this process entailed the wholesale destruction of the campesino sector. The hypertrophy of the informal sector became associated with the expansion of the criminal economy, which had previously been contained within the corporatist structures of the PRI under the so called "Pax Mafiosa."
What has remained firmly anchored in place during the course of neo-liberal change in Mexico are the corporativist and clientelistic structures of the state through which the drug cartels emerged as powerful economic and political actors in their own right, capable of penetrating the state apparatus at all levels - the municipal, the state, the federal. A similar point might be made with respect to Mexico's political parties: both the PRD and the PAN were pulled into PRI-based patterns of clientelism and corruption. Neither opposition party has managed to function as a transformative political force with respect to Mexico's authoritarian state. It remains to be seen if Morena, the party that appears poised to be swept in to power, can fair any better.
The expanding influence of the cartels is not the only reason why Mexico became a narco-state. As Solis remarks, there was also an ideological transformation at work, which was rooted in Mexico's so far failed transition to democracy. Democracy contains within it the idea of rule of law, provided by "un Estado de Derecho" (a state of law or right). Under neoliberal authoritarianism in Mexico, the state of law has become a fiction to the extent that Mexicans no longer recognize themselves as a part of the state - which is to say, as members of civil society whose members are free and juridically equal citizens. They are rather a subject to the arbitrary power of the state.
Solis's contends that such a recognition might have constrained the social violence that has exploded in Mexico, particularly since the Carderon sexenio. A state of law might have precluded the collusion between the business elite, the cartels and the political classes, which Solis argues, lies at the very heart of the nacro state: "...this symbiotic relationship between the political regime of neoliberalism and organized crime, which reshapes the entire apparatus of the state and with it the relations of dependency and domination that link state and nation." . What this represents (once again) is the re-articulation of corporativism and clientelism so that it can function in terms of neoliberalism. This is not pure neoliberalism, but hybrid, opportunistic neoliberalism which operates - and replicates itself - through whatever the institutional structures it finds at its disposal.
Comments
Post a Comment