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16 Mexico DF / N A F T A 17 The Mexican Neo-Liberal Conversion ... Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A Irmgard Emmelhainz secured rigid repayment and exorbitant fees. Mexico DF / N A F T A Capital flooded out of the country, while the Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexican peso lost 78 percent of its value and Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A The Mexican kept on devaluating. As a solution to enable Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A repayment, the Reagan administration found a Mexico DF / N A F T A way to assemble the powers of the US treasury Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A Neoliberal and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A to roll the debt over in return for neoliberal Mexico DF / N A F T A reforms.3 President José López Portillo’s Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A government cracked under the pressure Mexico DF / N A F T A Conversion Mexico DF / N A F T A and submitted the country to draconian Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A austerity measures crafted by the IMF, which Mexico DF / N A F T A encompassed an extensive privatization and Mexico DF / N A F T A and Differen- Mexico DF / N A F T A deregulation program, as well as a series of Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A reforms liberalizing the Mexican trade regime. Mexico DF / N A F T A Also that year, the final one of López Portillo’s Mexico DF / N A F T A tiated, Mexico DF / N A F T A presidency, the banks were nationalized as a Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A nationalist measure and as means to solve the Mexico DF / N A F T A problems of speculation and capital flight, as Mexico DF / N A F T A Homogenous Mexico DF / N A F T A well as a way to impose controls on foreign Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A exchange. In his last presidential address, the Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A Lives President announced the decision, famously Mexico DF / N A F T A bursting into tears and sobbing: “It is now or Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A Just as we are accustomed—when not also never. We have been sacked. It is not the end of Mexico DF / N A F T A 4 Mexico DF / N A F T A subjected—to absorbing energy in different Mexico. We shall not be sacked again!” Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A forms at home, we will also find it quite This episode marks the beginning of a Mexico DF / N A F T A easy there to receive or absorb accelerated severe restructuring of the Mexican economy, Mexico DF / N A F T A Irmgard Emmelhainz Mexico DF / N A F T A changes and oscillations which our sensory inspired by the ideology and operating Mexico DF / N A F T A 5 Mexico DF / N A F T A organs pick up and integrate to form all that framework known as neoliberalism, which Mexico DF / N A F T A we know. I don’t know whether philosophers generally implies a shift away from state-led Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A have ever dreamed of a society for the industrialization and welfare state policies, and Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A domestic distribution of sensory reality. a move toward a market-led political economy. Mexico DF / N A F T A 1 Mexico DF / N A F T A —Friedrich Kittler The banks were re-privatized between 1991 Mexico DF / N A F T A and 1992 under President Carlos Salinas de Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A Los blancos han forzado a los indios a Gortari, followed by the ratification of the North Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A (abandonar los valles y a) treparse a los American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in Mexico DF / N A F T A cerros. 1993, which represented the continuation of Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A —Erwin Slim Torres2 Mexico’s comprehensive trade liberalization and Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A economic reform programs that began in the Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A In 1979, the US underwent a second oil crisis early 1980s. Eliminating trade barriers between Mexico DF / N A F T A and a financial shock. In October of that year, the US, Canada, and Mexico was publicized as Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A Paul Volcker, Chairman of the US Federal the best way to bring economic development to Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A Reserve System, unveiled a new monetary the southern country. According to Uruguayan Mexico DF / N A F T A policy aimed at making the American dollar writer Eduardo Galeano, politicians and Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A the most sought-after currency in the world, technocrats promised that the trade agreement Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A and began forcing interest rates upwards to would finally allow the Third World to become Mexico DF / N A F T A Mexico DF / N A F T A combat in-flation. Mexico defaulted in 1982 as like the First World: “Rich, cultured, and happy”; Mexico DF / N A F T A the “Volcker Shock” was applied, and the US “We Can Be Like Them” was the mantra leading ... and Differentiated, Homogenous Lives 18 Scapegoat 6 Mexico DF / NAFTA 19 The Mexican Neo-Liberal Conversion ... from underdevelopment to modernization.6 The who drift along side by side, trying to speak energy, and resource industries. As production Experimental GMO corn crops were approved treaty covered aspects of investment, labour out and to survive in a highly fragmented and costs and wages have risen in China, efforts in the states of Sinaloa and Tamaulipas in 2010, markets and environmental policies. It was the violent social landscape. are being made to position Mexico as the new putting at risk the country’s important genetic first free trade treaty signed between advanced In spite of the damage inflicted on the China, or “Aztec Tiger,” drawing manufacturing food heritage. Contaminating and destroying countries and a developing economy, creating country and its citizens, subsequent treaties away from Asia, facilitated by the Pact for the environment, transgenic seeds will soon be the world’s largest trade area in terms of total have ensured the continuation and expansion Mexico’s rewriting of the countries 1970 labour commodities patented by a few transnational gross domestic product (GDP) and the second of neoliberal reforms into other regions and laws.12 Thus, Peña Nieto’s Pact, in concert companies, polluting corn at its source of origin largest in terms of total trade volume, after the institutional domains in Mexico, such as the with production innovations such as cloud and eradicating the means for the autonomous European Union.7 Ten years after the treaty Puebla-Panama Plan (2001), later renamed the computing and open-source innovation, is production of food.16 was signed, the promise of modernization had Mesoamerican Integration and Development geared toward attracting global investment in Moreover, neoliberal reorganizational not yet been fulfilled. Most foreign investment Project (PPP-MIDP) in 2007. This agreement cars, aerospace, household goods, and even alignments in the past 30 years have meant the has gone toward maquiladora (assembly) covers “development” projects in the area manufacturing drones for civilian use.13 From mass migration of individuals to the outskirts factories, creating an export-oriented known as “Mesoamerica,” a hotspot rich in this point of view, the country’s growth implies of cities and to the border, expelling people manufacturing and assembly-plant economy resources and biodiversity. There is also the the return of the maquiladoras, as well as from their forms of life and ways of making a severed from direct economic development Mundo Maya Project, conceived under Salinas the continuation of attendant social policies: living, putting them in places where they are of the rest of the country. Moreover, as China de Gortari’s presidency in the 1990s but put into large-scale incarceration, mass surveillance, and not wanted and therefore are most vulnerable. and other regions in Latin America came to be effect in 2011, a touristic development pole in the permanent presence of the military in some The state manages and excludes portions of integrated into global trade networks, Mexico the Southeast and Yucatan peninsula.
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