The Balkans from Latin America: The Troublesome Mexican Federation

By: Luis Bosques

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.

The political structure of Mexico is in danger. The pandemic and the crisis derived from it has triggered a series of political movements and alliances which seek to defy the status quo. Historically, the Center of Mexico has been the axis which the economic, political and social system of the country revolves around. However, states – mostly in the North – have prompted its political machinery to rebel against the government and push their agenda.

The crisis is mostly based on identity issues rather than political ones, and Mexico has been facing this question since soon after its independence. The construction of a national identity and thus a cohesive State in the newly independent Mexico faced several problems; while a homogeneous sense of place was established within central and southern Mexico, the North was developing its own identity. Despite sharing general cultural characteristics such as religion or language, the Northern region of Mexico had been co-opted by American culture. Naturally, borderlands are supposed to behave like this. 

However the political crisis in the 1840’s caused by the collision of two ideological poles – the almost-extinguished federalism and the centralism in consolidation within the State power – granted a safe haven for several secessionist or far-federalist rebellions and movements in the North to dismember the endangered territorial integrity of the country. Secessionist leaders were inspired and seduced by the consolidated American federalism to proclaim wishful thoughts of a sort-of Republic of Río Grande in the Northeast trying to capture the essence of the secessionist northern society. Other rebellions were triggered in the North as well looking for the establishment of stable proto-States aligned to U.S.-Texan interests.

Central and Southern Mexican, or non-Northern, identity are based on common values, history and socio-political structure founded under the mestiza tradition. The society of the North, however, was founded (not long ago) on the basis of a monopolistic and oligarchic business tradition, and its geographical position, separated from the Center, has created a legitimate sense of alienation; however this is compensated with its character as a borderland. These elements have effectively shaped a new identity, cosmovision and thus a nation for the Northern society: the Mexamerican.

Nowadays, Mexamerica still preserves its industrial and business bases and has adapted them as part of its identity, considering themselves the backbone of the whole (or almost) Mexican economy. The Mexamerican society considers the wrongfully named South as a worthless and expensive burden that they allegedly sustain through their profits. The mistaken geographical imagination of Mexamericans towards Mexico has in fact contributed to the crisis. While the South is hugely unequal in terms of socio-economic indicators, the geographical South has been acknowledged as the most lagging region in the country. The neoliberal features of  Mexamerica have shaped a dangerous North-South dichotomy that could justify present and future balkanization movements. To make things worse, the current left-wing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (popularly known as AMLO) is from South-state Tabasco. 

At this point it should not be a coincidence that opposition movements were born in the North as a response to national crises like in 1840. AMLO failed at, or ignored, including the business ambitions of Mexamericans into his political agenda while he recognized and widely supported Afromexicans, indigenous people, people in poverty and other vulnerable sectors of the population. His government based on the slogan: “Por el bien de todos, primeros los pobres” (in English, “For the good of all, first the poor”), his constant refusal to sympathize and grant privileges to the private sector and his leftist political base have led to him being wrongfully labeled as a “communist”. Two years and one pandemic after he assumed office, movements such as #Nortexit, Frente Nacional Anti-AMLO (FRENAAA), Sí por México and Alianza Federalista began to appear and even gain more force than the actual opposition. The common denominator? All are Northern-based movements, with the exception of the latter which has included non-Northern states in its agenda. 

The illiberal and oligarchic North has revindicated and channeled its identity through these movements to mark its distance from the Federal Government, and even though it would be unconstitutional to secede from the Federation, the notion of a separate entity is tangible and popular amongst local politicians and people in the region. 

What follows depends on the evolution of the crisis, and if those movements continue to gain force in their states capitalizing on the Mexamerican identity. Midterm elections could be decisive for them, and political parties are sympathizing more with them. A gradual shift in Mexican politics is not coming from the center, but from the periphery.

Luis is a Mexican student at Universidad de Monterrey and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in International Relations and Political Science & Public Administration. He enjoys writing about Mexican foreign policy, international politics, identity and government