The future of the country and even of the political parties will depend heavily on who wins and how they do it, as the socio-economic foundations that will sustain Mexican society in the immediate future are at stake.
Electrical reform must take the form of a constitutionally protected law, marking avenues of sovereignty similar to those trodden by Lázaro Cárdenas and Adolfo López Mateo with the nationalization of oil and electricity, which now includes lithium.
According to López Obrador, such an initiative is probably the most coherent part of a nationalist heritage-salvaging philosophy based on control mechanisms to ensure the country is never plundered again and that its profits are distributed to the poor first.
The struggle is complex because it involves the energy sector, the sector most infiltrated by foreign private capital and from which emanated the real power of the conventional parties that opened the doors to them in a long neoliberal process.
For López Obrador, the electricity reform in its infancy attacks the most difficult national problem, namely the control of its wealth.
The government’s practical aim is to eliminate corruption and hence impunity, violence and waste. The theoretical is the restoration of sovereignty through concrete measures that return to the people what has been stolen, including its historical, political, cultural and economic heritage.
The electrical reform is a critical point of this project, with which the government defines two basic questions: the natural resources belong to the people and their control is exercised by the state.
It’s the culmination of his approach, and that inevitably involves bolstering the country’s most productive state-owned companies: Petróleos Mexicanos and the Federal Electricity Commission.
The strategic development of the sector cannot depend on interests or an external vision that is alien to the country, so the private company cannot act outside of this context.
The reform does not ignore private capital, particularly in the case of clean energy – which has neither produced everything necessary nor modernized the sector as proclaimed – and has become, according to López Obrador, a model of plunder and exploitation.
Many people are involved in this enormous value chain, from big Spanish companies like Iberdrola, Repsol, OHL and others to Americans and Canadians who are important links and try to protect their interests with the Free Trade Agreement or TMEC.
From the time of Donald Trump to that of Joe Biden, the great capital of the United States and the White House itself have worked with Madrid to fight electricity reform with absurd arguments ranging from claims that hydraulic power is dirty to the Claim that the The current government is an enemy of renewable energy.
The White House has sent several missions, including one from Vice President Kamala Harris and three from John Kerry, but they have failed to persuade López Obrador of his opinion.
This week is crucial because the chambers of Congress are in full debate and everything is expected to be decided in mid-April, once the April 10 referendum is held to vote on whether or not to continue López Obrador as president.
Parodying García Márquez, the opposition parties are trapped in his maze because they were the ones who handed over the sector and brought Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission to the brink of bankruptcy, and have already declared that they will vote against the reform.
jcm/lma