The constitutional reform initiatives on energy and oil presented by the National Action Party [PAN] and the President of the Republic, which the Legislature is now preparing to discuss, represent a continuation of what Carlos Salinas de Gortari presented in 1991 to allow the privatization of ejido and communal lands and the influx of capital in them. In that sense, the aforementioned initiatives are the second stage of the revolution of the rich, what Carlos Tello and Jorge Ibarra called the neoliberal stage of world capitalism. In our country, we are talking about three decades of its implementation. Moreover, despite its noxious effects on society, no government is able to change direction; to the contrary, they seek to deepen it to bring it to its ultimate conclusions.
A little history is useful. In February of 1971, the PAN council of the 42nd Legislature proposed to terminate land distribution and transform ejido lands into limited private property, allowing their association with private capitalists.
MV Note: At the end of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1917), the new government granted ejido lands to indigenous and peasant farmer groups to satisfy the land demands of the rural poor in exchange for their support of the new Constitution of 1917. Ejido lands were to be owned and farmed communally; they could not be sold. As part of the run-up to the signing of NAFTA (1994), ejido lands were divided into parcels, which were owned individually by members of the ejido. These parcels could be leased, rented or sold.
That initiative didn't catch on, but it fixed the position of the business class, which clung to it in the following years. Halfway through his term, Carlos Salinas de Gortari presented his initiative to amend Article 27 of the Constitution, which picked up on the arguments of the business class: terminate land distribution, provide legal security to land tenure, permit the land to be leased and rented in order to capitalize it. The revolution of the rich moved forward.
History is being repeated with the proposed energy reform. The National Action Party presented a more radical initiative than that of the President of the Republic, but with substantially the same ends. It's a situation that will allow the politicians to make adjustments to their initiatives and pretend to argue a position already agreed to. But they also agreed on the vague terms of its text, which employed expressions like "exercising rights of the comuneros [communal landowners; i.e., lands granted by Spanish king during colonial era] over the land and of each ejidatario [owner] over his parcel", "convey land rights", "control over their parcels" and "transfer of title to parcels" instead of the legal terms of sale, rent, usufruct [usage rights], donation and, in general, acts of transmission of the rights that the ejido and ejidatarios had over their land.
The same is happening with energy reform. The presidential initiative proposes an amendment to Article 27 to permit the State to sign contracts with private companies for the extraction of oil and production of electric power, in any of its forms, which would include wind energy, which is causing many social problems in the country. Naturally, these intentions are not clearly expressed, but use ambiguous language that disguises the reform's intentions.
In the same vein, plainly stated, they would amend Article 28 to take the electricity, oil and other hydrocarbons from the nation's strategic areas. Taking advantage of these strategic areas is today the exclusive power of the State, which should organize their exploitation for the benefit of the nation; that is, not with the sole criteria of economic gain, but also for the social well-being of Mexicans.
In the same vein, plainly stated, they would amend Article 28 to take the electricity, oil and other hydrocarbons from the nation's strategic areas. Taking advantage of these strategic areas is today the exclusive power of the State, which should organize their exploitation for the benefit of the nation; that is, not with the sole criteria of economic gain, but also for the social well-being of Mexicans.
In essence, the second stage of the revolution of the rich proposes deepening the model of capitalist accumulation initiated in its first stage, stripping the nation of the natural resources of the Mexicans in order to deliver them to foreign companies. In practice, the depth of the change represented the rupture of the social contract that emerged from the social revolution that began in 1910 and was expressed in the 1917 Constitution. If at that stage the possibility that the lands could be sold, leased or given in usufruct [licensed] was the way that the transnational corporations might take over the mines, water, and biodiversity, then State contracts with individuals for extracting oil or producing electric energy will be the way that they take over the few natural resources that the country still has yet to boost its development.
*Francisco López Bárcenas is a lawyer and one of the most noted thinkers on indigenous rights. A Mixteco from Oaxaca, he was an adviser to the ELZN [Zapatista Army of National Liberation] during the San Andrés negotiations with the Mexican government between 1995 and 1996.