Mexico's shock plan: The dialectics of macro-and microregionalization

Abstract

The Mexican government committed a historic miscalculation in agreeing to the "bailout package" devised by the United States, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank (WB). This agreement and the ensuing "structural adjustment" economic program are exacerbating the very factors that had previously thrust the country into social and political instability and a vicious cycle by which the traditional material and jurisdictional foundations of the Mexican nation state are being undermined. Given Mrxico's position in U.S. geo-economic and geopolitical priorities for the Western Hemisphere and the long expansionist tradition that has characterized U.S. behavior in North American geographical history, the consequences of this new crisis could easily reach far into the future. 1 Furthermore, given the trends presently being driven by "neoliberal globalization,"2--a shorthand phrase that includes prominently IMF-WB and U.S. Treasury economic recipes for Mrxico and Latin America--that have characterized the so-caUed post-Cold War period, the correlation of forces in "North America" that is inducing both "macroregionalization" and "microregionalization" could even cause Mrxico to lose jurisdiction over significant parts of its own territory. Although the underlying assumptions of some analyses of microregionalization-cum-macroregionalization need to be carefully reconsidered, 3 the available scientific evidence leaves no doubt that the type of "globalization" we are experiencing is aggravating inequalities both within and among nations. The macroeconomic guidelines that have accompanied globalization--including deregulation, unilateral trade liberalization, increasingly rapid reduction of public investment in the social sector, an increase in state subsidies to capital to protect it from the discipline of the market, and the ascendancy of financial capital--have aggravated recession. Indeed, in Mrxico, these policies, along with the recent bailout negotiations that