"Nationalization" of lithium in Mexico, a smokescreen to cover the delivery of the resource to the Chinese

By Damian Quevedo 

The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, signed a decree on Saturday whereby almost 235,000 hectares of the northern state of Sonora, bordering Arizona, will be converted into a mining reserve for the exploitation of lithium. The measure establishes that the concessions already granted will not be withdrawn, a line that benefits the Chinese company Ganfeng Lithium, which has the most advanced exploration project in the region [1]. 

This measure announced with great fanfare is a crude maneuver, like the “tero”, a bird that builds its nest in the open field, but pretends to lay its eggs elsewhere. In the same way, López Obrador pretends to defend national interests, although, in reality, he plays in favor of certain multinationals, in this case Chinese, since by prohibiting new foreign companies from establishing themselves, he annuls any competition for existing ones.  

The creation of a state lithium extraction company does not mean any threat to the big capitalists who exploit lithium in Mexico, which could become another link in the production chain of multinationals. The capitalist State is in charge of managing and protecting the businesses of big businessmen, therefore the nationalizations and privatizations are nothing more than tools at the service of that policy. 

An emblematic case of “nationalization” has been that of Sidor, decreed by Hugo Chávez, who bought the company from the Techint group, well above the company's market price, when it was beginning to generate losses. Another example was the "nationalization" of YPF in Argentina, which served as a "smoke screen" for the handover of the Vaca Muerta business to the multinational Chevron. 

The populists are great conjurers who, with pompous gestures that do not change anything and that always benefit the capitalists, seek to win over the masses. Today, the general economic crisis and the collapse of the bourgeois democratic regime, make these maneuvers turn against those who execute them, because the "national and popular" can only sell smoke. 

The left must denounce these maneuvers in favor of some multinationals, pointing out that nothing changes for the working class. That will only change when workers and poor people take control of companies and natural resources, through a social revolution that imposes a socialist government. 

[1] Página 12 / 02/21/2023

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