I keep thinking about this every time our liberal journos try to stir shit against AMLO. Today we are enjoying another iteration of their never ending stream of open letters signed by disgraced journalists and intellectuals, the twist in this one is that they gathered 650 signatories, the claims are just hilarious saying that they are being persecuted and censored, absurd AMLO limits himself to clapbacks in his daily morning talks and this is what they are trying to equate to a vague understanding of authoritarianism its just so dumb. The cherry on top is that these pampered whores never criticized the openly documented system of media control pioneered by the president who launched our bloody war against the drug cartels.
All of this to say that I half remember that this was the same sequence played before deposing Evo, maybe a Biden admin is more open to the idea? His foreign policy is very worrisome for me.
Hey you just reminded me this article I once read about the analysis of Morales'path before the coup! I swear we're just speedrunning Bolivia and Brasil's Pink Tide eras. (I still need to dig in further into the parallels from that article, hope to make a post about it soon).
Now, to the juicy stuff. How likely would it be for a Biden administration to instigate or support a coup in México? Well, as usual, this is just conjecture from what I've seen from both the murikans and us, the unfortunate neighbors south of the border. But I will err on the side of "they always could, but the question is, why would they?"
Let's say Biden wins the election, somehow. Let's say Trump is out of the White House, somehow. Let's say the US is still there and everyone is ready to put the Most Progressive Agenda after three years of crap and one year of nightmares. Somehow. What US will Biden's Admin inherit? Who will Biden's Admin keep close to them? How much latency will Biden's admin give to the foreign policy machine and how much restraint will it have? And IMO most importantly: What will Biden's Admin do to separate themselves, at least image-wise, from the Trump era? From here, we can really look into AMLO's Admin.
I'm sorry but so far, AMLO's strategy for the Great Satan in the north has worked. He has played nice, has managed to keep Trump thinking nice things about him, got to visit and get their stupid neolib agreement finalized, it has worked. So far. Yes, we didn't come out of it unscathed (the poor central americans, africans and caribbeans trapped in our now nation-wide living border wall can attest to that plus all the poor people suffering under and over the border) but we're still here.
With a MORENA majority in both chambers of congress (with polls looking up for 2021), a conservative opposition in disarray, out of touch and with people's memories of their god-awful record still fresh (plus some of them looking to go on trial for their many crimes); a reorganizing of the military with a new branch added by him (tho I still feel like the military ideologically will always be a wild card) and with the support of some of México's elites (which I'm sure isn't causing any problems now and won't be causing any problems in the future /s), AMLO's admin has almost covered all of their bases. There's only one base they haven't been able to fully cover.
And that one is why we're talking about this. Media is the last place the conservative opposition has to put their time, money and energy to try to convince people AMLO's the worst president in Mexican history (therefore, anything they offer that's not him, will be better. SOUNDS FAMILIAR, JOE?). If you've been living in México these past two years, you know this has been our background noise. From the co-opted to the made-up, the disgraced, hollow ghouls who make up most of the remainer of our elites and institutions have screaming to anyone with ears allegations about how México is turning into a worse place to the one they made. And tbh, it's kinda hard to see that doing anything. We already know things suck, but lots of people want to believe in AMLO, lots of people fucking hate them and lots, lots of people more in México are still not interested in anything too radical to change the way things are (for both good and bad, as the originary peoples resisting against the mega-projects and the feminists and normalistas can attest). Too many are still too stuck in their fantasies about being a "real, lawful democracy" like Canada or Europe to really do more than just grumble and at most claim how they're going to give AMLO a piece of their mind come 2021 and 2024. It's all worked within the system.
So with all of that out of the way, how could a coup even happen? If AMLO has (almost) everything covered, who would be leading this coup and see it to completion? Because for me the most likely is the old regime doofuses with some mercenary muscle. I can see an attempt being made in the next two months, taking advantage of the unchecked and unstable state the US govt is right now and I could see some CIA spooks trying one last hurrah before things are settled, counting on Biden's complete fecklessness to do nothing about it to save face, but I can't see a lot of success there. As I mentioned, the only people who want to take any serious concerted action against this current govt are only them, and they're both incompetent, without any organized popular support and both widely hated in the mexican population. If they ever get close to doing it, all they're going to do is make the pushback even worse than Bolivia. People will fall in line to defend the nation. The trials will suddenly become a lot quicker on the heads, plus those dumb enough to be caught. And Biden's fecklessness goes both ways and they'd be more than happy to try to push this under the rug and try to keep things quiet in México for the remainder of the admin (and try again in 2024).
So in conclusion, a Biden admin will probably be not interested in doing any foreign policy fuckery without the support of the foreign govt there, if there's some fuckery done beforehand, they will probably let it happen but if the fuckery does not hold, they will also probably just act shocked and try to take it easy on us. Or at least, that's my theory.
(Links for reference coming soon, gimme a break)
Czechvault this is such a treat of a comment (saved), I had a nice substantial reply drafted in here but lost it stupidly and then work got in the way. I hope you get to see this and I apologize for being so late.
I think that most of our comrades in this thread, when thinking about a coup in Latin America, immediately think about Chile instead of Brazil which serves as the perfect example of a soft coup with their anticorruption campaign which turned into a vehicle to jail Lula on trumped up charges coordinated by their DA and judge Moro and supported by the US. I was thinking about what could happen in Mexico with this frame in mind, more of a legalistic battle than anything else. All in all, I now see that it is highly unlikely for either a soft coup (?) or a hard coup to be actively promoted by the US thanks to the reasons you and others have expertly laid out. And to be perfectly honest this administration is very mild making some economic elites pay their taxes is not the resurrection of a communist project so, as you say, what would be the reason? And yet there is still a dynamic that keeps bothering me, and one that I would like to bounce off with you.
In short, I'm thinking about this process as a soft coup that doesn't ultimately depose AMLO but in turn shapes the opposition into something . We see all of the tactics in that playbook being deployed right now, economic pressures (withholding private investment), relentless political attacks (from governors to feminists -which is your take on radical feminists popping out all over human rights offices?), financing of local far right groups, defamation and straight up disinformation in some media outlets (Reforma) and some social mobilization. Then we add to that the president trying to commit harakiri by removing his presidential immunity in the context of a supposed series of trials against the heads of previous administrations and I get this feeling that things could get dicey (I think that Gerts Manero doesn't have the balls or the capacity to really go after the ex presidents).
Presently all of the opposition parties continue to live in a state of crisis ridden with corruption scandals, this has lead the conservative opposition to exercise their diminished power in media as you say, the courts and propping up a comedic and anachronic far right group. So the question is, don't you think that the economic elites are going to support more aggressively the emerging far right? There was a hint in your comment that they support him now but won't in the future, isn't this the way they will likely go? We should also consider that yes AMLO has oligarchic support, not completely in the bag but the most influential appear to be quite at home with his admin, but the minigarchs are the ones rustling the leaves, I'm watching closely Claudio x and Gustavo de Hoyos.