Last week, Mexico's official statistical agency reported that 13.4 million people had been lifted out of poverty during AMLO's 2018-2024 government.
The main factors were a steady rise in the real minimum wage, year after year, and the "social programs" -- direct government payouts to people.
So for example AMLO instituted a pension for everyone over 65. It is a modest amount, and some complained that, in keeping with his administration's slogan "Por el bien de todos, primero los pobres" [For the good of all, first the poor], it should have been means-tested. But he said no, let's just do it, give all seniors a debit card and every couple of months, put some money in it.
So for example AMLO instituted a pension for everyone over 65. It is a modest amount, and some complained that, in keeping with his administration's slogan "Por el bien de todos, primero los pobres" [For the good of all, first the poor], it should have been means-tested. But he said no, let's just do it, give all seniors a debit card and every couple of months, put some money in it.
Likewise "scholarships" -- in reality just payments to families -- as a bribe for students to go to school. Again, the debit card does the trick.
And to make sure everyone can get one, the government has created what is in essence a huge consumer national bank, El Banco de Bienestar -- quite literally, "The Welfare Bank." Now it is promoting a scheme for Mexicans in the United States to send remittances to the debit card of relatives in Mexico at a lower cost than competing services like Western Union.
President Claudia Sheinbaum (who took over last October) has kept expanding these programs, starting with a pension for women beginning at age 60. For women from indigenous peoples, it already started. For other women, those aged 62 have started as well, the younger women start next year, as the government's redistributive capacity expands.
At the same time, Dr. Sheinbaum reported this morning in her daily news conference that foreign direct investment for the first two quarters of 2025 was a record-smashing $34+ billion, doubling the record set by the last full year of a neoliberal government in 2017 with then-President (now Spain resident on account of Spain forbids extradition of people like him) Enrique Peña Nieto.
And to make sure everyone can get one, the government has created what is in essence a huge consumer national bank, El Banco de Bienestar -- quite literally, "The Welfare Bank." Now it is promoting a scheme for Mexicans in the United States to send remittances to the debit card of relatives in Mexico at a lower cost than competing services like Western Union.
President Claudia Sheinbaum (who took over last October) has kept expanding these programs, starting with a pension for women beginning at age 60. For women from indigenous peoples, it already started. For other women, those aged 62 have started as well, the younger women start next year, as the government's redistributive capacity expands.
At the same time, Dr. Sheinbaum reported this morning in her daily news conference that foreign direct investment for the first two quarters of 2025 was a record-smashing $34+ billion, doubling the record set by the last full year of a neoliberal government in 2017 with then-President (now Spain resident on account of Spain forbids extradition of people like him) Enrique Peña Nieto.
This while Mexico's economy has become increasingly government-led: joint public-private infrastructure projects such as a railroad land canal between the Atlantic and Pacific to supplement and/or provide an alternative to the Panama Canal. It means cargo ships larger that Panama can handle could arrive on the West Coast, the containers put on trains to cross to the Atlantic, where their cargo could be redistributed so containers headed to Houston or New Orleans could go on one ship, those destined for Europe or the East Coast another.
Why do I suspect this is really important? Because that 13.4 million figure is truly astonishing after decades of neoliberalism during which the number of poor kept rising.
Last Sunday, trying to get material for Radio Migrante's Monday show, I kept doing Internet searches looking for major media in English that had covered it, or even minor media, and found nothing.
On Monday I finally found this on the Guardian:
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