Carlos Slim and Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Photo by Benjamin Flores.
MEXICO CITY: Like his predecessors, Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s six-year term was a success for the ultra-rich: between the start and the end of his administration, the number of Mexican billionaires rose from 10 to 22; during the same period, banks reported record profits, with more than 273 billion pesos in 2024, largely due to the usurious interest rates and high commissions they charge the population, the organization Oxfam denounced.
The historic multimillionaires, who consolidated their fortunes during the six-year term of Carlos Salinas de Gortari – such as Carlos Slim Helú or the Larrea and Baillères families – were joined by heirs, such as the children of Juan Francisco Beckmann or the Coppel Luken brothers, who benefit from the absence of a tax on large inheritances.
In a report titled “Profits on the Run,” Oxfam Mexico analyzed the unequal economic model that Mexico has followed since before independence, based on the dispossession and extraction of resources for the benefit of a few families, who “take” what is not theirs, “transact” with institutions to keep the wealth, “grab” to exclude others from these goods, “and call it merit.”
As a counterpoint to López Obrador’s official discourse, the organization maintained that “for prosperity to be truly shared, there must be economic justice,” and asserted that the economic model applied in Mexico “generates interrelated oligarchies.”
The organization observed similarities between the current economic model and that of colonialism: both are based on the extraction of natural resources – lithium or avocado today, as opposed to precious metals or sugar more than two centuries ago; sending profits abroad and current banks and commercial ports of yesteryear; and the exploitation of labor – digital platform workers today, indigenous peoples before.
In its report, Oxfam insists that Mexico is one of the five countries that generate the greatest profits for banks, as successive governments allowed the margin of income from commissions to double between 2000 and 2023, and that interest income tripled in the same period.
Thanks to these margins, banks earned one trillion 234 billion pesos during the López Obrador government – 31% more than during Enrique Peña Nieto’s six-year term of office – and sent nearly half of their profits abroad, where the headquarters of some of the main banks in Mexico are located, such as the Spanish BBVA and Santander.
The organization also put the spotlight on the concentration of water concessions in Mexico, a country that already suffers from water stress conditions, which will worsen in the future. According to the report, the “widespread privatization” of water continues, permitted, among other things, by the lack of resources allocated to the National Water Commission (CONAGUA) to prevent abuses.
Original article by Mathieu Tourliere, Proceso, February 4, 2025.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.