López Obrador opens a new controversy: “Neoliberalism encouraged feminism and environmentalism”

López Obrador observes the area through which the Mayan train will run, in Campeche.RS

When the controversy over his criticism of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) has not yet died down, the Mexican president seems to cover it with another: the one that opens with his latest statements in Campeche, where he has pointed out that feminism and environmentalism They are also products of neoliberalism, movements created “to prevent the population from becoming aware of the looting that was taking place in the world.”

Andrés Manuel López Obrador says: “What did neoliberalism or those who designed it for its benefit do? One of the things they promoted in the world to be able to loot at ease was to create or promote the so-called new rights. Feminism, environmentalism, the defense of human rights, the protection of animals … All these causes were very noble, very noble, but the purpose was to create or promote, develop these causes so that we would not notice that they were plundering the world. And so that economic and social inequality was left out of the center of the debate. That is why they did not talk about corruption, they stopped talking about exploitation, oppression, classism, racism ”.

It is already common in the president’s speeches to throw into the sack of neoliberalism practically all the causes, all the problems and everything that does not agree with his vision of politics. Thus, day by day, according to his criteria, the work of the media, the daily practice of university students, the vote of the discontented, the anesthetized middle classes in the face of the suffering of the marginalized, the opposition, responds to the neoliberal conservative movement. .. And now, feminism and environmentalism. The ideology of the president, meanwhile, narrows into a binomial, the poor and the rich. The poor who suffer from corruption, racism and classism. And the rest, the rich, the neoliberals, are those who promote “new rights” to divert critical gaze on their outrages.

Accustomed to controversy, the president faces another broad spectrum with an enemy that is not new: feminism, a movement closely linked to environmentalism in recent times and in its day a great ally of anti-racism. The movement for equality between men and women has always been in the crosshairs of the president, who has accused feminists of unjustified violence when they demonstrated in a country that loses 10 women a day to femicide. There have been many presidential attacks that gender equality activists have received to the point of abandoning their sympathies for Morena’s administration, which they arrived with enthusiasm, as many of them have recognized.

Environmentalism has also come off badly this time. On this occasion, López Obrador, to defend the Mayan train, one of his emblematic projects, has accused international agencies of financing environmental groups that oppose the route of the train, which circulates through the jungle and among the criticisms of those who denounce unjustified natural damage. This is what he said this Friday on a visit to Campeche, where part of the train’s route passes: “International agencies that supported the neoliberal model, of pillage, where corporations appropriate national goods, the people, financed, and continue to do so, to environmental groups, defenders of freedom. The United States Government has not yet responded to us, but there are environmental groups that opposed the Mayan train and that received money from the United States embassy, ​​”the president accused.

Ecology is, like feminism, another of the weak points of the Obrador government. His participation in the COP26 Climate Summit, which this year will be held in Glasgow, started this week with criticism for the low environmental profile of those who would represent this country in the great world event, only staff from the Foreign Ministry. The Ministry of the Environment had taken for granted that its staff would not attend, but later it was learned that the head, María Luisa Albores and those responsible for climate organizations had been included in the delegation.

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