“Masiosare, a strange enemy” in the dream of the tenant of the National Palace.
In his sleep, López sees himself as Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec emperor who faced off against invaders led by Hernán Cortés, refusing to reveal where Moctezuma’s treasure is as his feet are burned. The night progresses and now, dressed in the cadet uniform of the Military College, he faces the American invaders in Chapultepec Castle, dying heroically while he falls down the hillside wrapped in the flag.
With sweat from a hectic night, he then dresses in a frock coat and with a grim gesture, à la Benito Juárez, confronts the French invaders who dared to impose Maximilian of Habsburg as emperor; he enjoys the Mexican victory while he recreates in his dream the execution of Max on the Cerro de las Campanas. Later, he sees himself as the mystic of democracy, Francisco I. Madero, who fell a hero to the Huerta-Wilson conspiracy.
The night passes and now in his dream he sees himself twice on the central balcony of the National Palace. First in 1938 when with a serious gesture, à la Cárdenas, he announced that in the face of the intransigence of the foreign oil companies that refused to comply with the labor award, he had made the decision to expropriate their assets (not the oil that since 1917 has been owned by of the nation) creating Pemex, a company that will be in charge of exploiting such a precious resource for the benefit of the Mexican people. The second, now in 1960 and with a Hollywood smile, very much in the style of López Mateos, announces the nationalization of the electrical industry, having acquired the assets of different national and foreign companies, thus strengthening the CFE.
We have as president an individual taken from the free textbook of elementary history courses in the role of champion of the Nation, particularly when there is a foreigner involved. Seeing it this way allows us to see his rascuache nationalism in different public policy decisions, it does not matter that because of these the loser is the people of Mexico, highlighting those concerning the energy sector in three areas: oil, lithium and electricity, the same where his ideal world would be one where no foreigner had participation, no matter how minimal it was.
In oil exploration and exploitation, López decided to cancel the oil field allocation round scheme despite the fact that under it the private company that obtained the exploitation concession assumed all the risk, in addition to the fact that in the event that it did find and exploit the oil in the concessioned field, Mexico would receive a higher oil rent than if Pemex were the producer. Also in hydrocarbons, in this case gasoline, the president decided to violate the T-MEC.
The case of lithium López, decreed the “nationalization” of a resource that by constitutional mandate has been the property of the Nation since February 5, 1917 and also sells it as an act of patriotism. Surreal and notoriously ridiculous even more so when he decrees the creation of a public body for its monopoly exploitation that lacks the technology to exploit it so it may never be produced.
Finally electricity. López hates that a fraction of the generation is made by private, national and foreign companies. I really want it all to be generated by the CFE and hence their attempts to limit private participation by ordering the CRE to discriminate against them and promulgating a reform to the Electricity Industry Law that is being challenged in court, as well as being violent the USMCA.
The latest event in this sector is that of Iberdrola which, given the continuous attacks by López and the illegal discrimination by the CRE, decided to sell, at a profit, 13 electricity generation plants, 12 of which are combined cycle natural gas as an input and a wind farm including in the transaction the independent power producer contracts. López presented it as a new nationalization of the electricity industry, which is false: the plants and the contracts are sold to a private fund (Mexico Infrastructure Partners) who will pay the CFE to operate them (the latter assuming all the risk regarding the price). of gas), while on the other hand MIP will charge this company for the energy it generates. The net, they chamaquearó to López.
An operation of 6,000 million dollars that does not add a single volt to the generation capacity, but that left the president happy because he was able, in his mind, to take revenge on Iberdrola, who dared to hire Felipe Calderon as a counselor; It doesn’t matter that the big loser in this operation is Mexico.
Twitter: @econoclasta
