A regime like the Mexican one needs fetishes to build that hegemony that moves it.
For example, sovereignty and energy autonomy are flags that have led the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador to go against the current of the world and bet on the construction of a refinery in Tabasco that continues without yielding results.
Or to contravene the Mexican Constitution itself and different international agreements, including the TMEC, to marginalize foreign energy companies.
Under the same optics, this regime married the discourse that they would lower the price of gasoline and although that promise was not fulfilled, hundreds of billions of pesos have been allocated to subsidize their prices.
There is not, for example, that fetishistic use with the price of tortillas that have been allowed to move to the rhythm of the market, even though this product has a greater social impact.
The point is that one of López Obrador’s favorite fetishes is the strength of the peso against the dollar.
The President and his spokesmen did not tire of highlighting the exchange rate on that path that he undertook from the levels of 20.50 pesos per dollar last summer to the surprising 17.90 just last week.
“Triumph of the 4T” such a strong weight was repeated by the President and even the Head of Government, Claudia Sheinbaum, who dared to publish last January that some suffered from the heavy weight that she attributed to the economic policy of López Obrador.
And that is precisely the point, that from that leadership of the regime they begin to suffer with the ongoing exchange rate depreciation. Because if we pay attention to what they repeated without further analysis from those in power, then the strong depreciation of the peso must also be the responsibility of López Obrador.
Of course it is not, but if the President feels the need to fix the condition of this currency fetish he might feel the need to intervene in some way.
Basically, the only relatively effective way to try some kind of intervention in the exchange market would have to be from the Bank of Mexico, and even then it is very difficult due to the size of the market that the Mexican currency has achieved in the financial world.
The President could start with some kind of pressure in his mornings so that the Bank of Mexico injects dollars from its reserve to defend the peso. The truth is, there is no longer anything impossible that can be said in these conferences.
And that is when the central bank would have to come out to mark its line of autonomy.
The President can feel calm that in Banxico the hawks who prefer high interest rates to curb inflationary pressures dominate, and this high cost of money somehow underpins the strength of the peso.
Of course, we will have to wait for the turbulent financial waters to calm down for that prize in pesos to regain its appeal.
But it is a fact, López Obrador already imagined handing over power with a six-year appreciation of the peso. What we have remembered in these few days is that the volatility of the markets does not move to the rhythm of those personal dreams.
They did not tire of highlighting the exchange parity on that path that began from last summer’s 20.50 pesos per dollar to the surprising 17.90 last week.
