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not the facts anymore irrational and more atrocious that grind the lives of Mexicans every day is the payment of the public debt. As always, it is a fact especially abominable for those below. According to international law, the portion contracted abroad should be called odious debt, execrable debt, illegitimate debt or unjust debt, because those who pay it did not contract it or request it; It is therefore not required. But in fact, no one escapes paying it, even those who have not been born. Internal or external, they are more than odious debts.
The restriction introduced by international law is not valid: the internal public debt has exactly the same character as the external one. In both cases, its payment has a devastating impact, and the population that pays it did not request it: it is not required. No candidate to occupy the Executive Power has ever warned that he would incur internal and external indebtedness at the expense of the citizens. The government program that they have proposed to be elected never mentions the intention of squeezing the people through odious debt. Of course, that’s not how the world works, but nothing obliges us to accept nonsense that enriches a handful of privileged people at the cost of the lives of the most.
In Mexico, in 2020 the economic and health repercussions of covid-19 caused a loss of income of the order of 317.8 billion pesos (mmp). Meanwhile, the debt service (interest included) was 727.7 billion pesos, more than double.
In the last 10 years, the cost of debt has grown more than the budget allocated to physical investments and public programs. While the payment of interest and debt service increased at an average rate of 6.6 percent per year, programmable spending – current spending and investment aimed at providing public goods and services to the population – barely did so at a rate of 1.1 percent; and physical investment has fallen at an average rate of minus 5.2 percent per year.
In the same period, the Mexican economy has grown at an average annual rate of 1.8 percent and public income at a rate of 2.4 percent; meanwhile, the cost of debt has grown 3.6 times more than the economy and 2.7 times more than public income. These disparate growth ratios mean that Mexico is one of the countries that has had to allocate the largest proportions of public spending to paying interest on the debt, among the OECD member countries. In 2018, for example, interest payments absorbed 13.4 percent of public spending, while, on average, OECD members spent 4 percent of spending on this item. Part of the explanation lies in the level of interest rates: Mexico has paid with rates of the order of 5 percent, but the US or Japan do so with rates below 2 percent (data and estimates in Carlos Vázquez Vidal: https://ciep.mx./oUTO).
No country, especially in the global south, should ever accept as normal
these realities of capitalism, significantly worsened during its neoliberal period. It is a vile robbery to which the system has always given the force of law. Because that is what the formation and distribution of value dictates in this system, a few have the right to receive huge amounts of money in exchange for nothing. What do Mexicans receive in exchange for the billions delivered as interest payments to the ultimate beneficiaries of what was called Fobaproa, today IPAB: nothing. These gentlemen (Mexicans and foreigners) have a coupon, certificate or action (the legal form is the least important), which represents the right to receive substantial funds generated by the work of others. It is pure and simple robbery. It is the right to brutally rob others, for nothing. It is the monopoly of property, of all forms of capital (industrial, commercial, real estate, banking) that, in our days, has mostly reached its owners through the mechanism of inheritance. These owners have done nothing at all; they did not even conduct the process of formation of their capitals; they are only multimillionaire owners with the right to live in the most bizarre consumption, with outlandish spending that threatens nature. Their cars, their planes, their helicopters, their yachts, their mansions, are toxic agents that acutely affect the lives of those who generate the resources on which those same rentiers live.
In Latin America, there is extensive experience in the repudiation of foreign debt. Mexico did it in 1920-1945. He stopped paying an unpayable debt. He negotiated for more than 20 years, and was able to discount close to 90 percent of the debts.
It is necessary to rethink in facing the huge debts that AL suffers. It must be done starting with a thorough audit of the debts and their destination. There has been a corrupt use of indebtedness: it is suspicion; During the neoliberal period, debt and oil revenues often grew in Mexico side by side.
