The McDonalization of Mexico

 Starbucks has 670 retail outlets in Mexico, Subway has 900, and Walmart has 2,610 (the largest number in any country after the US), not to mention, 718 Dominos, 19558 Oxxo (a Coca Cola store),  and 400 KFCs, plus McDonald's, Pizza Huts, Baskin Robbins and Burger Kings, joined by Home Depot, Office Depot, Citigroup, JP Morgan Case, and thousands of factories, from Ford to General Electric.

More and more US transnationals have opened up in Mexico over the past few decades, taking advantage of unfair trade agreements, super-exploitative labor conditions, and cheap utilities. Local restaurants and traditional Mexican markets struggle to compete. The impact of this change in urban landscape and consumption on Mexicans' identity, lifestyle, and culture, shouldn't be underestimated.

"There isn't any equality of conditions, so it isn't really a competition," says Iktiuh Arenas, an expert in urban planning and human rights, and a specialist with Mexico's Secretariat of Agrarian, Land, and Urban Development (SEDATU). Arenas says shopping centers, department stores like Walmart, and transnational chain restaurants have advantages compared to local markets and craftspeople, because they have a big marketing budget. They encourage people to buy products that weren't produced locally, and they have the money to secure the best locations in squares and main streets  "This policy of urban development is based on copying the US model," he says.

Walmart in Mexico is the biggest retailer in the country, and it includes other brands, like the smaller Bodega Aurrerra supermarkets, the wholesale Sam's Club, MaxiPali, and Superama. In 1994, it had just 25 stores in Mexico, but the NAFTA agreement (1994-2020) meant it could easily sell hundreds of products imported from the US, without paying customs taxes. Department stores, shopping centers, and fast food joints from the US displaced local businesses , like the tlapalerias [Mexican stores selling paint and hardware goods.]

With NAFTA's removal of tariffs and trade barriers, these companies also benefit from some of the highest rates of exploitation in the world. While a Mexican worker in the US will earn US$1,870 per month on average, in Mexico the figure drops to US$291.

NAFTA also saw a mass displacement of rural workers in Mexico, and Arenas says public policy has abandoned rural areas in favor of cities. He argues that "classism and racism towards rural workers" have also been a factor. As more and more farmers moved to the cities, they became the new cheap labor.

People are abandoning the street markets and going to supermarkets because of their status. When a family goes to McDonald's, it's because they want to look like they are upper class. Working people are sold the idea of junk food as a way to feel modern. Many Mexicans feel the need to put on appearances. That involves pretending their living conditions are better than the poverty they face, as well as imitating the US or European ways, and buying products or brands from there. For hundreds of years, colonization has taught people that their culture and way of life were inferior.

 Consumers buy things they don't need as part of aspiring to be something better. "It strengthens those issues of classism and loss of identity," Arenas points out. Mexican people are rejecting their indigenous roots, and instead they imitate US culture. Being indigenous is stigmatized. 

Tianguis markets were a key part of people's culture and way of life, and they continue to exist in some form today in towns like Cuetzalan, Tianguistengo, Otumba, Tenejapa, Chilapa, Zacualpan, and more. In Walmarts, you exchange money with someone, but you don't exchange knowledge, you don't have real interactions. Instead of relying on interactions in the street and squares stores like Walmart have now increasingly adapted to selling online. Walmart's profits in Mexico and Central America increased to 162 billion pesos in 2020, from 148 billion in 2019.

"Mexico is dominated by the US … culturally, economically, and they even choose our presidents so that they can keep sending their companies here and enjoying cheap labor … and with that comes a policy of making people reject their culture, and that means rejecting themselves,"  Bertha Meléndez, a lifelong activist and well-known musician says.

This is nothing less than a cultural conquest.

Opinion | Walmartland: How US Stores Colonizing Mexico Are Displacing Local Culture | Tamara Pearson (commondreams.org)