A Pact with Banking Oligarchies to Not Touch Pension Gold Mine

This editorial by Lev M. Velázquez Barriga appeared in the June 30, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier leftist daily newspaper.

On June 24, the decree lowering the minimum age for eligibility for a retirement pension was published in the Official Gazette of the Federation. I believe it is essential to clarify what the document states: “The right of workers in public service who fall within the scope of the tenth transitory article” of the ISSSTE Law published in March 2007 is recognized. 

This means that the vast majority of state workers, that is, 2.66 million of the total population of 3.5 million, are excluded. They were stripped of a social right and forced by [former Mexican President] Calderón’s law to use individual accounts through Afores [private pension managers]. For them, the quality of their life in retirement does not depend on a new retirement table that lowers the minimum age for receiving a pension, but rather on their own savings, following the banks’ voracious collection of commissions and the distribution of their losses among account holders.

Public scorn has been unleashed on these workers, who are the most affected by the privatization of social security, often based on biased information issued by the federal government. The official version argues that restoring the public pension system puts social programs at risk and compromises the nation’s finances allocated for fundamental needs. However, it goes unsaid that a large portion of the national budget has been mortgaged for three decades with the bank bailout, allowing the owners of the Afores to accumulate billions annually for themselves, rather than for servicing their debt. Why do we Mexicans continue to pay the debt, with accrued interest, to a very small group of magnates? Is there money for the rich, but not for the workers?

Why do we Mexicans continue to pay Mexico’s bank bailout debt, with accrued interest, to a very small group of magnates? Is there money for the rich, but not for the workers?

What’s truly unscrupulous and abusive isn’t the teachers’ demands, but rather the fact that these measures recycle formulas and tricks, prioritizing the capitalization of the banking oligarchy with public money. Such is the case of what was proposed with former President López Obrador’s decree, intended to avoid the gold mine of profiting from workers’ savings. With this provision, the Pension Fund for Well-being was created in 2024. It does not integrate the savings from individual accounts into a single public fund. Separately, and with state resources, the profits of the Afores are subsidized through compensatory measures that can be accessed starting at age 65. 

If those with special protections, three-quarters of all state employees, must wait until that age to receive an additional retirement bonus, which also depends on budget availability and not a guaranteed right, the new schedule, which reduces the retirement age to 55 for men and 53 for women, is of no concern to them. However, the official decree did not consider the proposal made to teachers during the national strike, regarding those who, due to system errors beyond their control, were included in the individual accounts. The same applies to those who were deceived by the SNTE (National Education and Training System) into making ill-informed decisions and who requested a change of regime in time, but were denied. It was said that for them, there would be the possibility of correcting it so that they would opt for the transitional tenth.

Both administrations of the Fourth Transformation (4T) have opted for legislative and political agendas that replicate the crisis of progressive Latin American countries: focusing on the realignment of the new and old political classes in government; prioritizing partisan hegemonies of agreement with the right-wing parties that serve them; and encouraging the electoral mobilization of citizens as the only valid form of political participation.

With rhetoric that emphasizes social patronage, building media consensus with the 4T, and a pact with the banking oligarchies to spare their economic interests, a new retirement system based on age, rather than years of service, is being announced. This system applies only to a small number of contributors to the ISSSTE Law who, exceptionally, had the opportunity to opt out of private Afores.

A critical reading of the Magisterium does not reject the lowering of the retirement age for those in the tenth transitional period, but it repudiates the decision that ignores a just demand, the waste of the potential that the legislative majority has to disrupt the structural foundations of neoliberalism that provided constitutional support for the dismantling of fundamental workers’ rights.

Freedom for teacher Miguel Ángel Guzmán Michel!, accused of terrorism for defending life, territory, and the democratization of the SNTE.