Far from being an isolated case, this is the third suit brought by a mining company against Mexico. In 2018, Legacy Vulcan LLC, a U.S. mining company, filed suit against Mexico on behalf of its Mexican subsidiary Calizas Industriales del Carmen (CALICA) in the amount of $500 million regarding an environmental dispute over the extraction of limestone near Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo.

In 2019, Odyssey Mineral Exploration, another U.S. company, sued Mexico for not having approved the environmental permits for its seabed phosphate mining project near the coast of Baja California Sur for the enormous sum of “at least $3.54 billion.”

Mexico has already had to pay $242 million under these types of “investor-state” suits, plus millions more in legal costs and court fees, whether under NAFTA or BITs with European countries. However, it is currently being sued for much more than that. According to calculations based on information available from UNCTAD, Mexico faces investor claims totaling at least $8 billion — right when Mexico is attempting to revive an economy severely pummeled by the coronavirus pandemic.

And the outlook appears to be even worse. Legal and corporate experts have already warned Mexico that the AMLO administration’s counter-reforms in the energy sector will generate regulatory changes that could unleash an avalanche of investor-state lawsuits.

In 2016 we warned in “Unmasked: Corporate Rights in the Renewed Mexico-European Union FTA,” a publication by the Institute of Policy Studies and the Transnational Institute, that the trade deal being renegotiated between Mexico and the European Union could make Mexico the target of lawsuits by powerful European energy companies. Indeed, extractive enterprises (oil, gas, and mining) are the biggest exploiters of this anti-democratic system. To date, in just ICSID alone, extractives firms have lodged more than 200 suits worldwide, with Latin American and the Caribbean countries the most frequent targets.

Far from ending neoliberalism, the AMLO administration has enabled these types of suits against Mexico to proceed. His MORENA party — which largely dominates congress — virtually unanimously (except for two senators) voted in favor of the USMCA and they have failed to undertake an extensive review of existing investment rules. I hope they do not follow the same path with the renewed trade deal with the European Union.

In order for Mexico to awaken from its neoliberal nightmare and be able to guarantee national sovereignty, it must reform its trade and investment treaties. If other countries are able to do so, why can’t Mexico?

This was first published in Spanish in La Jornada.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.