Capitalism, political power, and social transformation in Mexico (2000–2025): The struggle among capital, state, and people in the redefinition of the economic model

This article examines secular stagnation in Mexico, its shared features with Latin America, and context within the economic stagnation of developed economies. In the Mexican case, external dependence, industrial fragility, and the absence of an autonomous productive strategy for four decades have kept the country trapped between international vulnerabilities and domestic limits, unable to break the low-growth cycle that began in the 1980s. The analysis of Latin American capitalism highlights its historically dependent nature, dominated by elites subordinated to foreign capital, with poorly diversified productive structures and fragile international integration. Between 1980 and 2025, the region showed a lackluster performance in investment, productivity, and industrial weight, unable to sustain its own development path. Faced with this scenario, the progressive governments of the 21st century opened spaces for redistribution and the expansion of rights, but their advances were constrained by neo-extractivism, fiscal discipline, and pressure from markets and domestic interests. This raises the question of whether Latin American progressivism can transcend its own contradictions in an increasingly multipolar context. Under the Fourth Transformation (4T), the Mexican case clearly illustrates these tensions. Since 2018, significant improvements have been made in wages, poverty reduction, the expansion of social programs, and tax collection efficiency focused on large taxpayers. However, income concentration among the richest 1%, the absence of a progressive tax reform, and persistent industrial weakness show that, despite social progress, structural change remains limited. The conclusion is that deep transformation requires the state to build an autonomous and redistributive productive model capable of overcoming external dependence and domestic inequality while managing the struggle capital and labor over the definition of the political and economic model.