In the book Extractive Imperialism in the Americas Capitalism New Frontier by James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer. In Chapter 8, Darcy Tetreault opines in Resistance and Reform in Mexico Mining Sector that Mexico has become the number one recipient of investment in mining exploration in Latin America. In the context of booming metal prices during the first decade of the 21st century, foreign and national-based mining companies have extracted almost twice as much gold and half as much silver as was extracted from the country during the entire 300-year period of conquest and colonialism.
Today, Mexico is the leading silver producer, tenth in gold and copper, and among the top ten in lead, fluorite, bismuth and various other minerals. This frenzy of activity has translated, not just into high rates of profit for mining companies, but also into multiple environmental problems and social conflicts, which can be classified into two groups ... labor conflicts and eco-territorial conflicts. The former have important antecedents in the years leading up to the Mexican Revolution that broke out in 1910. They are part of a long and ongoing battle between capital and organized labor.
The national context of this struggle began to change in the 1980s, during the transition to neoliberalism, with the privatization of state-owned mining companies, the deregulation of collective labor contracts and the decomposition of the corporation political system that had regulated the demands of unionized miners since the late 1930s.
In recent years, the federal government, under the control of the right-wing National Action Party (Partido de Acci Nacional, pan) and in alliance with big Mexican capital, launched direct attacks against unionized miners. In parallel fashion, since the 1990s foreign mining companies, mostly Canadian, have expanded the mining frontier to the isolated and marginalized regions of the country.
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