From Oil to Lithium

Extractivism in the Mexican Social Imaginary as Political Legitimizer

Resumen

Since the expropriation of 1938, oil has occupied a central place in the Mexican social imaginary, strongly linked to nationalism. Despite time and changes in the economic model, oil continued to be part of the country's magma, providing legitimacy to the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) governments for many years. Likewise, with the discovery of considerable lithium reserves, the actual Mexican Government seeks to monopolize its exploitation, creating a state-owned company, as PEMEX used to do with oil. Furthermore, the Government has generated a nationalist discourse that tends to place lithium within the social imaginary, as the PRI did years ago with oil. Based on the theoretical proposal of Cornelius Castoriadis and the differentiation between social theory and social imaginary proposed by Charles Taylor, this paper presents how the Mexican government has used extractive products, oil and lithium, to legitimize itself, favoring their incorporation into the social imaginary.