Extractivist constitutional orders: the case of the Dos Bocas refinery in Mexico

During the Latin American ‘left turn’ of the early 2000s, several governments in Latin America advanced anti-neoliberal discourses, foregrounding the defence of natural resources against private corporations and adopted progressive constitutional reforms to enshrine peoples’ power and strengthening state capacity. Yet in practice, these administrations reproduced extractivist development models, coupling resource extraction with redistributive social programs. A decade later, Andres Manuel López Obrador (2018–2024) came to power in Mexico promising to revert neoliberal injustices while restoring energy sovereignty. Central to his project was the expansion of large-scale infrastructure projects. We examine the case of the Dos Bocas refinery as a result of an enduring extractivist constitutional order. Though framed as a sovereign, state-led alternative to neoliberal dependency, the Dos Bocas project expands the infrastructural and labour extractive regimes that sustain fossil-fuel production accumulation. By bringing constitutional materialism into dialogue with infrastructure studies, we show how extractivism persists not only through typical resource extraction but also through the material reorganisation of territory, labour and state capacity. We contribute to debates on constitutional materialism through an in-depth examination of the endurance of an extractivist constitutional order in Mexico, which includes infrastructure building and the creation of racialised jobs.