Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Mexico begins 2025 with a new political system, a new Constitution, and new players in the decision-making process. Large foreign and national capitals, drug trafficking, and the Army have a privileged dialogue with the Morenista regime while the opposition is crushed and practically eliminated. A market regime is being established in Mexico with an exclusionary political system prone to authoritarianism.
On the relationship between capitalism and democracy, John Maynard Keynes postulated that a prosperous economy is fundamental to the functioning of an effective democracy. A government that promotes economic well-being contributes to democratic stability. Economic health and democratic health go hand in hand. Both Karl Marx, a sharp critic of capitalism, and Joseph Schumpeter, an advocate of capitalism, agreed that the malfunctioning of capitalism could lead to the erosion of democracy through the deterioration of the terms of social wealth sharing.
In 2025, nations will debate the nature and quality of their respective capitalism. Apart from Cuba and North Korea, the rest of the world practices some form of capitalism. The European and American models of liberal capitalism, with democratic electoral political systems, even some mixed with inherited monarchies adapted to a ceremonial yet stabilizing role, are no longer the norm.
The idea of most European and American theorists that political-electoral democracy was a prerequisite for the proper functioning of the capitalist economy today faces a severe denial. From Alexis de Tocqueville to Milton Friedman, there was a recognition of the intimate relationship between capitalist economy and democracy.
Countries such as China, Russia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and a plethora of African countries are building capitalist economies on a semi-authoritarian political firmament or, in fact, under dictatorial schemes. All these countries are proving that various forms of capitalism can emerge with relative success under authoritarian political schemes of control, including the total exclusion of the opposition.
This phenomenon of moving towards the mixture of a capitalist economy with severe and legal political exclusions is what Mexico is experiencing under Morenista’s rule. A subordinated capitalist economy such as Mexico’s, but linked to the world’s largest capitalist market, seeks to survive successfully by carrying a regime prone to the political exclusion of opponents or of dissident ideas or ideas different from its own. It fosters a political-electoral regime with no competition, and the regime’s loyalists occupy all the elected positions.
Morenismo has had the cynicism to announce that it will not rest until it has eliminated the political opposition from the last governorships it retains, notoriously Chihuahua, Aguascalientes, Durango, Queretaro, Jalisco, Nuevo León and Guanajuato. It is devoting all its human and financial resources to achieving that goal. It is moving political cadres from Mexico City to these regions for further colonization.
As the centerpiece of the new dominant political regime, Morena offers Mexico the consolidation of a justice system whose cornerstone is no longer the Amparo but now finds its apex in the unofficial pre-trial detention. Everything fits in this new justice system, knowing how to accommodate it. The broadening of the catalog of grounds to apply unofficial preventive detention facilitates the subjective interpretation of almost any conduct that does not please the hegemonic political power. Do you have problems with your invoices when they are presented to the tax authority? For the time being, you will go to jail. Has anyone questioned your expenses? For the time being, you should be imprisoned until the case is clarified.
And so on, almost to infinity, are the grounds for the unofficial preventive imprisonment susceptible to the interpretation of the authority. This change in the paradigm of the justice system in Mexico presages a fundamental change in the democratic system, from an open one with clear rules applicable to all to a closed one with a system of norms and regulations that the authority can interpret at its discretion. This is the profound meaning of the change from the Amparo system to the official pretrial detention system.
What does this paradigm shift portend for Mexico, along with the popular election of judges, magistrates, and ministers? The law is applicable in terms of its political interpretation and not the interpretation according to the letter of the law. With the popular election of judges, simulation, incompetence, and “moral flexibility” in decision-making are privileged.
We are facing the transformation of the political system into one that can legally justify all its instruments of social control and simultaneously hide its real actions and decisions, reinforcing its control over the economy, politics, and society.
Morena dedicates all its energy to consolidating an internal political system that allows it to govern the whole country without making pacts with opposing forces or forces different from its own, including its “allied” parties. Without qualms, Morena proposes to move towards a market economy with limited freedoms and subject to the authority’s opinion.
What is coming is a novel system of extended political and social control based on new laws and, de facto, although not de jure, on a new constitutional regime. When this Legislature finishes its term, it will have written a new constitution without announcing it. Legally, Morena can govern by changing laws to prolong its stay in power without the slightest consultation with the opposition parties.
But, since Mexico is still a market economy, the regime must consult with the powers that be in the economy. Therefore, those who are actors of consultation are the big capitals, of which there are three in the country—first, the big owners of capital, national and foreign. Secondly, there is drug trafficking, as the most important source of employment and production of big capital in the country, and, finally, there is the army and PEMEX, as executors of the most critical public budgets in the country, without the obligation to be accountable to the people.
These are the three preferred players of the Morenista regime. What they have in common is that nobody elected them. Still, they are distinguished by their economic capacity, and their firepower is considered in the cases of drug trafficking and the Army.
Foreign capital is prioritized for its relationship with the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC’s centers of political power, the United States, Canada, and, to a lesser extent, European and Chinese partners, and its productive capacity.
Mexico, then, begins 2025 with a new political system, where opposition voices are ignored or crushed, and the negotiation of the future takes place between Morena and the large armed and unarmed capitals.
@rpascoep
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