Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The reasons for the Mexican revolution are under siege by the misnamed Mexican left. The most relevant result of the revolution – the Constitution – is one step away from becoming a dead letter because of the actions of López Obrador and his movement. The President’s intention is not to modify or change the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States but to throw it away.
The most important achievement of the main actors of the revolutionary movement was to conclude in the Constituent Congress and the drafting, voting, and approval of the first Constitution with a social sense in the 20th century. After the Mexican revolution came the revolutions in Russia, with a constitution representative of the socialist state, the Chinese revolution, and, in Latin America, the Bolivian (1952) and Cuban (1959) revolutions. There have been other attempts at revolutions, but what makes the historical difference between lasting and fleeting revolutions is whether they can confirm a new, inclusive governing social and political pact with the approval of a new, long-lasting constitution.
The Political Constitution of the United Mexican States is the ultimate work and result of the revolution. It embodies an agreement between forces with different and disparate ideas about how the new nation-state should be constituted. The balance between centralism and federalism is a debate that dates back to the 19th century and always represents one of the dividing points between liberal and conservative groups. All previous constitutions left the debate ambiguous while resolving other issues, such as the state-church relationship or whether to build a monarchy or a republic.
But it is impossible to understand the processes of political, social, and, crucially, economic change without crystallizing them in a new legal order. That is why the Constitution is such an important subject. A constitution is the expression of an agreement on consensus in society, broad or narrow, between groups of opinion and power.
Since he came to power, López Obrador has been acting against the Constitution. He has his legislative majority pass laws that defy the Constitution and contradict its letter. That is, they pass laws that deny the Constitution. When the legislative measures passed by the Morenista majority contradict or go against the constitutional content, it refuses to accept the legal challenges of the opposition that question those votes that leave the Magna Carta as a dead letter. Everything that has to do with the energy sector, militarization, and the National Guard, and now with the National Electoral Institute (INE), goes against the Constitution and even against the USMCA/CUSMA. He does not mind violating the written and approved letter of the law.
But, at the same time, it is incapable of producing a proposal for a new Constitution. And this is because, in reality, he lacks a national project. What drives him is the maneuver to cling to power and entrench his own in positions of dominance to control power and use the public purse as a private asset. Therefore, his three priorities are: first, to control the energy sector because he needs a free and unfettered bag of money for the expenses involved in sustaining himself and his team in power. Secondly, to exercise control over the country’s weapons, pandering to the army, corrupting and giving away the National Guard as an additional budgetary purse and armed public security apparatus. And thirdly, total control of the elections in order to avoid alternation in the country and, by the way, also to eliminate accountability on the expenses of his pharaonic works, such as the Mayan Train, Dos Bocas, and the AIFA.
The case for his “Plan B” about INE is basically to weaken the electoral body to such a degree that it will be unable to bring order to the 2024 presidential election. He believes he can win the race if legal oversight is weak or, preferably, non-existent. It is evident from now on that illegality will be the preferred behavior of the official party. Its pre-candidates flout the law daily, leaving it hidden in a drawer. They intimidate the traditional actors who should act as guarantors of the exercise of the law.
Worse: AMLO seeks to leave the Constitution as just another law without teeth or validity. He leaves it as a dead letter. That Constitution produced by a revolution, which we commemorate today, and which had a consensus among the revolutionary factions solid enough to advance 112 years after its approval, is still in force. That is the agreement, and that is the validity that López Obrador wants to throw away, at the same time that he has no alternative State but political-bureaucratic maneuvers to stay in power beyond the end of his six-year term.
He destroys the rule of law and holds the ministers of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation hostage, some co-opted and others blackmailed and threatened. AMLO’s vision is that he prefers a country without a Constitution – that is, without basic agreements of coexistence among its relevant actors – to better control the situation, either by the hand of the submissive and corrupt military or by the hand of the narco and its intertwining of their interests with his own.
AMLO’s disregard for the Mexican constitutional state destroys the most outstanding achievement of the revolutionary movement of 1910 and the Constituent Congress of 1917.
If it were up to the President, the revolution would remain a “beautiful” memory of something that was and no longer is because he does not believe in the construction of agreements but in the theory of chaos to stay in power.
And for the revolution to be a mere ephemeris.
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