Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
With the recall, Morena learned that it could violate the law with impunity in seeking to win elections in Mexico. What has been happening in the weeks before the elections in six states of the Republic is the implementation of such wrongdoings. It is a tragic learning for the country because the lessons learned by this party put Mexican democracy on a path toward its destruction.
Morena learned that it could violate the law and ignore the electoral institutions. It did it without any cost to his party, especially since those who lead the anti-institutional charge are public officials who are the first ones obliged to respect the electoral laws embodied in the constitution.
But Morena also learned that it does not have enough support to win cleanly and legitimately the presidential elections in 2024. That his victory in 2024 is not certain.
Today, with the state elections, there will be one more test to the plan’s implementation to decisively alter his electoral results. Sheinbaum, Ebrard, and López Hernández lead the death race towards destroying the fragile national consensuses, of the little that remains a turning point before reaching totalitarianism. They ignore and violate the law and accuse others of being responsible.
Together with their presence in the public harangue, these public officials serve as a cover-up for the operation of thousands of public officials pressuring voters to support Morena candidates or suffer the immediate and withering cut of their social benefits. Today, the precariousness and poverty of the people are the most precious weapon of Morenismo to win elections.
What a bitter irony! The party that promised to get Mexicans out of misery has increased the number of poor people by millions and needs them to remain poor to stay in power. They learned that with the recall and discovered that it was not enough to assure victory.
The second lesson is that there is no reprimand or punishment for violating the law en masse together with the President of the Republic and expressing their total disregard for the electoral authority. As in the whole nation, when the rule of law is ignored, impunity reigns. This impunity is the crown jewel, especially when it comes to the next step: the political decision not to leave power democratically.
During the recall process, violations of the electoral laws, the unlimited use of the public budget, and thousands of public officials’ militancy touring the country were the norm. Everything took place in total opacity, illegality, and impunity.
But now they are going further. The recourse to criminally sue legislators who exercised their right to vote according to their consciences, accusing them of being traitors to the country, is one more political instrument to blackmail society as a whole. The message of such perverse intention is to tell society: “you see, if these powerful legislators are not capable of defending themselves, they will not be able to defend you”. And, more subliminally, the message is, “surrender all of you; Mexico belongs to Morena! You are lost!
This totalitarian message is always intimidating and threatening. But AMLO also learned that the force of the State at the service of the single thought, and the single party, is not enough to convince society “that it has no other choice”.
Consequently, he decided to move more aggressively on the road to obtain the total surrender of society at the feet of his ongoing authoritarian model. It resolved to take more imposing steps to indefinitely maintain power in its hands.
It consciously reinforces this path of harshness with messages to reinforce the inevitability of his imposition. The most recent message was his visit to the Golden Triangle in Sinaloa. His presence there served to let the nation know, without words or images, that the narco-AMLO alliance is already an institutional fact so that there is not the slightest doubt that behind the violence of the narco-arms, there is an official endorsement.
This was not an occurrence or a mistake. It was a strategic decision to appear in the territory of the Sinaloa cartel. The trip sent a clear and forceful message: “I want you to know that today there is a co-government among the weapons in Mexico, together with Morena, as the dominant political institute. We are restoring the balances of the past”.
In order to achieve this “revolutionary nationalist co-government of arms”, the Mexican Armed Forces must also have a relevant role in the new scheme of governance by force. It is not enough to have an agreement with drug trafficking. It is necessary to have a trilateral pact with Mexico’s legal and constitutional arms. For that, it is required to create a new scheme of participation in decision-making. In the trilateral Presidency-Narco-Armed Forces (FFAA) model, everyone must have their hands in the pot of prosperity.
The President manages the federal budget as his patrimony. The narcos have billions from their thriving drug business, a business that the government does not inhibit. To balance the deal, he has to ensure that the military has access to lots and lots of money. This explains the handing over of airports, ports, railroads, banks, and, in general, works in the millions to the military. Without this, there would not be balance and complicity in the relationship, but only envy and envy destroy the best arrangements.
To solve this imbalance, it was essential for the President to take his two most important generals to get to know Cuba’s political, economic, and military system. That country has developed a system of civil-military co-government where the military is simultaneously prosperous businessmen and masters of the arms that sustain a dictatorial political regime. The Cuban army manages a significant portion of the Cuban economy and, therefore, they think like businessmen whose interest is to keep things as they are since they defend their class interests.
That is what López Obrador wanted the Mexican generals to see, learn and admire from Cuba. So that they would understand that his interest lies in keeping things as they are, towards the death of democracy in Mexico and the emergence of a new one-party system, the Cuban style, where the elites live like kings and control the masses with military efficiency. As it happens in Venezuela, with its “bolibourgeoisie“, the army, and drug trafficking.
This “revolutionary nationalism” adapts to the new circumstances of the world. It offers an uneducated populism without progressive ideology based on corruption and social control. As a condition to justify itself, this recycled ideological invention requires a distance from the great powers of the world, especially the West and specifically the United States. It needs that distance from world scrutiny to operate its immoral and unethical alliance in the shadows.
In reality, AMLO is not creating something new. He is building a copy of the copy of our continent’s most closed and anti-democratic regimes. Latin American authoritarian DNA springs from the torn veins of peoples overwhelmed by centuries of oppression.
The defense of democracy against authoritarianism is the task of all of us. Society must not panic or surrender in the face of a terrifying history of recycled authoritarianism and armed elites defending their interests. Non-reelection, effective suffrage, the permanence of the National Electoral Institute (INE), and a united opposition are the weapons we have to guarantee a democratic future in Mexico. Democracy is in the balance.
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