Mexican Voices has begun to publish translations of Mexican op eds - mostly these are pieces that appear in Reforma. Two recent articles are: 1) a book review of Roger Bartra (Regreso a la juala de melancolia), renewing his vituperative critiques of AMLO and 2) the dictatorial logic of AMLO's government. Bartra had been sharply critical of AMLO before the election and it is hard not to conclude that his criticisms have all been amply confirmed. AMLO has been a return of the PRI - the worst aspects of Mexican nationalism and authoritarianism - rather than a turn toward social democracy or even a reasonable version of Pink Tide governments in the rest of Latin America which sought to redistribute the wealth produced by the export sector. AMLO has evinced a very mild form of resource nationalism, but has steadfastly refused to raises taxes on the rich and has funded his mostly clientelistic redistributive programs through a policy of “Republican austerity” - starving other government programs such as Seguro Social - in order to pay for his initiatives. AMLO has also attacked civil society by defunding and attempting to control the independent institutes that were created as a part of Mexico’s push for democratization. These include the National Electoral Institute, the Institute for Freedom of Access to Information and the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, among others.
Bartra also criticizes AMLO’s moral primer, based on a similar moral primer written by Alphonso Reyes, a notable Mexican intellectual. The moral primer brings back the idea of the state as a rector of the people, a notable similarity to the PRI-era moralizing nationalism. Interestingly, the booklet seems to have emerged from the AMLO’s alliance with the PES, a center right evangelical political formation in Mexico.
A year ago, when Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) undertook his third campaign for the presidency of Mexico, he declared himself “sponsor” of a “new current of thought”.
By accepting the presidential candidacy of the Social Encounter Party (PES), a center-right formation whose motto is “to transform Mexico from family and values”, the politician expressed his intention to seek the creation of a “moral constitution” for his country.
He told members of the PES that it would serve “to promote a moral paradigm of love for family, neighbor, nature, and homeland.”
And this weekend, a month and a half after assuming the presidency, AMLO materialized that idea through a decalogue called “Moral Primer” that it expects to distribute, initially, among 8.5 million beneficiaries of social programs.
The following is a pretty extended quote, but it provides some interesting background information on the PES (Partido de Encuentro Social):
The Social Encounter Party is a far-right political party in Mexico created in 2006 by Hugo Eric Flores, a neo-Pentecostal pastor that supported Felipe Calderón’s campaign for Mexico’s presidency in the State of Baja California and turned it into a National Party in 2014. It has branded itself as the “Party of the Family” and its electoral base is mainly conformed by evangelical Christians. The Social Encounter Party’s own name forms an acronym which resembles the word “Pez” (fish in Spanish) which is a symbol commonly used by Christians. In its home State, Baja California, the Social Encounter Party even uses the openly-religious ichthus symbol as their party logo, although it doesn’t use it nationally.
The PES, obviously, is against same-sex marriage, abortion, contraception and even sexual education in schools. It is also the first and only Mexican Party to be openly pro-Israel even though Mexico has had a long history of non-intervention and neutrality when it comes to world affairs.
It is interesting to compare Mexico and Brazil with respect to the way in which Evangelicals have become incorporated into politics. In Brazil, they were an important component of the political right which fused together a resurgence of class domination with culture war politics. In Mexico, culture war politics have become attached to AMLO’s attempt to articulate a conservative authoritarian populism.
The other point to discuss in this post is Morena’s recent abrogation of the Mexican constitution in extending the term of a supreme court justice that is friendly to AMLO. This is odd because Morena has the political power to change the constitution at will, given its control over numerous state legislatures, but the national party chose not to go down this route and instead to offer a series of justifications about why abrogating the constitution is just fine. Here, according to Jesus Silva-Herzog Marquez, are the rationales:
the Constitution must be violated because there are causes superior to it.
It is necessary to transgress the norms of the Constitution because the generality of its norms does not make sense in extraordinary times.
The Constitution must be violated for the benefit of those magnificent characters who deserve the public trust.
A historically sublime cause cannot be reduced to the trifles of the rules.
Heroes, being superhuman, have to listen to the call of history and do not have to read the articles in a book that limits them.
Herzog’s conclusion: this decision to willfully abrogate the constitution enunciates a logic of dictatorship in which the constitution cannot stand as an impediment of the project of the state and therefore Mexico can no longer be considered a constitutional state, but rather a populist state in which the leader, who claims to speak for the people, claims increasingly unlimited powers to act in the name of the people.
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