Behind the curtain of Mexico’s progress

Mexico has taken the oath its first female president. This seems like a bold step towards equality and progress – all the more impressive because the new president, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, is of Jewish descent. Her father’s parents emigrated from Lithuania to Mexico in the 1920s; Her mother’s parents fled from Bulgaria to Mexico in the early 1940s.

But Mexico is making no progress toward an egalitarian future. The country is falling into an authoritarian past.

President Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, systematically destroyed the checks and balances of Mexican democracy, subjecting once-independent government institutions to the president’s personal power.

Independence of the judiciary? Gone, abolished by the last major legislation of his presidency. Judges will now be chosen by party vote. Independent election administration? Paralyzed. Impartial enforcement of government transparency rules, impartial antitrust enforcement, impartial telecommunications regulation, impartial energy regulation? Abolished, abolished, abolished and abolished again. Only the central bank will be able to maintain its autonomy from direct presidential control after a long struggle.

The biggest question for Mexico’s future: Who will wield the power that López Obrador has consolidated?

The obvious answer seems to be that the new president will inherit the power of the old one. Sheinbaum is now the legal head of state, the legal head of the government. It can hire and fire government employees. She signs or vetoes bills. She heads the security services and the armed forces. She will probably become the new boss of the Mexican state.

But things could prove more complicated than that.

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LOpez Obrador built a strong presidency on top of a weak Mexican state. Control over large parts of Mexican territory is disputed between the government and criminal gangs known as cartels. The Mexican political system is seriously permeated by organized crime. About a quarter of the economy – and more than half of all employment – ​​is informal, operating outside the law, untaxed and uncontrolled.

López Obrador’s power was based not only on his legal authority as president, but also on his personal charisma and his complex and mysterious agreements with the cartels. López Obrador could not bequeath that other dimension of his power to a successor even if he wanted to – and there is no evidence that he has done so. He favored Sheinbaum over other potential successors because she was the candidate who most effusively praised López Obrador and his “fourth transformation” of Mexican society. López Obrador may also have gambled that by choosing the least magnetic successor with the smallest personal following, he could best extend his own hold on popularity beyond the end of his term.

López Obrador has hemmed in Sheinbaum with new restrictions that he could use to threaten her power. Mexican presidents are now being recalled, an innovation of López Obrador. He easily survived his own recall election in 2022; but if he, the most popular of recent Mexican presidents, were to campaign for the recall of his less popular successor, the outcome could be very different.

In short, López Obrador has orchestrated his succession in such a way that he can remain the real power in the country even after leaving office. This device has a precedent in Mexico. In the mid-1920s, a former general, Plutarco Elías Calles, held the presidency for four years. Although he left office at the end of his term, he controlled the government for five more years, appointing and replacing successors at will. Mexicans call this period the ‘Maximato’ because Calles remained the ‘maximum leader’ in both fact and form.

Many presidents since Calles have sought to control their successors in this way. No one has succeeded. Will López Obrador? Again, the answer is complicated.

First, there is the fact of human mortality. López Obrador is 70 years old and has a history of heart problems; rumors persist about his possibly declining health.

Second, it is far from clear whether a López Obrador-inspired effort to recall Sheinbaum would go smoothly. Recalling Sheinbaum would open the presidency to new elections, with potentially unpredictable results. López Obrador governed through his Morena party. Until now, it has functioned as a personal movement, completely obedient to López Obrador’s orders. But thanks to Morena, many people have now built political careers: governors, senators, members of Congress. If an absent López Obrador ordered them to risk their own future to punish President Sheinbaum, would they do so? Maybe not. The price for guessing wrong and supporting an unfavorable cause in Mexican politics could be a violent death at the hands of the cartels: at least 34 candidates were murdered in the 2024 elections. Mexican politicians want protection from the police and military – and that protection can only be provided by the current president, not the previous one.

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If the party When it comes to deciding a future power struggle between the ex-president and the current president, would the party itself become the heir to power? After all, the party – and not the president – ​​will choose the Mexican judges, at least in theory. Judges will have to compete for their jobs on party lists. Because Morena is by far the strongest party, its loyalists will decide who rules over Mexican law.

For most of the 20th century, Mexico was ruled by a one-party oligarchy, not a dictatorship. Even Calles was eventually overthrown and exiled by the party machine he created. Every president after Calles understood that his power was granted to him by the party for a limited term. That was the system in which López Obrador also grew up, and for which he has paid so much respect during his decades-long political career.

In many ways, Mexico seems to have returned to that past: Morena now resembles the one-party oligarchy of the mid-twentieth century. Morena controls the majority of state governments and has a large enough majority in Congress to rewrite the constitution as it sees fit. Morena exercises enormous patronage power in many areas of life in Mexico: especially energy production, access to higher education and social security.

Since the turn of the century, however, Mexico has broken away from a society that supported one-party rule. Among other changes, the old system relied on state control of the economy. Mexico today is a much more open economy than it was in the 1950s and 1960s. Free trade agreements with Canada and the United States limit the Mexican government’s power to use economic favoritism as a tool. The old ruling party held power as the representative of all major social interests. As dominant as Morena is, López Obrador’s party faces significant opposition from many sectors, especially Mexico’s business community.

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President and party are not the only sources of political power in Mexico. López Obrador also created a potential third: the military.

Modern Mexico has successfully excluded the military from politics. López Obrador invited the country back. He entrusted the army with civilian functions, so that, for example, it now manages Mexico’s borders and customs. It is also deeply involved in national infrastructure projects: the construction of an environmentally devastating railway line through the Yucatán, the operation of a new airport for Mexico City and the operation of a civil airline.

As president, López Obrador diligently courted the military’s favor. When a high-ranking general was arrested by the United States on drug trafficking charges, López Obrador threatened to end all law enforcement cooperation with U.S. authorities unless charges were dropped and the general released. The Trump administration relented; in 2023, López Obrador personally decorated the accused general.

The Mexican military’s long and proud tradition of political abstinence is under threat. If the Mexican state continues to lose control of areas to the cartels, the military may well feel compelled to win a war that the civilian government apparently cannot win.

López Obrador’s presidential legacy consists of the weakening of the state and the undermining of institutions that once protected the freedoms of Mexicans. The symbolic progress of Sheinbaum’s election as president should not obscure the reality of Mexico’s democratic decline. The liberal democratic ideal in Mexico has not yet died out. Thousands of Mexicans demonstrated for that ideal and voted against López Obrador’s authoritarianism. But the ideal is flickering – and the Mexicans who still uphold it feel alone and in extreme personal danger in a society where violent death can claim anyone, at any time.