Mexico Delivers Historic Democratic Victory

American media condemns Mexico’s judicial reforms despite being a monumental win for the people in the fight against corruption.

As Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s tenure came to a close, he passed a sweeping set of judicial reforms that will drastically improve democracy and eradicate corruption across Mexico. Earlier this year, the left-wing coalition led by the Morena party won a huge majority in both houses of Mexico’s Congress of Union, allowing them to pass the reform bill known as “Plan C.” The reforms were passed as a permanent constitutional amendment, and 22 of the 24 state legislatures passed it, signed into law by President Obrador on September 15th. The first and most crucial change was the democratic election of all federal judges, who would now have nine-year terms for a maximum of two terms. All judges up for election have strict campaign guidelines, and they cannot take any public or private funds for campaigning to maintain the judiciary’s independence. To be eligible for election, a judge must be a natural-born Mexican citizen, have no criminal convictions, have five years of professional experience, and hold a valid law degree. The second significant change is the implementation of faceless judges to try organized crime cases, which is necessary to ensure the safety of judges. It’s a rather prevalent problem within Mexico for gangs and cartels to intimidate or threaten judges. The third change is the implementation of a Judicial Disciplinary Tribunal consisting of five members elected by popular vote with a single six-year term holding the authority to suspend, sanction, or remove judges. All judges will now have their salaries capped at the president’s salary. Among other changes, the federal Supreme Court will be reduced from 11 members to 9, and their term will be reduced to 12 years. The plan was also immensely popular since nearly 80% of the Mexican population supported the changes.

Obrador’s struggle for Mexico’s democracy was a life-long fight – Jesús Ramírez Cuevas

This reform was a significant part of the populist-left Morena party’s platform this election cycle. Newly elected President Claudia Sheinbaum won in overwhelming fashion as the Mexican people expressed their will to continue the widely popular platform laid out by Obrador. Judicial reform is the final brushstroke in Obrador’s legacy of anti-corruption measures, which he promised to the Mexican people when he took office. In his time, Obrador attacked white-collar crime, tax fraud, illegal hydrocarbon trafficking, money laundering, and now, the corrupt judiciary. On top of that, Obrador’s philosophy when fighting corruption is not just catching a few bad actors but holding the entire capitalist system accountable for stripping the working people of dignity while concentrating wealth and power with the ruling class. Obrador critiqued the rise of neoliberal policy in the 1990s, which saw the immense transfer of funds from the public sector into the hands of private corporations. Over the next thirty years, Mexico would have a severe bribery problem where corrupt officials liberally handed out government contracts and sold state-owned entities to the private sector. Obrador knew to handle this, the relationship between the state and private firms had to change fundamentally. He canceled major government contracts that did not benefit the people, cracked down on fuel theft, and got aggressive with stopping money laundering operations by seizing stolen assets. Obrador doubled the pension benefits, started major rail infrastructure projects in the south, increased the minimum wage across Mexico while pegging it to inflation, doubled Northern Mexico’s minimum wage, and lowered the region’s value-added tax. Though he still advocated for a mixed economy, not exactly a committed socialist project, his reforms worked; over 5.1 million Mexicans escaped poverty in his first four years while violent crime finally began to decrease. Problems still persist in Mexico as the scars of past state oppression still linger and the murder rate remains high, but Obrador has taken some steps to confront this reality. During his third day in office, he created a Truth Commission to investigate the Iguala mass kidnapping in 2014, where state police disappeared and executed 43 student protestors. He also made an investigative body to undercover the state-sponsored violence of the Dirty War in the 1970s, where at least 1,500 people were disappeared by the government. While these investigations only cut into the tip of the iceberg, it is the first time that Mexico’s government has investigated its own state-orchestrated crimes. 

As a result of the new judicial reforms, judges across the country went on strike, walking out of the courtroom in protest. The obvious question one may ask is, what kind of judge would be protesting such a democratic reform? What kind of judge would call such a reform a “power grab” when the reform quite literally takes power out of the government’s hands and gives it to the people? To be fair, judges could have very legitimate reasons to question such a monumental reform. However, knowing the history of Mexican corruption, we can comfortably presume that these are judges who know they will not be reelected because they are corrupt and unpopular. 

President Obrador faced intense condemnation from American media when this reform was drafted and passed this year. The New York Times published a headline reading, “Reform or the End of Justice? Mexico Is Split on Plan to Elect Judges.” despite the aforementioned poll that showed 80% of Mexicans support the change. The Times quoted in their coverage of the strikes, “The president ‘has lost it,’” and “Critics of Mr. López Obrador argue that the proposals amount to a power grab, aimed at eroding checks on the executive branch.” Upon the reforms passing, a group of right-wing protestors stormed into the legislature to disrupt the proceeding. American media like CNN jumped to headline the event as proof that this was an undemocratic change, writing, “Controversial judicial reform passes Mexican Senate after protesters break into chamber.” The British BBC also made this relatively small protest into a headline while The Washington Post published an op-ed titled “Can Mexico’s democracy survive López Obrador’s judicial reforms?” While there’s no doubt that many opposition party members did come out to protest the measure, what gets less attention in these articles is just how popular the Morena party is in Mexico and how many people come out for them. In 2023, about 500,000 Mexicans gathered in Mexico City for President Obrador’s rally against American trade policy, and then again in 2024, where tens of thousands came out to support him leaving office with an approval rating of 70%. The media’s coverage of this event is transparently distorted. It would be like if Fox News showed a small-town tea party rally in January 2009 to prove that Obama was unpopular while ignoring his 1.1 million person audience on inauguration day.

This is nothing new. It happens every time a popular left-leaning party comes into power in Latin America (or the world, for that matter); American media distorts what is going on. The US has abused the economies of Latin America for decades now. So when those countries resist influence in their country’s politics, America places sanctions, freezes assets, withdraws investment, and attempts assassinations. An American NGO, the Washington Office in Latin America, had the audacity to put out a statement titled “Judicial Reform in Mexico: A Setback for Human Rights,” where they propagandized this change as ‘political capture,’ saying that it would “deep[en] patterns of impunity and abuse against the population.” The statement was so obviously written to skew public opinion in America and sow lies that the Mexican Morena party is corrupt despite this being a popular democratic reform. The US Embassy in Mexico condemned the reform as a “major risk to the functioning of Mexico’s democracy.” In response, President Obrador then temporarily paused relations between Mexico and the American embassy as it was a blatant overreach of the US to criticize how Mexico should reform its own government. Obrador said that the United States has no business in how Mexico handles its government, and he’s right.

The utter hypocrisy here is that America is going through its own judicial crisis where the rogue conservative Supreme Court has taken it upon itself to repeal long-standing rights and rule in favor of domineering corporations. The exact same Biden administration condemning Mexico’s reforms is advocating for very similar judicial reforms right here in America. Beyond that, to suggest that Mexican judges shouldn’t be elected is insane; we already do that in America– most states hold judicial elections. Forty-five of them, in fact, have some sort of democratic input. A prominent criticism of the reform is that it will lead to more corruption, but how does that make any sense? If justices are appointed, that is, by definition, concentrating the power with the appointer. And we have no problem with this process in America; you won’t find anyone complaining here that we can elect judges. 

President Joe Biden pretty much stayed silent regarding Israel’s judicial reform in 2023, which centralized power with Israel’s right-wing governing party. These reforms sparked widespread protests throughout the country. They were seen as undemocratic measures to weaken the system of checks and balances within the government and were only supported by around 42% of the population. The US State Department’s spokesman said regarding the reform, “It would be inappropriate for us to prescribe any kind of outcome here. That is for the leaders of Israel and the citizens of Israel to determine.” However, regarding Mexico’s reform, the State Department said in their 2023 Human Rights Report that Mexico had “serious problems with the independence of the judiciary.” In a press conference, they supported the embassy’s statement, saying, “We especially look at the enactment of this law in light of our joint efforts to promote our economic competitiveness and integration,” a subtle economic threat. Following that, they said, “ultimately we will continue to have a dialogue with our Mexican colleagues on the statute and how it’s implemented.” but there is no dialogue to be had– Mexico is a sovereign country that has the right to make constitutional reforms without the US input, if it so decides.

This massive double standard is crystal clear; America does not, and has never, respected the democratic process of countries that are not enthusiastically loyal to it and its corporate interests. President Obrador fighting back against US influence signals to the rest of Latin America that they can do so too– and that profoundly frightens US leaders. If the people of Latin America reject US hegemony, where will American corporations go to extract oil, minerals, agriculture, and cheap labor? We see how the Mexican people’s struggle for true democracy is the same as our struggle. We, as part of the same class fighting against the bourgeois, celebrate their victory in solidarity.

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