Mexico’s President AMLO responds by putting relations with US and Canadian ambassadors on hold while giving the Mexican people a history lesson on US interference in Latin America.
Well, that was quick.
Just a week ago, we wagered that the US and Canadian embassies would soon begin piling pressure on Mexico as the outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (aka AMLO) seeks to pass sweeping constitutional reforms to its mining laws, energy laws and judicial system, among other things, in his last month in office. Just two days later, the US Ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, sent a communique warning that the proposed judicial reforms could have serious consequences for the US’ trade relations with its biggest trade partner:
Based on my lifelong experience supporting the rule of law, I believe popular direct election of judges is a major risk to the functioning of Mexico’s democracy. Any judicial reform should have the right kinds of safeguards that will ensure the judicial branch will be strengthened and not subject to the corruption of politics.
I also think that the debate over the direct election of judges in these times, as well as the fierce politics if the elections for judges in 2025 and 2027 were to be approved, will threaten the historic trade relationship we have built, which relies on investors’ confidence in Mexico’s legal framework. Direct elections would also make it easier for cartels and other bad actors to take advantage of politically motivated and inexperienced judges…
We understand the importance of Mexico’s fight against judicial corruption. But direct political election of judges, in my view, would not address judicial corruption nor would it strengthen the judicial branch of government. It would also weaken the efforts to make North American economic integration a reality and would create turbulence as the debate over direct election will continue over the next several years.
Canada Joins the Scrum
It didn’t take long for the Canadian Ambassador, Graham C Clark, to join the scrum, warning that Canadian investors — primarily, of course, the mining companies that dominate Mexico’s mining sector and which now face tougher regulations following Mexico’s mining reforms last year — had also expressed concerns about Mexico’s judicial reform.
“I heard these concerns this morning. So, the only thing I’m doing is listening to what our investors are saying about it and there’s concern,” Clark said, adding that the proposed judicial reforms may affect the “bond of trust” between investors and the Government of Mexico. From Forbes Mexico:
“An investment is a sign of confidence. I’m going to invest in your country, I’m going to, I don’t know, build a factory or invest in a Mexican company,” the diplomat added.
However, the ambassador clarified that his “interest is to convey the concerns of the Canadian private sector” without intervening in Mexico’s affairs.
“As a diplomat, I am very sensitive to any comment that could be seen as interference in Mexico’s affairs and it is certainly not my goal,” Clark said.
Yet interfering in Mexico’s affairs is exactly what Clark and Salazar are doing. And AMLO is acutely aware of this, as, it seems, are many Mexicans. After all, this is not the first time Salazar has meddled directly in Mexico’s domestic affairs. In 2022, Salazar — a long-serving oil and gas lobbyist with close ties to the Clintons — lectured Mexico on renewable energy as the AMLO government sought to pass an energy reform package aimed at restoring a strong role for the state in Mexico’s energy and electricity sectors.
AMLO’s “Plan C”
The AMLO government’s “Plan-C” judicial reform proposals seek to radically reconfigure the way Mexico’s justice system works. Most controversially, judges and magistrates at all levels of the system will no longer be appointed but instead be elected by local citizens. Those elections will be taking place in 2025 and 2027, and sitting judges will have to win the people’s vote if they want to continue working. New institutions will be created to regulate procedures as well as combat the widespread corruption that has plagued Mexican justice for many decades.
This, insists the AMLO government, is all necessary because two of the main structural causes of corruption, impunity and lack of justice in Mexico are: a) the absence of true judicial independence of the institutions charged with delivering justice; and b) the ever widening gap between Mexican society and the judicial authorities that oversee the legal processes at all levels of the system, from the local and district courts to Mexico’s Supreme Court.
There is some truth to this. And making judges electorally accountable may go some way to remedying these problems, but it also poses a threat to judicial independence and impartiality, of which there is already scant supply. As some critics have argued, with AMLO’s Morena party already dominating both the executive and the legislative, there is a danger that it will end up taking control of all three branches of government — just like the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, that held uninterrupted power in the country for 71 years (1929-2000).
While these risks may exist, it is also true that the AMLO government has every right to pursue these reforms, has the support of roughly two-thirds of the Mexican public in doing so, and is following established legal procedures. Put simply, it is doing nothing outside of the law. It is also true that, whatever the Washington Post may claim, Mexico’s judicial reforms are a strictly domestic issue and should be of no business to the US or Canadian governments.
In response to Salazar’s latest provocation, the AMLO government sent a strongly worded note to the White House [and is preparing to send a similar one to Ottawa]. In his Friday morning press conference, AMLO read out excerpts from the note to Washington:
The Mexican government is committed to a Judicial Branch that enjoys true independence, autonomy, and legitimacy, thus strengthening the rule of law and improving access to justice for all.
Therefore, the statement by the Ambassador of the United States of America expressing a position on this strictly domestic matter of the Mexican State represents unacceptable interference, contravenes the sovereignty of the United Mexican States, and does not reflect the degree of mutual respect that characterizes the relations between our governments.
AMLO also divulged another way in which the US government has been meddling in Mexico’s internal affairs over the past six years — namely by giving money to organizations that claim to defend human rights but in reality are dedicated to undermining Mexico’s democratically elected government.
Mexico’s Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) recently revealed that the NGO Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI) had received 96.7 million pesos ($4.95 million) from the US Embassy. CIA cut-outs the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have also been giving generously to MCCI, as we reported in 2021.
Founded in late 2015 by Claudio X. González Jr, the son of the long-serving president of Kimberley Clark Mexico, with the ostensible purpose of investigating the causes and effects of corruption and impunity, MCCI has become a major political actor. In recent years, it has helped build a coalition of opposition parties against the AMLO government. Tellingly, it didn’t start receiving donations from the US government until 2018, the year AMLO won the presidency and his party, Morena, secured a majority in Mexico’s legislative chambers.
In 2021, AMLO described the US government’s funding of MCCI as a form of golpismo, or coup promotion, and likened it to the participation of US ambassador Henry Wilson in the overthrow of President Francisco Madero during the Mexican Revolution. “It’s an act of interventionism that violates our sovereignty … Our Constitution forbids it. You can’t receive money from another country for political ends.”
Historical Background
In his speech on Friday, AMLO also provided some historical background to US meddling in Mexican and Latin American affairs. Like Vladimir Putin, AMLO has a penchant for delving deep into the past to explain current realities:
For many years… the United States has applied an interventionist policy throughout America, ever since it established the Monroe Doctrine…
For a long time Washington set the political agenda of countries on this continent. They imposed and removed presidents at their whim, they invaded countries, created new countries and new protectorates… We were invaded twice… The first time was the War of Intervention of 1847-8, which robbed us of half of our territory. Nine states of the American Union belonged to Mexico.
It was very sad. Imagine: on September 15, the [US troops] took Mexico City and hung the stars and stripes from here, the National Palace. Then, in 1914, they invaded us again, this time in Veracruz. For seven months they occupied our territory.
[T]hen they created a different strategy that was more subtle but highly effective. They began opening up US universities to young, ambitious Mexicans to educate them there… We have evidence of this: [T]hen-President Wilson was told by his secretary of state [Robert Lansing] that it was no longer necessary to invade Mexico or shoot a single bullet; it was just a question of indoctrinating young ambitious Mexicans at US universities.
And the strategy worked… for a long time. At least three (Mexican) presidents during the neoliberal period were educated in the US… [T]he [US] not only dominated politics here but also imposed the economic agenda. They were the ones who defined the so-called structural reforms, they touted the privatisations that transferred the nation’s assets from the hands of the Mexican people into the hands of private individuals and foreign companies.
So, this neoliberal, anti-people, interventionist policy led us into a terrible crisis, a prolonged economic decline — and the people of Mexico, who are fiercely protective of their traditions and are prepared to fight for justice, for freedom, for independence, and sovereignty, said “basta” [enough] and this new transformation began.
Flagrant US Hypocrisy
The US government’s flagrant hypocrisy is once again on full display in this latest diplomatic spat. As Mexico’s former Foreign Minister (and incoming Economy Minister) Marcelo Ebrard pointed out a few days ago, in 42 out of the US’ 50 states at least some, if not all, of the judges are elected:
Dear Ken: what are you talking about? [said in English]. Of all our partners, the US is the country that elects the most judges. In the US, judges are elected in 42 states of the American Union, and this has been going on for more than a century and a half. Mexico never said: ‘oops, democracy is in danger in the United States.’ No one said that, on the contrary, [the election of judges] strengthened it.
What Ebrard doesn’t mention is that all federal judges in the US, including the supreme court judges, are appointed. By contrast, Mexico is proposing to make all judge and magistrate positions subject to vote. In the case of the Supreme Court, which is the highest judicial authority of the land as well as the ultimate interpreter of the constitution, the concerns are understandable…
Read the full article on Naked Capitalism
Nick Corbishley 