Enrique
Krauze

We have confused —or conflated— democracy and the republic. They should be, and in many cases have been, compatible and complementary, but they are not identical. Democracy is the political task of citizens; the republic is the institutional and legal framework that makes it possible. Yet democracy is always at risk of being corrupted by demagoguery, and that is when the republic and democracy can come into conflict. Unfortunately, this is the case in Mexico today.

Democracy, an invention of the Greeks, essentially answers the question: Who has the right to govern? The answer is: the majority. But to prevent demagogic corruption, the Greeks devised rules to remove from office those leaders who, abusing their popularity, sought excessive concentrations of power or incited revolution. Although Athens ultimately succumbed to tyranny and later to Macedonian and Roman rule, its history records no philosophical thesis, episode, or figure who defended the political suppression of minorities in the name of democracy. That suppression had a name: tyranny—and no tyrant ever claimed to act “in the name” of democracy. Unfortunately, that is the case in Mexico. Today.

The republic, an invention of the Romans, essentially answers the question: What limits should be placed on power? The answer: all that are necessary. Fearing the tyranny of the many and of the one, Rome devised a tripartite division of power: the Senate, legislative assemblies, and executive magistrates—two consuls, not one, elected annually. This republican order, developed over five centuries, brought law—and with it, Roman civilization—to the world. It eventually collapsed at the hands of a single leader and his popular following. What followed was an empire that globalized citizenship and, in its heyday under Augustus, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius, paid formal homage to the republic. Yet long periods were dominated by figures like Caligula, Nero, and Commodus, intoxicated by power and trampling on the historical legacy. Unfortunately, this is the case in Mexico today.

The Mexican regime has used democracy to destroy the republic. How? By interpreting democracy—clearly in bad faith—as the tacit will of the people entrusted to the regime to do whatever it wants, including suppressing the rights of the (immense) minority.

In Latin, this demagogic device is called the fallacy ad populum. It consists in pretending that truth depends on the number of people who believe in it. But truth is not quantitative: no matter how many people believe something, truth is the agreement between what is said and what is real.

The regime’s spokespeople practice the fallacy ad populum ad nauseam. They often get etymological: “demos, people; kratos, power.” Or they turn to Latin: “Vox populi, vox Dei.” Or they grow sententious: “The people are never wrong.” At heart, their inspiration—perhaps unintentional—is Carl Schmitt, the philosopher of Nazism: “The specific distinction of politics is the confrontation between friend and enemy.”

When those supposedly infallible people brought Hitler to power in 1933 and rejoiced at the destruction of the Weimar Republic, Schmitt believed he saw his doctrine realized as prophecy. We all know the consequences of that “divine” voice—of that German demos handing kratos to the Führer. But no one thinks of that madness as a triumph of democracy. Unfortunately, Mexico is experiencing its own madness. Today.

This act of barbarism, euphemistically called judicial reform, is being presented as a democratic feat. “The people demanded it to end corruption and nepotism,” it is demagogically proclaimed. This is a double fallacy: Where is it recorded that “the people” demanded the reform? And even if they did, such an opinion would not establish its legitimacy. Worse, the regime—rife with nepotism and corruption—now clears its conscience by invoking the people.

The deification of power produces such monstrosities. Greece never regained its democracy. Rome sacrificed its republic forever. Now, here, in Mexico—implausibly, without separation of powers or respect for the law or autonomous institutions, with hordes of criminals at our gates, amid bread and circuses, in a vast kingdom of lies, with fragile freedoms, distorted democracy, and destroyed republican institutions—we find ourselves.

A Country Without Law

History will record the costs left behind by the destructive machine known as the Fourth Transformation. Many are already irreparable. Consider the previous administration’s negligent handling of COVID and its criminal “hugs, not bullets” policy, which sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives. The jungles of the southeast, along with their trees and species, are gone forever. Other costs continue to accumulate: payments for the airport that was never built; the one that was built but doesn’t work; the train that doesn’t run; the refinery that doesn’t refine. And let’s not forget the massive subsidies to Pemex and the CFE or the opportunity costs in countless areas: education, health, security, culture, infrastructure. In some areas, there are signs of a desire to stop the bleeding. But one cost is truly irreversible: the so-called judicial “reform.”

Was reform necessary? Of course—it was necessary across the justice system, from prosecutors and police to courts and prisons. But reform is not destruction. What has been done is destruction.

Mexico’s legal tradition—dating back 200 years to the first federal Constitution—is being destroyed. Institutionally, the country was built (never forget that word) by people like Juárez, whose lives revolved around the law: study, research, publishing, teaching, the courts, the bar, the judiciary. Traditions are the backbone of a nation as much as, or more than, its material works. That tradition is now buried.

So too is the separation of powers. It may not have existed under Porfirio Díaz or the PRI, but even then, a certain respect for form prevailed. And in the face of executive and legislative excesses, the judiciary often performed less disgracefully. Starting in 1994, the separation began to function and lasted until the current regime decided to abolish it.

The “reform” destroys the professional lives—and in some cases the assets—of hundreds of judges and their families. It eliminates the Judicial Council and replaces it with a Disciplinary Tribunal and an Administrative Body, both sure to be as servile to the executive as the judiciary was before Zedillo’s genuine and historic reform.

The most serious consequence is the cost to future generations. With all its flaws and arbitrariness—and they were many—there was at least, in the Mexican imagination, an aspiration: the law was the law, not the word of the king. This alone explains the old vocation of the lawyer. From now on, law will be what the regime says it is: an empty word.

The fraudulent executive and legislative elections of the 20th century never reached the grotesque carnival that culminated on June 1. Perhaps a few competent and honest judges will sneak through, but more likely there will be pathetic, implausible, and outrageous cases. The damage won’t be immediate. Like a subtle poison, it will slowly seep through society, affecting all types of litigation, sowing fear, uncertainty, and confusion. It will discourage initiative and investment at the root, until it reaches its goal: the political prostitution of the law.

We are burying something very precious: a historical idea of justice distinct from state handouts; a margin of protection against arbitrary power; a safeguard of individual freedoms and rights. The memory of our great jurists—Otero, Rejón, Zarco, Vallarta, Sierra, Rabasa—has been trampled. In his hometown of Jilotepec, the judge Andrés Molina Enríquez (author of Los grandes problemas nacionales) would be ashamed of the affront to his profession. Alberto Vásquez del Mercado, the minister who stood up to Calles in 1931, would feel contempt for the four sitting ministers—I will not stain this page with their names—who, with their resignation, lies, demagoguery, and treason, have dishonored the Court.

Daniel Cosío Villegas once invoked the ministers of the Restored Republic—Ramírez, Altamirano, Iglesias: “They were fierce, haughty, arrogant, irrationally independent.”

What judge, magistrate, or minister appointed through the spurious process just carried out could even dream of possessing the moral stature of those eminent Mexicans?