by Karlos Berman, published on Socialist Action, September 2, 2024
On August 27, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador [photo above] announced that his country had “paused” relations with the embassies of the United States and Canada. He stressed that the “pause” applied to the embassies and not to the countries themselves, whatever that may mean or imply. Some news outlets, apparently getting carried away, called it a “freeze.”
Mexico’s action came after the US and Canadian ambassadors made statements criticizing proposed reforms to the Mexican judiciary. The reforms would have Supreme Court judges elected rather than appointed. The ostensible purpose for the proposed change is to curb the corruption of judges by the drug trade. According to US Ambassador Ken Salazar the reform posed a “major risk to the functioning of Mexico’s democracy” and—here’s the kicker—“a potential risk to the US-Mexico trade relationship.”
Mexico’s president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum, [photo above] will replace López Obrador on October 1st. Radio Havana Cuba quoted her as saying,
“What’s best? Justices of the Supreme Court elected by the Senate of the Republic or by the people of Mexico? . . . This is democracy — democracy to elect the president, democracy for lawmakers, and democracy for the judiciary, too, so that it’s a judiciary at the service of the people.”
Of course, all that is just hot air and posturing on the part of Mexican leaders, who are used to this sort of Big Brother bossing from Washington’s proconsuls.
What business is it of the ambassador of the United States, with his Canadian satellite in tow, to criticize proposed legislation in Mexico, a nominally independent country? Is it because the US is the world’s undisputed authority on democracy?
In the United States, Supreme Court judges are appointed, of course, not elected. The purpose for that, we are told, is to protect “democracy” by removing the judges from political influence. Of course, every time there’s a vacancy on the Supreme Court we see how ridiculous that claim is.
The real reason the judges are appointed rather than elected in the United States is to insulate them from democracy—to provide a safeguard for the system against democracy. And the same, they reason, should be true for Mexico and every other country under the US imperial umbrella. After all, with popularly elected judges, US corporations operating in Mexico might be subjected to the whims of the Mexican electorate, which can be rather nationalistic when it comes to relations with the Empire of the North.
Will Mexico’s gesture of “pausing” relations with the US and Canadian embassies have any impact? No. It’s just a gesture–standing up to the Gringos for domestic political consumption, that’s all.
While US Ambassador Salazar was teaching the Mexicans how to run their country, his counterpart in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Laura Dogu, was not to be left behind. She upbraided the Hondurans for sending a delegation to Venezuela that included the minister of defense and the chief of staff of the Honduran armed forces. Honduran President Xiomara Castro (no relation to Fidel or Raul Castro) took umbrage at that. She charged that a coup was being planned against her government. Castro has had some personal experience with coups. In 2009, the elected president of Honduras–her husband–was overthrown in a coup.
In her X/Twitter feed of August 28, she declared:
“The interference and interventionism of the United States, as well as its intention to direct the politics of Honduras through its Embassy and other representatives, is intolerable. They attack, ignore and violate with impunity the principles and practices of international law, which promote respect for the sovereignty and self-determination of peoples, non-intervention and universal peace. Enough.”
Castro said she had directed the foreign minister to cancel the extradition treaty with the United States that has been in force since 1912.
Honduras’ first female president, Castro took office in January 2022. She was elected as the candidate of LIBRE (for Liberty and Refoundation), a party formed by a coalition of reformist left groups after the 2009 coup (in which her husband was removed from the Presidency by a U.S. backed insurgency -editor).
The US is not likely to try a coup in Mexico. Even they are smart enough to know it would certainly backfire. And they are used to Mexico’s nationalist rhetoric. But Honduras is another story.
Both Xiomara Castro and Andrés Manuel López Obrador represent “leftist,” pro-capitalist, social-democratic parties (in the case of López Obrador and his successor Claudia Scheinbaum it is Morena). Neither in Mexico nor in Honduras can such parties successfully defend the workers and campesinos against US imperialism and its local clients. Nor can they bring true democracy, equality, or development. Only a revolutionary socialist vanguard party leading a mass movement of workers and campesinos can accomplish that.
*Featured Image: Andrés Manuel López Obrador y Claudia Sheinbaum saludan durante una ceremonia para celebrar el primer aniversario de su administración el 1 de julio de 2019 en la Ciudad de México.Pedro Martin Gonzalez Castillo (Getty Images)