Hubris

September 28, 2025

Luis Rubio

Morena is breaking the cardinal rule of politics: believing itself permanent and immutable. It is the most common vice of those who feel all-powerful and invincible. Their arrogance exposes them to the affliction the ancient Greeks called hubris—a defiance of the gods, a challenge to the natural order of things. Nothing good can come of this, for Morena or for Mexico.

One of the most basic principles of politics is that any change designed to blatantly favor those in government today can—and will—be reversed when they eventually find themselves in opposition. It is an almost universal flaw of ruling parties, especially those that see themselves as dominant. Communist parties in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union fell victim to it; so do Argentina’s Peronists each time they return to power; and so, in its heyday, did Mexico’s PRI. Holding power makes it hard to imagine ever losing it, but any seasoned observer of global politics knows that nothing is permanent, everything changes, and sooner or later power passes to those once in opposition—whoever they may be.

Changing the rules of the game, excluding those outside the ruling movement, or stripping citizens of their legal protections are all time-worn methods to eliminate competition, create the illusion of permanence, and subdue dissenters or anyone with diverging interests. Yet “the government in power” is always just that: temporary. This is especially true in an era when things shift quickly under the weight of internal pressures, corruption, or outside forces, domestic and foreign—all of which are part of Mexico’s current reality.

Today, the government and its party are preparing to advance two transformative changes for national life, political and socio-economic alike. One is an electoral reform expected early next year that would alter the structure of power itself. The other, unveiled quietly in the middle of Independence Day festivities, seeks to weaken the amparo—Mexico’s last meaningful instrument of judicial protection for citizens.

The electoral reform is the clearest expression yet of the government’s hubris. It amounts to an attempt to exclude nearly half the population from political representation. Not content with controlling the presidency, the Supreme Court and the judiciary, as well as a qualified majority in Congress, Morena now seeks to erase even the remnants of opposition. Beyond the dubious and abusive way that qualified majority was obtained, this next step is especially dangerous: it would close off all escape valves for citizens who do not support the ruling party. Morena seems to have forgotten the basic lesson of 1978, when reforms opened the door to opposition participation—a decision that helped the system absorb discontent instead of pushing it into the streets. Lyndon Johnson put it bluntly: better to have the opposition inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in.

The assault on the amparo is perhaps even more dangerous. It targets the last line of defense citizens have against abuses of authority—over issues as diverse as pensions, permits, taxes, property rights, or constitutional violations. Under the proposed changes, courts could no longer suspend the effects of government actions while challenges were resolved. That would drive the final nail into Mexico’s economic coffin. This follows naturally from the ruling party’s capture of the judiciary, marking another giant step toward absolute control over executive, legislative, and judicial decisions. If passed, citizens would be left defenseless, investors would see it as the end of any legal recourse, and foreign capital—already weakened by the shift from NAFTA to USMCA—would treat it as the last straw. Total control, in practice, means control of nothing.

The motivations for these reforms are obvious: the arrogance of power. But they are also blind, because they cannot see the consequences of such overreach. Does the government really want to risk its dominance by sowing the seeds of its own decline and collapse? That is exactly what will happen if it persists in alienating citizens and investors alike.

In Greek mythology, Icarus ignored his father’s warning and flew too close to the sun, only to fall to his death. In that same tradition, the counterpart to hubris is nemesis—the punishment for defying common sense. Morena is rushing headlong toward both.