Yearly Archives: 2020

Luis Rubio One feature that defines the current Mexican government is its emphasis on the past. In stark contrast with its predecessors, who always promised a better future, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) appears to fervently believe that one can find in the past the foundation for the future. In reality, the Mexican President battle is […]

Luis Rubio In memory of Dr. Guillermo Soberón Spanish writer Francisco de Quevedo wrote: “When we say that all time past was better, we condemn the future without knowing it”. The past was not always better, but it is easier to envision it because it stays frozen in time. The new dogma is that the Mexican economy was […]

Luis Rubio If politicians say it, it must be true. That is the way Mexican politics has worked during the past years: pure verbosity. One needs no more than to listen to the endless ads by Mexican legislators claiming to have fixed one problem by passing a new law. Problems suddenly vanish. If it just were so easy. […]

Luis Rubio Karl Popper, the great scholar of democracy and open societies, wondered once: “What has to be done if ever the people vote to establish a dictatorship?” According to Popper, most democracies include clauses in their laws to prevent that from happening, such as requiring qualified majorities in Congress. Legally or not, the fact is that Mexico’s governing party (Morena) -and therefore […]

Luis Rubio “Each generation doubtless feels called upon to save the world” Albert Camus begins saying in his speech on obtaining the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature. That is the spirit with which Mexican President López Obrador appears to have undertaken his government: change everything. There were good reasons to change what did not work, […]

Luis Rubio King Canute of Denmark (990 A.D.) is famous for having positioned his throne on the beach surrounded by his entire entourage; seated near the waves, he commanded these to come to a halt, but ended up being drenched by them: Canute was ordering the waves to halt not because he thought they would […]

Luis Rubio In the “envelope theory” –an old joke of Mexican politics- the outgoing president leaves three envelopes to his successor. When things get stuck, the president, pressed, remembers the envelopes and opens the first one. “Blame me” says the paper. President López Obrador opened the first envelope some time prior to his inauguration and […]

Luis Rubio According to Marx, “Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of the interrelations of the relations with which these individuals stand.” Mexican society has been thwarted in its opportunity to express itself as a society because the logic of the political system always entailed controlling it. That is beginning to […]

Luis Rubio The democratization that the country has undergone over the last decades brought with it unanticipated consequences to deal with because the alternative is absolutely unacceptable. Whosoever wins an election feels free to advance their agenda not only disavowing the opposition, but, as occurs today, branding it as the enemy. Instead of a democracy, […]

In solidarity with Nexos Luis Rubio   “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” stated Mark Twain. The same can be said about capitalism. Since 2008 innumerable politicians, scholars and opinion writers have assured us that capitalism was at death door; twelve years later, the pandemic has unleashed a new wave of protests and […]