Where To?

August 3, 2025

Luis Rubio

“What does it mean to live in a permanent state of exception?” asks Giorgio Agamben, a philosopher who has studied this modern tendency. His answer should give us chills: “the voluntary submission to institutionalized violence.” In other words: the establishment of a “legal civil war” disguised as a “need to preserve public security.”

Where is Mexico headed? That’s the question many of us are asking. The outlook is so complex and confusing that it invites contemplation of scenarios so varied and extreme that one can only conclude that what’s failing is leadership. Mexico and the world have experienced all kinds of governments throughout history, but all successful ones share a common denominator: they manage to make the population understand clearly the direction the nation is heading, and ideally, they get people to support it.

As much as the President’s popularity might be used to argue that the majority shares a sense of direction, the truth is that the great success of the two Morena governments derives from a transactional (if implicit) pact that works so long as both sides fulfill their commitments. In contrast to the pact that supported China’s transformation in recent decades (rapid economic and income growth in exchange for submission to the Communist Party), Morena’s pact is much more pedestrian: social programs instead of economic growth, employment, and healthcare. In China, the government at least offered a future; in Mexico, it hands out a few crumbs for the meantime.

Those who benefit from the social programs naturally appreciate them and express that in the form of electoral loyalty and favorable poll numbers, and that is the foundation of the current government, which (in practice) prefers economic paralysis over long-term development, while finding no contradiction between increasing political repression and its concept of democracy.

To be fair, the announcement of the Mexico Plan and the repeated attempts to give it substance show there is a recognition that the formula that worked for AMLO is no longer viable. AMLO pushed Mexico to the economic extreme, exhausting every conceivable financial loophole, and in the end, resorted to the most traditional of all: debt—without using it to create productive assets that would foster growth and, in turn, generate funds to repay the debt. The President inherited a country in precarious conditions, probably believing she could continue her predecessor’s strategy when, in reality, had that transition occurred a couple of decades earlier, the country would be on the verge of one of its traditional end-of-term crises.

The problem with the Mexico Plan is that it doesn’t align with the reality of the world we live in. No matter how much the current leaders might want otherwise, the country is tied to the global financial, industrial, and trade currents—especially those of our northern neighbor. This means potential investors—Mexican and foreign alike (there’s no distinction here)—have countless options, and Mexico won’t be one of them if what they find is an uncertain regime, saturated with extorsion and impunity; shifting rules of the game; and a single party that can change and impose its preferences on a whim, all without recourse to neutral and reliable institutions or courts to resolve disputes. Add to that the persecution of journalists, censorship of citizens, and public denigration of anyone who dares to think differently, and the outlook becomes downright bleak.

In recent years, Mexico has been increasingly challenging the provisions of the trade agreement with our neighbors—the very agreement that has provided the country with the economic stability it enjoys today. In other words, the previous government spent its time biting the hand that feeds it, as if there were no consequences. Therefore, the current actions from the U.S. government are not coincidental: they are the result of the disorder that characterizes the country, poor decision-making, and the inability (or unwillingness) to address even basic problems.

So the question remains: where to? The pretense that everything is fine, that there’s no need to consider alternatives, and that the northern challenge will resolve itself simply collapses under its own weight. Moreover, everything suggests the government believes its popularity is permanent and immovable. Maybe it is—but its foundation is extremely fragile given current fiscal, economic, and international conditions. In other words, that pretense is nothing more than a gamble—a coin toss.

The risk is more serious than it seems. On the one hand, there’s the possibility that public finances simply won’t hold up; on the other, the contempt for foreign demands may intensify them; and as if that weren’t enough, the conscious decision to ignore the increasing political repression could become a ticking time bomb.

Appearances suggest everything is under control, but the moment that changes, what once seemed stable could suddenly turn critical—and a divided country is no help in solving it.

Ernest Hemingway once wrote a phrase that perfectly captures the risk Mexico now faces: “How did you go bankrupt? Two ways: Gradually, then suddenly.”