Articles

January 11, 2026

What Now?

Luis Rubio In his chronicle of his participation in the Spanish Civil War, Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell describes not only what he lived and observed, but also the conflicts and tensions within the Republican coalition in whose ranks he had fought. Amos Oz once wrote that there are two ways to understand conflict: one is […]

January 08, 2026

After Maduro’s Capture, the Shockwaves Reach Mexico

Mexico By Luis RubioJanuary 8, 2026 U.S. pressure may force Mexico’s leaders to make crucial decisions on organized crime, Cuba, and their policy priorities es MEXICO CITY—Months of naval blockade culminated in the capture of Nicolás Maduro, unleashing a vortex of centrifugal shockwaves that threaten to alter the established order in Mexico. The political aftermath of […]

January 03, 2026

The Aftermath of the Berlin Wall—and Mexico’s Missing Lesson

Luis Rubio The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 freed the nations of Eastern Europe from the Soviet bloc, to which they had been bound since the end of World War II. That moment created a unique opportunity to observe how each of these “new” nations adapted to an entirely different political, economic, and […]

December 27, 2025

Democracy

Luis Rubio Democracy, that much-used and much-abused word, is a way of life—a manner in which societies organize themselves to make decisions, govern, and preserve legitimacy. For some, democracy is a terminal stage, almost a final achievement; for others, it is nothing more than a method of decision-making in complex societies that demand participation, in […]

December 20, 2025

My Readings

Luis Rubio In turbulent times, books that try to explain the nature of the problem and its implications tend to proliferate. Some start from the premise that the status quo is unsustainable, while others focus on proposing the need to change what exists. The broader environment—and the uncertainty it produces—encourages extreme positions, but also deep […]

December 14, 2025

Visions

Luis Rubio The divisions and conflicts that define our era—magnified by social media—often obscure the similarities and differences among development models, and with them, the possibilities they hold for overcoming the obstacles to progress. Some nations have advanced spectacularly in recent decades, while others remain stagnant. Many, Mexico included, have tried to break free from […]

December 07, 2025

Stuck in Time

Luis Rubio Paraphrasing Albert Camus, “Every government believes itself destined to remake the world.” Camus was talking about his own generation, but the principle applies neatly to governments that take office imagining they can wipe the slate clean, as if everything that came before were wrong, misguided, or malicious. Morena didn’t invent this way of […]

November 30, 2025

Mexico’s Fading Leviathan

Luis Rubio When Thomas Hobbes wrote Leviathan in 1651, he offered a warning that still resonates: chaos is humanity’s natural state (“solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”), and order must be built—and rebuilt—by legitimate authority. A government that cannot guarantee security loses its right to rule. That ancient tension hangs over Mexico today. Violence is […]

November 23, 2025

The Reign of Arbitrariness

Luis Rubio President Sheinbaum insists that the decision to move flights from Mexico City’s airport to the AIFA wasn’t political. Perhaps not. It’s plausible that the former president never intended to hurt airlines or even realized that, in doing so, he was violating the rules of our bilateral agreement on aviation. But that’s precisely the […]

November 16, 2025

The Inverted Pyramid of Power

Luis Rubio The confusion could hardly be greater. President Sheinbaum is right to reject a return to Mexico’s “war on drugs.” But in the same breath, she equates confronting cartels with upholding the rule of law—missing the point entirely. The issue is not whether the state should hunt down drug lords; it’s whether it can […]

November 09, 2025

Scapegoats

Luis Rubio Stop looking for scapegoats. That reflex—so convenient to a politics of polarization—has run its course. When violence spreads and murders grow more brazen, the issue stops being about guilt. It becomes about survival—and solutions. Mexico’s crisis is not the result of one bad decision or another, but of decades of accumulated misjudgments that […]

November 02, 2025

Government and Growth

Luis Rubio Lord Acton, the 19th-century British historian and politician, once observed that “liberty depends on the division of powers, while democracy tends toward the unity of power.” He added: “liberty rests on the division of power, absolutism in concentration of power.” For any government, the central challenge is how to strike the right balance […]