Al Grito de Guerra: the Second Mexican Revolution

[Tursiops Amicus]

I don't get how people, in the absence of science, can somehow come to the conclusion that they need to brutally slaugther someone.

DUDE 1: Man, we're not getting any rain. (Random god) must need more blood. Son!

SON: Yeah dad?

DUDE 1: I need you to die, K?

SON: OK, YEAH, SURE WHATEVER.

I doubt that was the only or even the main reason. Probably weakening rivals by butchering it's population in sacrifices was the objective.

 

[Bookmark1995]

I doubt that was the only or even the main reason. Probably weakening rivals by butchering it's population in sacrifices was the objective.

Actually, that makes sense. I mean, a really twisted sense. But still, it is a good explanation. Ruthlessness is a pretty human trait.

 

[CountDVB]

So this is basically an inborn cultural appropriation: since not only is there no respect to the Natives, but it ignores the conquest of the Aztecs was not black and white.

Hell, some tribes welcomed Cortez.

Well, remember, most of the Latin American populations are a mix of indigenous and European blood. That's a hell of a lot different than in Canada and the United States. I think it's less cultural appropriation and more them learning the wrong lessons.

In fantasy terms, imagine a country where half-elves are the majority rather than the minority. This means cultural stuff and perspectives will be pretty different.

 

[Bookmark1995]

Well, remember, most of the Latin American populations are a mix of indigenous and European blood. That's a hell of a lot different than in Canada and the United States. I think it's less cultural appropriation and more them learning the wrong lessons.

I don't know. Race relations in Latin America are...weird.

Mexican Natives were treated like slaves in the Porfiriato...but Benito Juarez, one of Mexico's most revered heroes, was Native himself.

 

[Worffan101]

I doubt that was the only or even the main reason. Probably weakening rivals by butchering it's population in sacrifices was the objective.

IIRC I read an article that postulated that the Flower Wars were practiced by the priesthood as a form of limited warfare for population control during a major drought in the Valley of Mexico. I don't have the link though, sadly.

 

[CountDVB]

I don't know. Race relations in Latin America are...weird.

Mexican Natives were treated like slaves in the Porfiriato...but Benito Juarez, one of Mexico's most revered heroes, was Native himself.

Courtesy of the convoluted racial caste system the Spanish introduced. I remember there are five main ones and then sublevles for mixes: Those born in Spain, people of Spanish descent born in the colonies, the mixed blood mestizos, the indigenous and then the slaves.

I think it's that they venerate their indigenous past while mimicking the behaviors of the European colonizers.

 

[Couperin]

Courtesy of the convoluted racial caste system the Spanish introduced. I remember there are five main ones and then sublevels for mixes: Those born in Spain, people of Spanish descent born in the colonies, the mixed blood mestizos, the indigenous and then the slaves.

I think it's that they venerate their indigenous past while mimicking the behaviors of the European colonizers.

Let's not also forget that the Spanish also coopted indigenous power structures in areas like Mesoamerica and the Andes, in which descendants of native nobility were seen as being above their indigenous peers (though still below the Europeans in general).

 

[Mr. C]

I don't get how people, in the absence of science, can somehow come to the conclusion that they need to brutally slaugther someone.

DUDE 1: Man, we're not getting any rain. (Random god) must need more blood. Son!

SON: Yeah dad?

DUDE 1: I need you to die, K?

SON: OK, YEAH, SURE WHATEVER.

it's like i've traveled back in time to r/atheism circa 2011

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

I don't get how people, in the absence of science, can somehow come to the conclusion that they need to brutally slaugther someone.

DUDE 1: Man, we're not getting any rain. (Random god) must need more blood. Son!

SON: Yeah dad?

DUDE 1: I need you to die, K?

SON: OK, YEAH, SURE WHATEVER.

IIRC their preferred sacrifices were captured enemy warriors, and in those cases I guess it makes as much sense as any POW execution.

 

[Allochronian]

When the 62nd Congress of the Mexican Union was gaveled into session in 1997, the assembled legislators had one thing on their minds: change. The various factions of Mexico’s blossoming, multi-party system disagreed on what exactly should be changed, but everyone could see that the system needed reform, and needed it now. And while only Democratic Hope had openly campaigned on the promise of a new constitution, by the time the new legislators congregated in the rebuilt Palace of San Lázaro, most of them had more or less accepted that the changes they sought would require nothing less than a full-on rebirth of Mexican political thought.

The problem was how to organize one. The Political Constitution of 1917 included no provision for a constitutional convention. It would be simple enough on paper to just amend the constitution and provide for one, but finding the requisite two-thirds majority in the Chamber and the Senate proved challenging. ED proposed a national convention made up of elected delegates, but the PDC and the PAN, still reeling from their landslide defeat, pushed back in fear that such a convention would be stacked against them. Instead, the Congressional right jointly proposed another model: a committee of prominent members of the civil society, half appointed by the majority in Congress and half by the opposition, which would draft a new constitution and then submit it to a national referendum for approval. ED and its allies lambasted this plan as elitist and undemocratic, but they had little choice but to take it seriously as the opposition pledged to block any other plan. Eventually, after a month of back-and-forth, the two sides agreed to a hybrid plan. The new constitution would be drafted over a twelve-month period by a constitutional convention consisting of two separate bodies—a Popular Assembly with 300 delegates elected by the people and a Council of Deliberation with 72 members appointed by the Congress—which would split up into various Committees, each equally divided between left- and right-leaning members. These Committees would investigate their respective policy areas and issue reports, which the wider Convention would then compile into a single document. Each body of the Convention would have to endorse the final draft by a majority of at least three-quarters, and the final document would have to be approved in a national referendum.

Though the Popular Assembly were officially non-partisan, it was clear that most of the 300 delegates who were elected to the Convention in mid-January at least sympathized with ED and its principles. But that didn’t stop a substantial number of eclectic independents from being elected. Delegates like activist Marco Rascón Cordova (who showed up to the convention’s first session in character as the poverty-fighting superhero Superbarrio Gómez) and the cowboy hat-wearing Jalisco rancher José González Rosas (whose death nine years later at the hands of drug-trafficking soldiers would help ignite a fiery, public rage at the unholy union between the narcos and the Army). Characters such as these turned the Convention floor into a lively hall of raucous, often expletive-laden debate, and neither Televisa nor TV Azteca had to worry about their ratings while the Convention was in session. The Council of Deliberation, by contrast, was considerably more stodgy and sedate, as the slate of trustees approved by the Congress included such even-keeled characters as the poet laureate Octavio Paz and the matronly, ex-priísta elder stateswoman María de los Ángeles Moreno.

Despite the stark contrast between the two deliberative bodies, they quickly became the beating heart of Mexican political life. Held in multiple different sessions at the UNAM campus over a year-long period from March 1998 to January 1999, the Constitutional Convention became the linchpin of Mexico's national renewal. Nearly all the major newspapers assigned full-time correspondents to cover the proceedings, and all major debates and hearings were broadcast live on cable news networks. Within weeks, members of Congress were complaining about how little attention they were getting from the press, as the Convention proceedings sucked up all the limelight.

View attachment 669078

To a nation unaccustomed to open discussion of political and social problems, the Constitutional Convention became a source of fascination. Many of Mexico’s most prominent political pundits made their bones reporting on the Convention’s many testimonies, committee hearings and tribunals, and some of modern-day Mexico's brightest political stars were involved in the Convention as delegates or council members.​

First on the agenda was civil and human rights. The most obvious ones, like assembly, speech, religion, press, and protest, had been officially enshrined since 1917, but successive PRI governments had ignored these rights whenever it suited them. Other rights, like that of citizens to access government records, had never even existed, allowing the state to maintain an impenetrable veil of secrecy over its more sinister activities. Pulitzer laureates Lydia Cacho and Xanic von Bertrab, though not delegates themselves, were very public in calling on the Convention to right those wrongs, and Council member Jorge Zepeda Patterson was swift in answering the call. As the founder and publisher of the newspaper Nuevo Siglo, Zepeda grasped how the PRI machine had been able to manipulate the press through its dominance of the paper and advertising trades. The resolution he introduced in April, which explicitly banned the state from withholding resources from a news outlet on the basis of its editorial stance, was adopted with zeal. Delegate Rosario Ibarra’s resolution that the state immediately disclose all files regarding torture, forced disappearance, the Dirty War, and other human rights abuses was approved without a single abstention. To give these provisions teeth, delegate and human rights lawyer Jorge López Vergara proposed the creation of an independent Ombudsman for Human Rights empowered to investigate government abuses, charge military and civilian officials with crimes, and refer certain cases directly to the Supreme Court of Justice. López’s plan also stated that when the high Court ruled on such questions, its decisions would be binding not just for the parties that had filed the case but also, in a reversal of the centuries-old Otero principle, for the entire country.

Though there was broad consensus on these issues, some questions were fractious and controversial, such as the future of the welfare state. From the very beginning, Mexico’s social security system had been deeply flawed: government-funded health insurance, work injury compensation, and retirement pensions had only ever been available to members of oficialista labor unions, and the most powerful syndicates had hogged all of the best benefits while the rest offered only piecemeal coverage. Mexicans who did not belong to any union (meaning almost everyone outside the cities) had no safety net at all. The task of laying the groundwork for a new system fell to the 24-member Joint Committee on Solidarity and Social Welfare, which, in accordance with Convention rules, was equally split between left and right. The two sides disagreed profoundly on how exactly the changes should look and how far they should go—the left-leaning Committee members advocated a universal, crade-to-grave system of entitlements, while the right-leaning caucus, led by PAN economist Josefina Vázquez Mota, pushed for a much more conservative system designed only to provide the truly indigent with the minimum skills necessary to enter the workforce.

It quickly became apparent that on this issue, the conservatives had the upper hand. The leftists were split between pro-worker delegates led by former Acuña labor leader Juan Tovar, and pro-farmer delegates led by former Guerrero Congressmen Jorge Eloy Martínez. This split allowed the conservatives to dominate the Committee proceedings, calling up a cavalcade of economists and businessmen to give favorable testimony and drafting reports and recommendations with zero involvement from the left. However, once they realized that the Committee’s final recommendation would be a right-wing wishlist, the leftist delegates came together to stonewall all Committee business and demand rewrites of all major reports. Conservative media pundits, particularly at TV Azteca, tore the delegates apart for obstructionism and immaturity, but there was little Vázquez and her team could do as long as they lacked a working majority. The leftists, meanwhile, could do little else but obstruct, since they still lacked the cohesion to put together counter-proposals of their own. The Committee eventually decided to kick the can down the road, providing the basic skeleton of a welfare state and leaving it up to future administrations to hang meat on the bones. The Committee’s final report consisted mainly of broad principles, including that all communities, whether rural or urban, must have equal access to social programs, and that employee contributions to any work-based insurance funds should never exceed employer or government contributions.

Somewhat less acrimonious was the question of agricultural reform. Since the days of Lázaro Cárdenas, millions of Mexican farmers had been wringing their bread out of small, communal plots of state-owned land called ejidos. By 1998, this system was in crisis. Because communal farmers did not own the land they cultivated, they could not sell it or borrow money against it. The only sure source of capital was the federal government, which doled out funds only when it was politically convenient. Many ejidos lacked not just modern farming equipment but also electricity and running water, and after Carlos Salinas loosened import restrictions in 1989, millions of ejidatarios had been run out of business by foreign grain, feeding a vicious cycle of falling food production and growing import dependence. Many farmers had already been forced to leave their homes and flee into the cities, where they faced the blight of urban poverty, or to the United States, where conditions were little better. On April 6, one ejidatario delegate from Michoacán gave a moving speech to the convention, in which he described the sorrow he felt while watching his wife and children grow emaciated on a bare-bones diet of corn and beans, and begged the Convention to turn things around before it was too late.

View attachment 669079

For years, the farming community had been ignored by PRI governments intent on promoting industrialization and urbanization. To millions of ejidatarios, the Constitutional Convention represented the first chance in 65 years to petition the government to make genuine improvements in their lives.​

Despite the Convention’s rules on equal apportionment, the Committee on Agricultural Reform was far less partisan than most of its counterparts. Nearly all the members were from rural, ejido-heavy regions and had a visceral understanding of the problems facing rural Mexico. Within three months, the Committee had put together a detailed, ambitious set of proposals, including a program of joint state-farmer ownership to give the farmers a stake in their own production, a pledge from the federal government to provide all ejidos with electricity and running water by 2014, authorizing individual ejidos to merge with each other in order to increase production and reap economies of scale, and requiring every state to establish an agricultural college with free tuition for local farmers. Perhaps the most extraordinary proposal would have bound the federal government to set aside 3% of its total annual revenue to invest in agricultural production and “the general welfare of the ejidatarios”. While this constraint was eventually whittled down to 1.8%, the rest of the Committee’s recommendations were adopted with little modification in what was seen as a major triumph for the farmers.

Perhaps the most dramatic moment of the Convention concerned the matter of the Zapatistas. Since Subcomandante Marcos’ march on Mexico City in 1995, little had changed between Mexico City and San Cristóbal. President Muñoz Ledo had continued his benign neglect of the State of Zapata, which continued to exist as an autarkic confederation of self-sufficient communes, and which was growing increasingly isolated from the rest of the country. No attempts had been made to negotiate, as the federal government did not recognize the authority of Bishop Samuel Ruiz, the State’s nominal governor. The Mayan delegation to the Constitutional Convention, consisting of 12 delegates from majority-Indian constituencies in the south, pressed hard for the recognition of Zapata as a full-fledged state with special constitutional status, and for the adoption of the Indigenous Bill of Rights, which had failed in the Senate two years earlier. But these efforts led nowhere. Recognizing Zapata was a bridge too far even for many of the more left-leaning delegates, and the Bill of Rights seemed equally unpalatable.

Then, on June 8, 1998, Mayan caucus leader and human rights activist María de Patricio Martínez read out to the Convention a letter from Subcomandante Marcos, pledging that the ELM would launch a renewed military offensive within week unless the Convention showed “the faintest interest in the well-being of the people of the State of Zapata”. Within hours, stock prices were dropping, and within days, President Muñoz Ledo was pressuring delegates to give in to the Mayans’ less outrageous demands. By June 13, the Convention’s joint committee had reached a compromise: the State of Zapata would not be officially recognized, but Mayan sovereignty over the area would be, meaning that the Zapatistas would be able to carry on in all but name. A separate legislature for the indigenous people was off the table, but legislators from Mayan-heavy districts would be permitted to form a caucus during every session of the Congress of the Union to block or approve matters affecting indigenous communities. Many indigenous rights, including the right to communal land ownership and the right of Mayan children to attend public school in their native language, would also be incorporated into the new Constitution. Critics raged in the press, accusing President Muñoz Ledo of “capitulating to the rebels”, but that didn’t stop the resolutions from being adopted by both bodies of the mildly-perturbed Convention.

View attachment 669080

María de Jesús Patricio Martínez, affectionately known as Marichuy, emerged as the Zapatistas’ champion in Mexico City. Her role in securing multiple key concessions at the Constitutional Convention helped pave the way for her to become one of the Mayan people’s most dedicated advocates under the new political system. ​

Despite all these major, far-reaching changes, perhaps the most noticeable result of the Constitutional Convention was the fundamental restructuring of Mexico’s political system. Since the dawn of the Mexican republic, the President had always exercised an inordinate amount of power over the country. After the excesses of the Bartlett years, it was clear that such a “hyper-presidentialist” regime, as Enrique Krauze called it, could not be allowed to continue. So, at the outset of the Convention, the Committee on Political Institutions was given the formidable task of designing an entirely new political structure for 21st-century Mexico. Unlike most of the Convention’s other Committees, which were proportionally distributed between members of the Popular Assembly and the Council of Deliberation, the Committee on Political Institutions was stacked with learned academics drawn from the upper chamber. The Committee’s two vice-chairmen, Juan Molinar Horcasitas and Jorge Castañeda (both renowned political scientists who had played key roles in the downfall of the PRI), enjoyed a warm relationship, developing ideas over cordial coffee chats and hashing them out on paper with the collaborative consent of their colleagues.

The system they eventually came up with was influenced by everything from American constitutional law to Irish naming conventions, and was approved with gusto by the Committee in November of 1998. The fundamental change was to move Mexico from a presidential to a semi-presidential regime, with a president tasked largely with ceremonial duties and political arbitration, and a prime ministerial figure charged with governing the country and implementing policies. The latter figure would take on the title of tlatoani, from the Nahuatl word for “leader”, and would be appointed by the Chamber of Deputies at the outset of every Congress. The tlatoani would be accountable to the Chamber of Deputies, which could remove him or her from office with a majority vote (although, in order to effect such a removal, the chamber would need to simultaneously appoint a new tlatoani to fill the void). The tlatoani would nominate most cabinet secretaries, all of whom would be subject to confirmation by both the Chamber and the Senate. The president would give up most administrative duties to the tlatoani, though he would still reserve some powers including the right to issue calls for new elections once per term, the right to appoint ambassadors and cabinet ministers charged with defense and foreign policy, and the right to negotiate international treaties.

Other major changes involved elections to the Congress. In addition to proportional representation, which had already been a feature of Mexican elections since the 1970s, future Congresses would be elected by ranked-choice voting in mixed-member constituencies. This, it was hoped, would make future dictatorships unlikely by preventing any single party from acquiring sole power. The ban on consecutive re-election was lifted for deputies, who were now permitted to serve up to three terms, and for senators, who could serve up to two. Senators would serve staggered terms, and elections to the Senate would be held every three rather than every six years to make the upper chamber more sensitive to swings in the national political mood. Also changed was the process of amending the Constitution itself, which had been so easy in years past that PRI Presidents had done it whenever it suited them without a second thought. Now, in addition to a two-thirds vote in both chambers of the Congress, constitutional amendments would require the consent of at least 17 state legislatures and popular approval in a nationwide referendum. These reforms were highly popular with the rest of the delegates (many were already sizing up future Congressional runs, and they liked any plan which gave more power to the legislative branch), and the Committee’s plan was adopted by the wider Convention with almost no modifications.

View attachment 669081

Because of their prominent role in crafting the new constitution’s political institutions, Juan Molinar Horcasitas (left) and Jorge Castañeda (right) were hailed as Mexico’s newest founding fathers. Both men would later hold positions of leadership in the system they helped design.​

Not every aspect of the Convention was a triumph. Aside from the acrimonies gripping the welfare committee, the difficulties faced by delegate Samuel del Villar would foreshadow future political crises. As a vice-chairman of the Committee on Corruption Reform, del Villar hoped he could muscle through some measures to increase oversight over corrupt military officials. But when he tried to demand that all high-ranking Army officers submit twice a year to an audit by an independent, anti-corruption commission, he found it strangely impossible to get the rest of the Committee on his side. His proposal for a permanent prosecutor’s office to investigate civilian corruption was accepted unanimously, but when he tried to establish a similar office for the Army, several of his colleagues (particularly delegate Juan Galvan, an associate of former Defense Secretary Juan Gutiérrez Rebollo), insisted that the Army should have the right to investigate its own affairs, claiming that civilian prosecution would caused the Army to become politicized. del Villar’s many counterarguments proved inexplicably useless, as a sizable majority of the Committee’s members voted to make the Constitution almost entirely toothless regarding the issue of Army corruption. By 2008, an investigation by El Universal would reveal that over half of the members of the Committee on Corruption Reform had accepted bribes from cartel-affiliated Army officers (which would form just one piece of the massive wave of scandals that would rattle the foundations of the new republic just a few years after its inception).

Despite these difficulties, by late 1998, the Convention had pieced together all of the various Committees’ reports and recommendations into vast, sprawling document that touched every policy area from health care to press freedom to minority rights. The result was wildly imperfect, and no one side was entirely pleased with it, but in a system built for compromise, there could hardly have been a better outcome. The final document was approved near-unanimously by both Chambers of the Convention on January 13, 1999, two months ahead of schedule. Within two weeks, both chambers of the Congress had approved the new Constitution. The public referendum was scheduled for May, with the intention that the new system, if approved, would enter into force on the first day of the new millennium.

Though the people had three months to consider the new Constitution, three days would have been just as good. Nearly every day of the Convention had been broadcast live on cable TV, and every aspect of the writing process had been carefully analyzed by every pundit and politician in Mexico. By the time it the Convention was over, most of the people had already made up their minds about the new Constitution. And with all of the major political parties backing it to the hilt, there was little doubt as to the outcome of the referendum.

View attachment 669082​

With over 80% of the vote, the Millennial Constitution received a resounding endorsement from the Mexican people and went into effect on January 1, 2000. That year would see the first federal elections under the new system, and Democratic Hope knew exactly whom to pick as their standard-bearers. For the new position of tlatoani, there was perhaps no man better suited than Sergio Aguayo. For years under the PRI, the human rights activist from Guadalajara had been one of the most passionate advocates for political change. As President of the Chamber of Deputies following the crucial election of 1994, Aguayo had pioneered the art of parliamentary wrangling while setting many important precedents, and as one of ED’s founding members, he could be trusted to govern responsibly while advancing the party’s core priorities.

The PAN did its best to oppose ED at the polls. By this point, the party leadership had managed to paper over most of the factional divisions, and tlatoani candidate Carlos Medina Plascencia forced the appearance of unity by demanding iron adherence to the party line. There were some rumblings of discontent (most conspicuously from Conchalupe Garza, a PAN Congressional candidate from suburban Monterrey, who was recorded on a hot mic comparing Medina and his staff to the Gestapo), but on the surface, the party held together well enough to increase its presence in the chamber by 22 seats and stave off a widely-expected threat from the Christian Democrats. But it just wasn’t enough. For all the PAN’s ideological coherence, Sergio Aguayo was simply too popular and ED had a lock on too many rural and urban districts to lose control. While ED won an outright majority in the Senate, allowing Senate President Adolfo Aguilar Zínser taking office as the first cuauhtlatoani, or vice-leader, the party would maintain control of the Chamber of Deputies with a reduced, but still commanding majority, and Sergio Aguayo would take office as the first tlatoani of 21st-century Mexico.

View attachment 669083​

As for the Presidency, ED was represented by one of the most popular men in Mexico. Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas had always been reluctant to re-enter politics after his wife’s assassination. He had agreed to serve as Mayor of Mexico City only because he was assured that he would not be asked to run for a full term once direct elections were instituted. But, as he worked to cleanse the city government of corruption and graft, Cárdenas had slowly rediscovered the zeal for change that had first attracted him to seek public office in the 1970s. ED officials had approached Cárdenas about a presidential run as early 1997, and he had initially been skeptical about committing to such a responsibility. But once he realized that the new Constitution would turn the presidency into more of a ceremonial arbiter than the administrative and political epicenter of the country, he could barely declare his candidacy fast enough.

His victory wasn’t quite a 1994-style landslide, but it was still a resounding mandate. He captured an outright majority of the vote and won all but four states, surpassing ED’s share of the Congressional vote by two percentage points. It wasn’t the first time Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas had won a presidential election, but it was the first time he would be allowed to take office. The general’s son was on his way to Los Pinos, where he would set many precedents that would help define the presidency in post-PRI Mexico as a dignified figure above the political fray.

View attachment 669087
​

As per the provisions of the Millennial Constitution, Cárdenas was to be inaugurated not in December but in September, one week after the installation of the new Congress. In contrast to 1994, when Muñoz Ledo and his allies in the Congress had been too busy to stage even the most paltry of inauguration ceremonies, Cárdenas was determined to make his investiture one for the history books. Dignitaries from all over the Western Hemisphere were invited, including Prime Minister Tobin from Ottawa, President Cisneros from Washington, and President Arías Cárdenas from Caracas. The swearing-in was to take place not within the Chamber of Deputies, as was customary, but in the center of Mexico City, where the masses could gather together and watch it for themselves. As 250,000 Mexicans gathered in the Zócalo to watch a man they had elected get duly sworn in as head of state, the air was imbued with a distinct sense of optimism and hope. Mothers and fathers lifted their children up onto their shoulders so that they could watch the new president take the oath of office. After decades of struggling and striving, democracy had well and truly arrived in Mexico. But if the hard-won achievements of millions of activists and protesters were to survive, then the younger generation would have to understand the value of the gift they had been given, and they would have to work even harder than their parents had to preserve it.

@Roberto El Rey,

Thank you for writing this incredible timeline. Not only was it entertaining, but it was also educational.

I am sad to see it end so soon. I think there were still more events and people that you could have talked about, but I understand and respect your wish to finish this story on your own terms, as a right you have as an author.

This timeline felt personal for me. I’ve always wanted to see someone who knows a lot about Mexican history (and other related topics) to develop an alternate history of Mexico that is not based on implausible clichés or tropes. A Mexico where it’s future is better than what it is in reality. A Mexico where its hunger and thirst for justice is satisfied and whose laws no longer abuse its people but instead, serve them.

Like I mentioned before, your story is something that I would love to see get adapted into an official series on television or any other medium. I know I’m not the only one who thinks that. If it ever happens, I will be ready to throw money at it.

Whatever you call this timeline, any other additional information/improvements you decide to make in the future will be greatly appreciated from those who are simply curious about Mexico and those who are well versed in its history, culture, society, and politics.

As a token of my heartfelt thanks, I post on here a video of Cárdenas campaigning for president in 2000, which would look very similar to your timeline, but you would be seeing white stars on red flags (or vice-versa), instead.
I also post footage of Pope John Paul II’s 1999 Visit to Mexico (ITTL’s Second visit since 1979 per my head canon) and a complete version of the Mexican National Anthem.

 

[Shevek23]

few quick questions on the form of the new Government...
1) What government out there iOTL is closest to the format of TTL Mexican government
...
4) Who is Head of State, the PM or the President (who gets a 21 gun salute when they arrive in France)

I'm not the author and cannot answer any of these definitively, but I can offer some speculation on these.

1) the nation whose government form I am most familiar with that seems most similar to what the author describes the 2000 Constitution being would be the Irish Republic. There, the people elect a President for a seven year term which can be repeated once, but while the Presidential approval of things is what technically makes it legal, the President is mainly ceremonial and their duties are pro forma. Actual "Government" is parliamentary in form.

The entire machinery of the Irish state including the President along with the two legislative houses are called the Oireachtas Éireann. The people do not elect the upper house (Seanad, clearly Gaelic for "Senate") whose 60 members are appointed various ways. The lower house, the Dáil, is elected by people voting for between 2 to 5 members in variously sized districts by means of Single Transferable Vote, which yields a sort of approximation of proportional representation, especially for larger parties. (I have plotted the relationship between number of seats won and total national popular vote by first preference (this is how the Irish press and other institutions typically report popular vote in their STV ranked-choice system) percentages, and I find that larger parties are consistently overrepresented while smaller ones have a random scatter around their PV percentages with average below their PV share).

In the ATL instead of a Senate whose members are appointed indirectly by Dáil members, the Taoiseach (the leader the Dáil elects, equivalent to Prime Minister) and so on, Mexico has a Senate which is elected. It seems that the mechanics of electing Senators would be similar to that of electing the lower house but in larger districts, and a new Constitutional reform is to split their terms on a staggered basis; the terms are 6 years but it seems half are elected in one election and the other half three years later. Why not three classes, each one two years after the last, as per US Senate I do not know. Another thing that is not clear to me is whether there are just half as many Senate districts as there are total seats and each Senate election every 3 years elects one of two Senators from that district with all Mexicans voting, or whether half the districts sit out each election and only half the Mexican people (ideally) vote in the districts whose Senators happen to be up. I'd recommend and prefer the former. Also, it might be that as in the USA the Senators represent Mexican states regardless of population.

The Seanad Éireann is expected to also approve legislation that the Dáil Éireann has passed; they don't have to but if they don't the Dáil can override and send it to the President for approval. (The President is bound to approve, though they can delay by sending it to a constitutional court--if the court rules it is OK the President must then sign--again though formally speaking it is this signature that makes it a valid law). Thus practically speaking the Seanad can't really block legislation, just delay it and force the Dáil to reconsider before passing it again. I would guess though that the Mexican Senate can indeed block it permanently by refusing to approve.

The Mexican President seems a bit stronger than the Irish one in that there are certain governmental offices relating to defense and foreign affairs that the President appoints, subject to legislature approval. Otherwise the power of government has largely been moved to the Nahautl-titled "tlatoani," like "Taioseach" this is similar to a parliamentary Prime Minister, who appoints the majority of cabinet executive officers forming the "government."

Broadly speaking, we seem to have a hybrid of the Irish and French system here, more similar to the French system of the Fourth Republic (between after WWII and DeGaulle's Fifth Republic reforms in the early 1960s).

I do wonder a bit about the electoral system. The author mentions that "proportional" elections have been the norm since long before this "Revolution" which by the way I feel a bit shortchanged on--this was not what I'd call a revolution, it was a democratic grassroots electoral coup ousting a corrupt single party system by means of the ballot box, not a grassroots mass insurgency overthrowing said corrupt government by force. Would we call DeGaulle's makeover of the French governmental system via democratic approval of a new constitution in the 1960s a "revolution?" I wouldn't anyway! Calling this the "second Mexican revolution" seems pretty wrong to me. A perfectly reasonable turn of events, and good versus OTL, yes. A major political transformation, yes. Revolution? No!

Anyway even under the new system, which carries over the unspecified form of "proportional election" mixed with a new multi-member district STV electoral system, the outcomes look pretty far from actual proportionality to me.

From the wikibox in the last post:
ED 50.4% => 252 seats, actual seats 295, bonus 43 seats or 8.6% for 59% of the Chamber of Deputies;
PAN 34.8%=> 174 seats, actual 144, deficit -30 or -6% for 28.8% CD
DC 11.4%=> 57 seats, actual 43, deficit -14 or -2.8% for 8.6% CD
PRI 2% => 4 seats, actual 3, deficit -1 or -0.2% for 1.8 CD
subtotal 98.6 %, 485 del, the rest is presumably 1.4% =>7 members, actual 15 presumably independents or small parties, surplus 8 or 1.6% for 3 percent of CD.

Note that with perfect proportionality to the national popular vote, the ED still governs, albeit with a bare majority plus one member, versus a delegate election of 44 extra members beyond this bare majority plus one.

I am not sure just how these discrepancies arose. They'd be par for the course, indeed modest, if voting were for single member FPTP as in the USA or UK, but they are supposed to be elected by STV with some leveling up for proportionality. I suppose the "proportional" part is a correction based on groupings of electoral districts and not an integration of the whole nation. STV ought I think have perhaps given ED even more delegates, but also PAN with its fairly close runner-up of nearly 40 percent should be stronger than its share instead of weaker; DC's deficit seems in line. As for the last 1.4 percent of votes, one feature of STV, as with FPTP, is that in theory there is no competition between parties; all elections decide on a district race without reference to anything happening elsewhere, between individual persons without any need to mention or note the parties they happen to stand with. In Ireland, independent candidates with no declared party affiliation, and also wildcat small parties, do stand for election and sometimes win, the independents doing better than the small fry parties usually. There are generally, in a Dáil that has historically ranged in membership between 120 and 160 or so members, a dozen or so independents, so the Mexican voters are voting more strongly partisan than the Irish in this respect, and 15 independents in 500 is entirely reasonable.

But I don't call these outcomes very proportional. With STV used alone, it is as important as with FPTP that the districts have similar populations per member. To achieve maximum similarity of each voter's power to choose, these districts should all be uniform in numbers of members per each as well, but in practice Ireland has districts ranging from two members to six or perhaps even seven. The outcomes are governed by the "Droop quota," which is the number of ballots cast divided by number of members to be elected plus one, so in a 2 member district the DQ is 1/3 the electorate (assuming everyone votes) while in a 7 member district, it is 1/8. Of course a 7 member district should have 3.5 times the population of a 2 member district, so the DQ for the 7 member district is about 21/32 the number of persons ideally as that in the 2 member district. To be elected a candidate must acquire a DQ of votes; voters cast ballots ranking the individual candidates in order of preference, and if some candidates have a DQ based on first choices, they are elected, and the surplus of votes over those needed for DQ have their votes transferred to their second choices, which in turn might result in others being pushed over the DQ line. When no candidates have a DQ, the candidate with the smallest number of votes (first choice or transferred lower rank choices, combined) is eliminated and the ballots listing them first are transferred to the voters' second choices. Eventually someone goes over the DQ line again, and eventually as many candidates as are allowed the district are elected, leaving a residual of ballots that can be as high as a DQ. So DQ size matters two ways; it is the bar candidates have to clear to be elected and also an index of how many ballots might in theory fail to elect anyone. In practice a fair number of these residual ballots have already elected one or two candidates.

So if we apportion 100 4 member districts in Mexico, each one aiming at 1 percent of the total population, the DQ for each is 1/5 and in theory it is possible, though not very likely, that 1/5 of all Mexico's voters cast ballots for a ranked list of candidates none of whom are elected because they are voting for candidates that don't manage to scrape up a full 20 percent of all voters in their district--never mind how many candidates their first choices, combined into a national percentage, should be elected proportionally out of say 500 total delegates. But you will note this above proposal elects just 400 members! What I call properly proportional is to count up all the votes by party and base proportionality on the whole nation, in this case out of 500 total. Then we can subtract the number of persons of each party elected by STV from their national proportional share, and the outcome is that parties like ED that got more than their national party proportion will get no or few level-up seats, while those that underperformed their total national share of votes would get lots of them.

For instance, if 4 of 5 seats were subject to the STV process, we'd revise the above totals down to 8/10 or 4/5, roughly, and get
ED 242 STV seats
PAN 116
DC 34
PRI 2
Ind 6

There were 8 seats left out of 400 on first pass due to rounding, so I put 4 of them with ED, 4 with PAN and 1 with DC since the larger parties get a bonus typically under STV.

I already estimated the party-proportional numbers in my first tabulation, so if we subtract these STV outcomes from those we get
ED 10
PAN 58
DC 23
PRI 2
Ind 7

Since the independents don't form one big party nationally, we might question this outcome. However the system could provide for independent candidates forming alliances by declaration; a group of independents running in various districts could agree they are allied by unanimous mutual consent, and declare this alliance for voters to consider when voting, factoring in whom their local candidate chooses to stand with as an indication of their allegiances and character. Realistically the Ind share would be lower, as the sum of several rival alliances, say one of them has a share of 3, another a share of 1, and a third also just 1, and by STV they won 2, zero and 1. The larger parties would have the other 5 seats proportioned among them.

Typically with systems like this, parties have a list of additional members offered nationwide, or because these kinds of systems typically evaluate proportionality in much smaller groups of districts than the whole nation, lists for each PR superdistrict. But I see no need for that. We can just look at the party candidates or alliance members who were not elected STV and take the ones with the highest number of first choices for each party. As it were, the voters make the party list, and their cast ballots do double service.

Well this is clearly not happening in the ATL. According to Wikipedia, OTL

The Chamber has 500 members, elected using the parallel voting system. Elections are every 3 years.

Of these, 300 "majority deputies" are directly elected by plurality from single-member districts, the federal electoral districts (with each state divided into at least two districts). The remaining 200 "party deputies" are assigned through rules of proportional representation in 5 multi-state, 40-seat constituencies. These seats are not tied to districts; rather, they are allocated to parties based on each party's share of the national vote. The 200 party deputies are intended to counterbalance the sectional interests of the district-based representatives. Substitutes are elected at the same time as each deputy, so special elections are rare.

So, that lets me infer what actually is supposed to have happened! I presume that what the author calls "proportional," which is not PR because it only applies to 40 percent of the total Chamber, was carried over from OTL pre-POD, and that the people of Mexico only vote for 300 members by STV. It is not clear to me whether voters cast a separate vote for their favored party as in German MMP, but one could read that passage above as saying no, they don't, instead their first choice for an individual in their STV districts is double-counted as a party vote--which seems like a good system to me indeed. It just does not go as far as it should. If we have 300 members to elect by STV, we could have 150 two member districts, 100 3 member districts, 60 5 member districts, 50 6 member districts, 30 ten member districts, or 25 12 member districts--I could go on but 6 member districts seem to me to be about as many as we'd want to deal with; the above 5 multi-state constituencies for the level-up 200 members would be formed from 10 6 member districts, or 20 3 member districts.

Taking the national percentages which determined my target shares of the whole 500 member legislature and reducing them to 40 percent, we get
ED 101
PAN 70
DC 23
PRI 2
Ind 4

And that lets me infer the STV outcomes were
ED 194
PAN 74
DC 20
PRI 1
Ind 11

I might believe these outcomes would be this lopsided off the proportional ones if the districts were in fact 2 member, but it would be strange to institute STV at all with so few members per district!

Looking at it more closely, I suppose a scenario would be, based on what the author told us:

The districts are 3 member each, which would generally give a majority winning single party something like 25 percent extra or about 5/8 the 300 STV seats, which would be about 188 or so, pretty close. Whereas while PAN having a third the vote would normally do better than their percentage share, here partisan infighting has weakened them; often a person voting first for one of 3 PAN candidates will not rank the other two second or third, because the three candidates were chosen by compromise and the rival subpartisan wings would sooner shift their vote to ED or DC or an independent especially than support the PAN candidate of the other faction(s). So PAN STV outcomes are depressed by this, with independent candidates in particular gaining wins despite not being the first choice on many ballots. DC and still more PRI suffer from being small parties and tending to lose by elimination or being preempted in the STV contests.

The national-proportional fractional level up serves to limit how badly PAN tanks, but not much of a thing in terms of party unity.

With 100 3 member districts, we see that in the large majority of them, ED wins two of the three seats; the rest of the STV election is a scramble among the other three parties and independents for the final seat. There might be a fair number of districts where ED won all three seats, which frees up some districts where ED only wins 1, or in rare cases, no seats whatsoever, in these rare bastions PAN might win a second seat, but clearly if they won only one at most, in 3/4 of all districts, they win nothing at all. DC manages a single seat in just 1/5 of all the districts (or even fewer.

 

[TimTurner]

I do wonder a bit about the electoral system. The author mentions that "proportional" elections have been the norm since long before this "Revolution" which by the way I feel a bit shortchanged on--this was not what I'd call a revolution, it was a democratic grassroots electoral coup ousting a corrupt single party system by means of the ballot box, not a grassroots mass insurgency overthrowing said corrupt government by force. Would we call DeGaulle's makeover of the French governmental system via democratic approval of a new constitution in the 1960s a "revolution?" I wouldn't anyway! Calling this the "second Mexican revolution" seems pretty wrong to me. A perfectly reasonable turn of events, and good versus OTL, yes. A major political transformation, yes. Revolution? No!

In all fairness, this is Mexico we're talking about here, and the PRI being destroyed absolutely should qualify as a revolution. This is after all the biggest change to Mexico's political scene since the 1910s.

 

[Indicus]

I mean we do call the People Power Revolution in the Philippines a revolution, and the changes of this revolution are just about as dramatic.

I think the reason we don’t call the rise of the French Fifth Republic revolutionary is less because of the actual changes, and more because Charles de Gaulle was pushing a narrative of it being the rescuing of the republic. It has more to do with the historiography being pushed than it does the actual events.

 

[Kermode]

Also remember that IOTL, Cuahtemoc Cardenas founded a party in the aftermath of the 1988 election called the "party of the democratic revolution". There's precedent!

If memory serves me right, Roberto said earlier in the thread that the original intention was to have a violent overthrow, but he changed his mind at some point. I prefer this direction, though; as 'exciting' as war can be, it's hard to imagine the United States tolerating one on their doorstep for long, so having the revolution be a slow-burn breakdown of the regime's authority feels like the more plausible outcome. Plus, I think this offers a more nuanced portrayal of that breakdown.

 

[Bookmark1995]

In all fairness, this is Mexico we're talking about here, and the PRI being destroyed absolutely should qualify as a revolution. This is after all the biggest change to Mexico's political scene since the 1910s.

I mean we do call the People Power Revolution in the Philippines a revolution, and the changes of this revolution are just about as dramatic.

I think the reason we don’t call the rise of the French Fifth Republic revolutionary is less because of the actual changes, and more because Charles de Gaulle was pushing a narrative of it being the rescuing of the republic. It has more to do with the historiography being pushed than it does the actual events.

Also remember that IOTL, Cuahtemoc Cardenas founded a party in the aftermath of the 1988 election called the "party of the democratic revolution". There's precedent!

If memory serves me right, Roberto said earlier in the thread that the original intention was to have a violent overthrow, but he changed his mind at some point. I prefer this direction, though; as 'exciting' as war can be, it's hard to imagine the United States tolerating one on their doorstep for long, so having the revolution be a slow-burn breakdown of the regime's authority feels like the more plausible outcome. Plus, I think this offers a more nuanced portrayal of that breakdown.

I think peaceful revolutions are, as a whole, better than violent ones.

I'd trust revolutionaries who let the tyrant go into exile more than the revolutionaries who torture and execute the tyrant, since they usually become the new tyrants.

 

[Indicus]

I think peaceful revolutions are, as a whole, better than violent ones.

I'd trust revolutionaries who let the tyrant go into exile more than the revolutionaries who torture and execute the tyrant, since they usually become the new tyrants.

My stance is that peaceful revolutions are better - but sometimes peaceful revolution isn’t an option, and sometimes there is no option except to violently overthrow the tyrants.

 

[Bookmark1995]

My stance is that peaceful revolutions are better - but sometimes peaceful revolution isn’t an option, and sometimes there is no option except to violently overthrow the tyrants.

Obviously.

But violent revolutions make it easier for the next regime to be evil.

Pancho Villa began the war as a beloved and heroic figure, but gradually his violence turned many Mexicans away from him.

 

[Indicus]

Obviously.

But violent revolutions make it easier for the next regime to be evil.

Pancho Villa began the war as a beloved and heroic figure, but gradually his violence turned many Mexicans away from him.

The thing is, it is not the revolutionaries who decide whether a revolution will be violent or not. It is the people in power who decide that. Violent revolutions typically arise when peaceful attempts to resolve grievances have been halted and suppressed by the people in power, when it seems such avenues for change have been clogged. This was true for the Mexican Revolution, and this is true for every other revolution.

 

[Mr. C]

I think peaceful revolutions are, as a whole, better than violent ones.

I'd trust revolutionaries who let the tyrant go into exile more than the revolutionaries who torture and execute the tyrant, since they usually become the new tyrants.

this is dangerously close to "antifa are fascists" territory

 

[Bookmark1995]

this is dangerously close to "antifa are fascists" territory

Uh...

I'm not talking about antifa. I never once talked about antifa. I don't know why you're bringing up antifa.

I'm talking about ACTUAL revolutionary terror throughout history.

Whether it was the guillotine, the Soviets executing the Romanov children, Robert Mugabe demolishing an entire slum and scorning the poor people he once fought for, or Maduro sending thugs into Carcas while enjoying luxury steak, violent revolutions often lead to violent regimes.

If I distrust antifa, it is because I distrust those who change society through armed force because their heroic struggle often becomes terror.