Will AMLO run a new Maximato or be just another ex-president?
AMLO won't become another Maximum Leader, running things behind the scenes. He doesn’t have the tools. But don’t be fooled — President Sheinbaum appears to agree with him on most things
In our last post, we explored how Plutarco Calles ruled Mexico, sort of, from behind the scenes. Emphasis on “sort of.” The Maximum Leader received all sorts of accolades during his reign, but he fully controlled a puppet president for only two short years, during the 1930-32 term of Pascual Ortiz Rubio. In 1928-30, the President wasn’t a puppet; rather he was Calles’s close friend and ally; the two of them faced down a violent revolt in ‘29. (When they disagreed, President Portes’s will often trumped the Maximum Leader’s.) In 1932-34, President Abelardo Rodríguez owed his nomination to the Calles’s National Revolutionary Party and he was also Calles’s personal friend. Nonetheless, Rodríguez clashed with the Maximum Leader on multiple fronts and won on more than a few.
How did Calles lose what little power remained? Well, first, Lázaro Cárdenas wasn’t his first choice. None other than President Rodríguez told Calles (the head of the party) that Cárdenas was their first choice.1 Cárdenas then surprised everyone by running a vigorous populist campaign. Even in a stolen election — the official vote count gave Cárdenas a Stalinist margin of 98% — that gave him a strong mandate. Once in power, he befriended labor by the simple expedient of refusing to interfere in strike actions. (This had the salubrious effect of sidelining the pro-Calles CROM labor union.) He also redistributed land, following in President Rodríguez’s footsteps. In other words, he basically ignored Calles.
Rodríguez’s actions, or lack thereof, got Calles angry, so he made increasingly distemperate statements. Cárdenas threw Calles’s cronies off his cabinet, then got control over Congress when hotheaded Calles supporters shot two Cardenistas on the floor — that’s right — giving Cárdenas the perfect excuse to expel Calles’s supporters from the legislature. After that it was one blow after another until Cárdenas finally bundled Calles off into exile in 1936.
In other words, Calles never had much authority over Cárdenas. It was his blustering attempts to oppose the new President, trying to use power that he did not possess, what got him in trouble.
Can AMLO become a “Maximum Leader”?
The only part of this that looks like Mexico in 2024 is that Claudia Sheinbaum, like Lázaro Cárdenas, campaigned vigorously. Unlike Cárdenas, she won a free and competitive election against a popular and serious challenger. Unlike Calles’s National Revolutionary Party (PNR), Morena does not hold power uncontested.2
What tools did Calles use to rule during the Maximato?
Elections weren’t an issue. They were simply stolen. That’s not how things work in 2024, obviously. Calles also had a veto over anyone who wanted to serve in the legislature first via the “Inauguration Commission of Congress” and (after 1928) the need to obtain a PNR nomination. He also could freely remove state governors subject only to fear of a violent revolt.3
AMLO, conversely, is influential in Morena, but he doesn’t have that level of control. Jilted factions have already left Morena in Chihuahua, Durango, Mexico City, Mexico State, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Veracruz, and Yucatán. For all his authority, he simply doesn’t control his own party’s candidate lists.
The use of violence was always in the background. Much of Calles’s authority came from a fear that après lui, le déluge. Calles negotiated between powerful military commanders who at best interfered in and a worst controlled politics in their command zones. In point of fact, Calles did face down several severe revolts and prosecuted a guerrilla war against the Cristeros in 1926-29. In addition, violence and assassination was a common tool; ultimately, Calles himself would be deported over a mysterious bomb in a train that killed 13 people, including two prominent politicians. President Ortiz was the victim of an assassination attempt at his inauguration and was clearly afraid of another.
AMLO, needless to say, is not compromising between armed generals prepared to fight. Nobody is afraid that defying an AMLO-brokered deal will trigger a civil war. Nor is Sheinbaum afraid that AMLO might kill her.
After its creation, the PNR subsumed all the other parties. The CROM labor union remained an independent base of support, but the CROM’s political wing, the Mexican Labor Party, rapidly withered away.
Sheinbaum’s coalition, on the other hand, depends on the Green Party. Here’s how I described the Green Party back in 2015:
The Green Party is not a green party. It supports the death penalty for kidnapping, which would shock other green parties, and it’s remarkably wobbly on LGBT issues. So green it is not. Nor is it much of a party. Rather, it seems to be more of a family business run by its founder, Jorge González. (His son now heads the party.) The Greens collect election subsidies, get involved in a remarkable number of corruption scandals, and seem to care little about environmental issues. It went into coalition with the PAN in 2000 and now works with the PRI ... and keeps managing to win votes.
That description remains pretty accurate today. In 2024, the Greens went into coalition with Morena. The agreement between the two parties gave the Greens a third of all the seats won by the coalition. That makes them the kingmaker for any constitutional reforms. To a lesser extent the Labor Party (no relation to the Mexican Labor Party mentioned above) falls into this category as well. AMLO doesn’t control the Greens. Sheinbaum, however, has Presidential patronage at her command. Since ultimately the Greens are in it for the money, and Sheinbaum has the money, then Sheinbaum also has the power to use them as she sees fit.4
Calles had dirt on Ortiz Rubio, and may have had information about Portes Gil and Rodríguez that he never had to use. If AMLO has something on President Sheinbaum, then I don’t know about it.
So does AMLO hold any tools over Sheinbaum? Well, two, First, he’s popular, and he does have a lot of sway with Morena functionaries. So he could make trouble for her that way, even if he hasn’t been able to turn Morena into a true machine.
Second, he amended Article 35, Section 9, of the Constitution to allow a recall election in the middle of the presidential term if 3 percent of all registered voters petition for one.5
He also set the precedent of voluntarily calling
AMLO could threaten to come out openly against Sheinbaum in the referendum, but that would split the ruling coalition. Morena itself is fractious, more so the larger it gets. Nor does he seem to have any dirt on President-elect Sheinbaum the way that Calles did on Ortiz Rubio; nor is AMLO likely to unleash any paramilitaries.
Morena is not the PRI
Don’t know who Donald Manes is? He ran the Queens County Democratic machine. Want to get the nomination for any elected office in Queens County in the 1980s? Talk to Donald. He lost control when he made the huge mistake of letting big national companies wire up the borough for cable (in return for kickbacks, obviously) instead of giving the contract to a local company.
In our world Morena is not like the old Queens County Democratic machine. AMLO retains a great deal of influence, but nobody thinks that opposing him is the kiss of death, professionally or personally. The party is internally divided. When AMLO gave Sheinbaum the dedazo he came very close to pushing Marcelo Ebrard, her chief competitor, into open opposition—despite the fact that AMLO basically relied on moral suasion to get the party to support her rather than a more Calles-like menu of carrots and sticks. And we’ve already mentioned the local and regional defections.
Why is probably doesn’t matter
Sheinbaum is AMLO’s ally. She campaigned on a lot of the reform that he wants. She ran on elected judges. She ran against the agency that (putatively) guarantees access to public information. She campaigned to bring all autonomous agencies under direct presidential control. She’s favored his infrastructure projects, including the (kinda crazy) Dos Bocas refinery.
In other words, she committed herself to most of AMLO’s agenda during the campaign. And politicians generally try to fulfill their promises, for obvious reasons.
So if don’t like AMLO’s agenda, don’t worry about whether he’ll try to pull President Sheinbaum’s strings behind the scenes. He will try … but unless he has some hidden dirt on her or Morena radically reforms it’s internal structure, he won’t succeed unless she agrees with him.
Which she probably does.
Jurgen Buchenau, The Sonoran Dynasty in Mexico, p. 287
There were zero opposition deputies in Congress until 1946.
In theory, this power still exists, since Article 110 of the Constitution grants the federal Congress the power to impeach and remove state governors. Before 2000, this power was exercised surprisingly often, considering that state governors were effectively appointed by the President. Since 2000, however, the power has only been used for what seems to be genuine malfeasance, although to be fair the ex-governor’s guilt has not been proven and he was but not removed before his term ended.
There is a reason this blog is called The Power and the Money!
To be successful, the recall would need a majority vote with at least 40% of all registered voters casting a ballot. Article 35 itself is unclear on what would happen next; presumably the regular processes to choose an Acting President and call new elections would kick in.