Money and Power
El Financiero, April 25th, 2025
As the election of judges, magistrates, and Supreme Court justices approaches, it becomes increasingly clear just how deep a crisis the group currently holding political power in Mexico has thrown us into—thanks to a coup d’état, orchestrated precisely with the help of members of the Electoral Tribunal, who validated a majority capable of amending the Constitution without argument, negotiation, or debate.
Elections are won with money, plain and simple. Personal charisma helps, as does a strong team or party machinery, but in the end, you need plenty of cash. That money comes from three sources: the wealthy, the government, and criminals—groups that, as is well known, often overlap.
That’s why leftist parties, which believe in a large and powerful state, have always favored public financing—because that’s where they get the funds to win elections. That’s also why, once in power, they use public resources to win the next round.
This is exactly what López Obrador did, as we know. His charisma and the spectacle of his impeachment attempt gave him a decent base of support, maybe around 20% of the vote—not enough to win. That’s why he turned to unreportable funding, as we now know. Repentant criminals, now protected witnesses in the U.S., have testified that since 2006 he had been receiving funds from organized crime.
You might think the word of a criminal shouldn’t carry weight—but those same testimonies were used as evidence to convict García Luna, so we must also take them seriously here.
Once in power, López Obrador used the public treasury for the next elections. In 2021, he again relied on criminal support, as was obvious in governor races in Sonora, Sinaloa, and Michoacán. But by 2024, he had to multiply those resources, and so he increased government debt by 10 percentage points of GDP—a move that has now left us in an extremely vulnerable position.
If all this happened during elections that were still relatively democratic—where voters understood what was at stake and knew how to vote, where citizens counted the ballots themselves—imagine what’s going to happen in just over a month, when we’ll be faced with incomprehensible ballots, lists of unknown candidates, and vote counting done in secret, far from public oversight.
The promise to clean up the candidate lists appears to have been broken, and it’s likely that those who show up to vote will unwittingly elect criminals, corrupt individuals, or the incompetent. Of course, this can happen in traditional elections too—but here, both the probability and the consequences are far greater.
Although only part of the judiciary is being replaced, the entire institution has been destroyed. Even the Finance Ministry has looted the trust funds that guaranteed benefits and pensions for judges and magistrates. The Judicial Career Path no longer makes sense. Internal promotion, evaluation, and oversight mechanisms will now be under the control of an Inquisition-style Tribunal. Soon, only three types of people will remain: those who have no other choice, those who are corrupt, or those who work for other bosses (that is, the wealthy or the criminals).
This same logic was seen six years ago, when it was proposed that public officials be prohibited from working elsewhere—something we discussed here at the time. Back then, the Supreme Court stopped the madness. Now, the madness is destroying the Court itself.
If the ruling group were monolithic, what’s happening to the judiciary would be proof of a dictatorship. But given the current situation, what we’re seeing is more like confirmed chaos.
I believe the only response left to us is not to vote. A very low turnout would expose the illegitimacy of this entire process.
In any case, voting in Mexico no longer makes sense. In fact, under current conditions, it’s harmful.