From revolution to transformation through constitutionalism

The violent revolution of 1910 re-established the Mexican legal system through the force of social constitutionalism .

Secular education, collective property, protection of work and the well-being of the popular classes became mandates that were guaranteed through reforms. constitutional and the action of government and administration institutions.

As the country became more industrialized, it had to care for a population that doubled every 20 years. This rose from 10 million at the beginning of the 20th century to 100 million in 2000 and 30 million more 20 years later.

Such a society became more complex, plural and demanding better schemes for political participation and responses to its demands and needs .

When between the sixties and seventies that society demanded more rights , democracy and development from the PRI system, A process of political, economic and legal change began, which led to two proposals being tested. Both offered relief and failed in the face of their own dysfunctions and changing circumstances.

One was the proposal of the two PRI presidential governments of the 1970s ( Echeverria and López Portillo ) that compensated for social imbalances, but put public finances at great risk, leading the country to a historic economic crisis at the end of the 1970s. Faced with the financial disaster, the PRI itself had to open up to new options.

The second proposal was the one implemented in the following 40 years (from De la Madrid to Peña Nieto ) and corresponds to what is called the neoliberal period , which was based on a system of limited competition and rationalization of public life both politically and economically.

Gradually, a greater role was assigned to the national and foreign private sector , and we moved from a closed and protected economy to an open and free-trade one, which generated, once again, strengths along with weaknesses, as well as a large wave of constitutional reforms that formalized the economic and political model.

The neoliberal strategy encouraged polarization between classes and accelerated the social crisis, typical of inequality and poverty aggravated in a growing population, which in part had to emigrate or turn to the informal or illicit economy in order to survive.

In short, the exhaustion of the post-revolutionary State, whether nationalist or neoliberal, ultimately led to its delegitimization and rejection by the social and political majority. Faced with the evidence of its costs, the latter opted for the structural transformation of that model and gave an opportunity in 2018 to the radical left, represented by Andrés Manuel López Obrador .

Already in presidential power, the proposal of the National Regeneration Movement ( Morena ) has been testing heterodox formulas to respond to the serious inherited and emerging problems.

Since 2019, a new reformist wave has begun to dismantle several of the arrangements of the neoliberal period and has continued to find popular support to consolidate the transformation .

This is how we have reached the point of integrating a latent national constituent Congress that is activated and reacts immediately to adjust the constitutional contents to the conditions that arise in a context of resistance, shifts and aggressive changes that come from within and outside the country.

Of course, a constitutional, political and legal system of this nature is not ordinary. Rather, it is exceptional .

This is because it transfers the living power of the popular majority to the constitutional review mechanism and contains the strong tension between the division of powers, on the one hand, and unity and effectiveness in the management of the State and society, on the other.

Obviously, a revolutionary change of such magnitude within the Constitution itself puts it in crisis and cannot be explained with the usual theoretical frameworks.

At this critical moment in which we are feeling well, we can add an additional factor that contributes to re-establishing the structure that is being reshaped.

I am referring to local or federative constitutionalism, which can contribute a lot to the process of the Fourth Transformation and its second level.

Well, in Oaxaca this refoundation is underway and in search of better solutions to old and new problems that are also largely problems of the country.

Through a renewal of the current Constitution of 1922, a text is being outlined in Oaxaca that regulates institutions under a political, social and intercultural approach, both to continue building a welfare state and to make respect and peaceful coexistence between the 16 ethnic groups, the Afro-Oaxacan people and the culturally majority, mestizo and Creole society transversal.

The upcoming Constitution will be transcendent and illustrative as it will test its own model arising from the Oaxacan context within the framework of the federal pact and the margins provided for local legislation, remodeling the internal regime of the federative entity.

The current ten titles of the constitutional text and its 142 articles with around 100 thousand words, 5 times more than in 1922, can be reordered and reexpressed to better represent and concretize the just desires of the contemporary plurality and diversity of the Oaxacan people.

Surely, their principles, rights and guarantees will be there, written in a clearer and more orderly manner; the structure of three separate but well-coordinated powers, autonomous State bodies and municipal and sub-municipal governments, not for themselves or for a few but at the service of the people, all obliged to integrity, good public administration and the respective responsibilities.

In particular, the Constitution may articulate an intercultural interinstitutional framework in which equal respect for all cultures is proclaimed and mechanisms are guaranteed for their representation, management, interaction and joint response to the balanced exercise of their rights and satisfaction of their interests.

100 years ago, the revolution and the Constitution of 1917 vindicated the demands of majorities exploited by a regime that failed to correct its excesses.

100 years ago, local constitutions accompanied and supported the successful national strategy that made us advance from nothing to the second industrialized world.

100 years later, the 1917 Constitution is regaining its social profile that makes us more resilient and secure against new attacks on our sovereignty in the world of services and technology. globalized digital.

100 years after a local Constitution, the Oaxacan Constitution is on its way to establishing a political, social and intercultural constitutional framework that empowers peoples and communities, the people as a whole, to establish the second floor of the Fourth Transformation on firm and non-violent foundations, led by the first female president of Mexico, Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum.