Political conjuncture and power in Mexico today

Abstract

Mexico is experiencing a serious institutional political crisis, the result of the lack of transparent and effective legal and political channels through which part of society—working people and those excluded from social rights—can express their discontent with neoliberal policies and halt the worsening of the social contradictions those policies have generated. The crisis surfaces and deepens in the current post-electoral moment because of mass civil resistance to the recent election results, but its political origins lie in the shortcomings of Mexico’s transition to democracy: a transition avoided, reduced, negotiated and directed by the leaderships of the PAN and the PRI.