Photo: Presidencia

By KELIN DILLON

During the 107th anniversary of the Mexican Constitution on Monday, Feb. 5, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) commemorated the holiday from Mexico’s National Palace with the proposal of a series of sweeping congressional reforms to the nation’s century-plus-old constitution. 

 “Friends and friends, Mexican men and women, we commemorate on this historic date, one more anniversary of the 1917 Constitution in force and in this place where the liberal Constitution of 1857 was approved,” began the federal executive’s speech.

“I would like the people of Mexico to know the foundations and reasons that inspire me to present a package of legal reform initiatives, which are aimed at modifying the content of anti-popular articles that were introduced during the neoliberal or neo-Porfirista period, all of the reforms from neoliberal period that are contrary to the public interest,” continued AMLO.

The package of 20 proposed reforms includes the official constitutional recognition of indigenous communities and Afro-Mexican peoples, solidifying elders’ rights to pensions, expanding scholarships for impoverished families, guaranteeing access to free healthcare, as well as banning animal abuse, fracking, open pit mining and transgenic corn cultivation across Mexico.

Likewise, the initiatives propose enforcing water use limits in areas with resource scarcity, banning trade on vaping devices and fentanyl, securing the public’s right to internet access, reassessing the legal framework behind tax fraud, guaranteeing annual minimum wage increases in line with inflation, eliminating autonomous agencies and reform Mexico’s electoral law. 

However, López Obrador’s in-power National Regeneration Movement (Morena) notably does not have sufficient votes between itself and its allies to pass the proposed constitutional changes through Mexico’s legislative houses. Out of the 10 constitutional reforms proposed by AMLO over his six-year term, only five were approved.

“The essence of these measures is to put public life back on track. These proposals are different and opposed to the reforms that were approved throughout the neoliberal period, when in those 36 years of that dark period they did not think about benefiting the people, but rather they thought about adjusting the legal framework for dispossession in favor of a minority,” concluded AMLO. “Never in 36 years has anything been approved for social justice.”