AS explained very well in these pages by Tim Young on September 5, Mexico under outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has been remarkably successful in rolling back privatisation, promoting welfare and infrastructure and reclaiming control over natural resources — and also in neutralising the political right and its discourse.

The result was a crushing victory in the June 2 elections for Morena party candidate Claudia Sheinbaum, the first woman ever to win the presidency, who will take office on October 1.

Equally important, Morena and its allies in the Workers Party (PT) and the Greens (PVEM) won two-thirds of the seats in both houses of the Mexican congress. This exceeded expectations and was a stunning blow to the Establishment: it means that the new congress (which has already taken office on September 1) can pass constitutional amendments.

This is crucial because hitherto, the right had used its greatest remaining bastion of institutional power, the extremely corrupt judiciary, to block or hamstring many of Amlo’s reforms by injunctions or stays of execution.

Back in 2020-22, Amlo had temporarily made limited progress in reforming the judiciary when he had a progressive chief justice, Arturo Zaldivar, but Zaldivar was in a minority on the supreme court and was later replaced by a reactionary woman from the old governing party, PRI, Norma Pina.

Pina has waged systematic lawfare against Amlo and his “4T transformation” programme ever since, with blatant politicisation of the supreme court and the entire judiciary. She and her associates tried to derail the elections and only Amlo’s political determination and skill and the strength of the popular movement prevented this.

After the elections, the right-wing coalition tried to question the rules they themselves had previously invented in order to undermine the Morena coalition’s two-thirds majority, but despite all their efforts and the help of Chief Justice Pina, they failed.

So it was clear that after September 1, with the new congress in session, constitutional reforms were likely to be passed.

There are 20 such reforms proposed by Amlo and backed by President-Elect Claudia Sheinbaum, including constitutional entrenchment of indigenous rights, welfare programmes including free universal healthcare and education, and much more. But the first and most fundamental change is judicial reform because in its absence the right would continue to block everything else.

The reform provides for judges and magistrates to be elected by popular vote from lists of candidates with legal training; for the existing judicial council (supposed to discipline errant judges, but completely ineffective as it is dominated by high-ranking justices) to be replaced by an independent body; for judges to be regularly evaluated to ensure their effective and prompt application of the law; and for their salaries and benefits to conform to the legal limitations (not as at present where senior justices have inflated salaries and benefits much greater than the president of the republic).

Amlo and Morena tried dialogue and conciliation with the opposition, but to no avail. So on September 3, the reform was passed in the chamber of deputies (lower house). This was easy since Morena’s coalition had more than enough votes there, but the senate was more difficult since the governing coalition only had 85 senators out of 128, and the prevailing view was that 86 were needed.

The plenary debate in the senate was scheduled for September 10, but in the meantime, tensions were reaching boiling point. Some judges issued injunctions trying to prevent the debate, but it was obvious that they had no power to do this.

But the media was overwhelmingly against the reform, and the US ambassador, who had previously indicated agreement with the reform, had (clearly on instructions from the State Department) condemned it.

Amlo, Sheinbaum and Morena rejected this as an unacceptable infringement on Mexican sovereignty and also pointed out that in the US judges are elected in 43 out of the 50 states. But the judges, led by Pina, declared themselves on strike and began street demonstrations against the reform.

Some right-wing politicians openly called for violence: a female senator of the PAN party from the state of Aguascalientes declared that those who voted for the reform should be lynched.

The judicial strike, which paralysed the system and left citizens with no access to justice, was completely illegal and political since the judges and court employees had no salary or work-related demands.

But when the senate debate began, the opposition minority senators allowed the protesting judges and judicial employees into the chamber where they began a violent assault on the majority senators.

There was total mayhem and several people were injured. The senate leader, Gerardo Fernandez Norona of the PT, showed remarkable composure and managed to evacuate the chamber and lead the senators to another hall where they resumed the debate.

The protesting members of the judiciary tried to assault the alternative venue but were prevented by the Mexico City police (who showed commendable restraint). The debate continued into the early hours of September 11; two opposition senators declared their support for the reform, and it was finally passed by 86 votes to 41 (one member was unable to attend).

Ratification of the reform requires approval by 17 of Mexico’s 32 state assemblies, and 20 have already done this. Some violent protests continue, but demonstrations and declarations of popular support for the reform are much greater.

The opposition know they are defeated; chief justice Pina’s surname means “pineapple,” and we now have a very sour pineapple.

As for the US, despite its displeasure, it is unlikely to take any serious hostile action. President Joe Biden has his own judicial reform proposal, so he is not in a strong position to object.

David Raby is a retired professor of Latin American history and the co-ordinator of the Mexico Solidarity Forum. Follow him on X @DLRaby.