The fight for democracy is happening everywhere. We saw democracy under siege in the US midterm elections as a reactionary Republican Party led a movement to restrict voting rights, threaten election workers, and gerrymander electoral districts to limit African American and Latino voting power. That same anti-democratic movement threatened to refuse to accept the results of elections if defeated. 

US voters largely rejected this Trumpista attempt to subvert democratic processes, despite a hysterical mainstream media that predicted a Republican “red wave.” Those who know what it means to be marginalized — African American and Latinos, women and youth — became the backbone of the vote that fended off the right-wing attack.

With repressive elitist forces still active all around the world, the fight for democracy remains critical. But Latin America has become the region that’s turning the tide — pink! Throughout Latin America, social democratic leaders have been replacing right-wing governments. Voters recently elected working class leader Lula da Silva the new president in Brazil, defeating the neo-fascist Jair Bolsonaro, who had received a loud — como siempre — endorsement from Donald Trump.

If the Morena Party of AMLO can consolidate and continue its political dominance, México could well become the political anchor for this Pink Tide. But is México fighting for democracy? On November 13, tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in México City’s main boulevard to protest new proposals by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to overhaul México’s National Electoral Institute, the INE.

This INE has for decades favored and benefited the PRI and the PAN, parties that mainly support the interests of México’s oligarchic ruling class. The INE system, many Mexicanos believe, denied victory to Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas when he ran for president in 1988 and did the same to AMLO in 2006. Both candidates most likely won a clear majority of the nation’s votes. Fortunately, the victory of AMLO and the Morena party in 2018 turned out to be so overwhelming that the ruling class this time couldn’t steal the elections.

AMLO’s new electoral reform initiative will eliminate state-level electoral offices, slash the amount of public money going to political parties, and allow the Mexican people — not the lower chamber of the Mexican Congress — to elect members of the INE. The reform would also reduce that lower chamber from 500 to 300 members and the Mexican Senate from 128 to 96 by eliminating at-large members not chosen by voters, but rather given seats based on the proportion of a party’s votes.

The US media, no surprise, has given overwhelmingly favorable coverage to the anti-AMLO demonstrators, characterizing the reforms proposed by AMLO and Morena as a movida to weaken democracy, como siempre. I find myself suspecting, when I read articles along this line, that AMLO must be proposing something really positive for democracy.

In any case, the fate of AMLO’s proposals will ultimately be up to the Mexican people to decide, as it should be.