Mexico & Nafta - September 2010 (ISSN 1741-444X)

On 16 August the supreme court ruled that homosexual couples could adopt children and thus enjoy the same marriage rights as heterosexual couples.

The supreme court's ruling, and the reaction of the ruling Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), may well lead to a split in the PAN. If the PAN breaks apart there should be a chance, at least, of a non Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) candidate winning the presidency in 2012. The beneficiary of such a chain of events is likely to be the instigator of the events which led to the supreme court's ruling: Marcelo Ebrard, the mayor of Mexico City since 2006. 

Ebrard has been moving towards the political centre since taking office, though he started off on the radical Left. He has avoided disasters in managing Mexico City, the only bastion of the leftwing Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD). Unlike most other urban centres in Mexico, the drug gangs have yet to disrupt metropolitan life. So far this year, there have been 110 gang killings in Mexico City, in 2009 there were 173 and in 2008, 138. In 2006, when Ebrard took office, there were 137 gang killings.

On a recent visit to Europe, Ebrard impressed at least some of his hosts with his non-doctrinaire statements and moderate (even bi-partisan) ideas for the modernisation of Mexico. As mayor of Mexico City, Ebrard's highest profile public stances have been on abortion and gay rights. He has pushed an abortion reform through the city council which allows terminations up to 12 weeks after conception and sponsored reforms to allow same sex marriage and to give gay couples equal rights, such as adoption, to heterosexual ones.

These reforms outraged the Roman Catholic Church's hierarchy. Despite the worsening violence and the grim state of the economy, the Roman Catholic Church has decided that the most important issue facing the nation is same-sex marriage.

The church's vitriolic language about homosexuals looks anachronistic. It may well allow Ebrard to tap into the deep reservoirs of anti-clericalism that motivate large numbers of Mexicans. Ebrard's problem is that outside Mexico City he has a low-profile. Such a high profile, clearly defined squabble with the Roman Catholic hierarchy is, therefore, just what his PR advisers might have ordered.

The choice of issue, gay rights, is also ideal for increasing US media interest in Ebrard. Best of all, Ebrard did not bring the media attention on himself. In a wildly intemperate attack on 15 August, the Cardinal Archbishop of Guadalajara, Juan Sandoval Iñiguez, accused the supreme court of being bribed by Ebrard and “international organisations". On 18 August Ebrard sued the cardinal for libel, after asking him to retract the bribery allegation (the cardinal refused). As the whole Roman Catholic Episcopal hierarchy has lined up behind Sandoval, the row should run and run.

It is worth noting that the supreme court's ruling on same-sex marriage rights (by nine to two on the right of homosexual couples to adopt children) means that the law in Mexico is now clearer than it is in the US. In the US a federal court has ruled that a referendum in California to outlaw gay marriage was unconstitutional. The US federal courts have refused, however, to rule on whether same-sex marriage is constitutionally legal.

It is also worth noting that a majority of Mexico's supreme court judges disregarded the argument advanced by the two judges who opposed granting homosexual couples the same rights as heterosexual couples. These two dissident judges, who included the president of the supreme court, argued that marriage was an institution which preceded the promulgation of the Mexican constitution and so the traditional understanding of what constituted marriage took precedence over constitutional rights. The majority's upholding of the constitution as the fundamental definition of rights and duties has implications across a whole range of other issues.

The PAN, which has always been an uneasy alliance between Roman Catholic conservatives and economic liberals, has come out against the supreme court's rulings on gay rights. PAN activists in several states have also tightened up abortion laws, which are set by individual states, prompting abortion-rights activists to highlight the severe prison sentences (of seven years) being served by some women, notably in Guajanuato, who have undergone abortions.

The failure by the current administration of President Felipe Calderón to win the war it declared on organised crime, and Calderón's hesitancy over indicating a candidate to succeed him as president, are already causing tensions inside the PAN. The PAN appears to be on the point of expelling Manuel Espino, a former party president who marshalled the party behind Calderón in 2006.

The two leaders fell out and Espino, who comes from the Roman Catholic Right, has now launched a new movement, Volver a Empezar (VAE, or 'To Start Again') which, he claims, has 60,000 members. Espino, who has been president of the Organización Demócrata Cristiana de América since 2007, is a candidate who may well alienate the so-called neo-panistas, the entrepreneurs and modernisers who are especially prominent in the PAN in the more prosperous (and now more violent) north of the country.

If Ebrard continues his march towards the centre-ground of Mexican politics on economic issues, he may well pick up the support of the neo-panistas who loathe the corporatism of the PRI.