Hungary and the Intermarium

Hungary and the Intermarium

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

The fall of Viktor Orbán in 2026 marks a turning point that compels us to revisit Fredo Arias King's warning about the nature of transitions. For this author, democratic success in Eastern Europe depended on a radical break with previous power structures, something that Orbán's illiberal model simply reformulated under a modern nationalism. Now, with the triumph of Péter Magyar, Hungary faces the dilemma of the Intermarium: that belt of nations between the Baltic and the Black Sea desperately seeking to shake off Russian influence while attempting to assimilate Western values ​​that do not always align with its historical reality.

As Jesús Silva Herzog Márquez has aptly pointed out, the change in Hungary is not an automatic liberal restoration, but rather a conservative replacement. This lesson is vital for Mexico. We often believe that democracy ends with the vote count, but as analyzed in the volume edited by Ilan Bizberg and published by Cal y Arena, transitions are profound processes where geopolitics and state control weigh as much as, or even more than, popular will. The Hungarian experience teaches us that a populist regime can capture institutions in such a way that, even after its defeat, the state apparatus continues to operate according to the logic of the past. For Mexico, the lesson is that alternation of power is not synonymous with democratization if it is not accompanied by a reconstruction of the rule of law and genuine independence of technical bodies.

Hungary's difficulty in breaking free from Russia's energy and political orbit demonstrates that geography is, at times, a stronger destiny than the ballot box. Democracy, in this sense, requires not only a civil society that desires it, but also an international context that enables it. Silva Herzog's warning about the structural fragility of populism resonates today: corruption and arrogance ultimately exhaust authoritarian models, but the vacuum they leave is usually filled by figures from within the same system. If Mexico wants to avoid becoming a laboratory for illiberal democracy, it must understand that freedom is not guaranteed simply by winning an election, but by ensuring that the new power does not inherit the vices of the defeated. Society must desire democracy, but it must also have the patience and astuteness to dismantle a regime designed to be eternal.

The Coming Progressive Right

 The Coming Progressive Right

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

While the historical right, that of the Habsburg model, corporatist and clerical, clings to its remnants of power through local political bosses, a more insidious creature is emerging: the progressive right of the digital youth.

It is not a force for liberation, but rather the enforcer of an algorithmic puritanism that has transformed the classroom into a pocket-sized Inquisition tribunal.

These young people, who carry their cell phones like personal panopticons, are not rebels; they are the new watchdogs of a regime that despises them while granting them the illusion of moral superiority.

It is the minionization of the spirit: a mass desperately seeking a charismatic villain to serve and a scapegoat to cancel.

They have replaced hard data and scientific rigor with the fetish of identity, validating an authoritarian structure that uses tenderness to conceal what is rotten.

This new right wing doesn't need bayonets when it has students willing to denounce any teacher who dares to interrupt its lethargy with the aridity of real-world politics or thermodynamics, anthropocentrism or geopolitics. The system doesn't need to send the army into the square if it can send the "minion masses" to digitally lynch anyone who steps out of line.

"Repression" today means exclusion from the job market, social media blackouts, and the budgetary strangulation of intelligence.

The looming conflict will not be between progress and reaction, but between two forms of servitude.

On one side, the old order of personal loyalties; on the other, this consumerist vanguard that confuses empathy with censorship.

However, the awakening will be tragic.

In a Mexico where infrastructure is crumbling, pollution is devouring the future, and public administration is a prize for the incompetent, the Sultan algorithm will offer little solace.

Cell phones will be useless tools in the face of the harsh realities of manual labor and the scarcity they will inherit.

Digital courtiers are being cultivated for a world that demands engineers and critical thinkers.

While the political class smiles for the cameras, the intelligentsia silently drinks its hemlock, aware that the mirage of digital freedom is merely the prelude to a new and deeper darkness.

Gabriel Careaga exposed the university students of '68 not as romantic revolutionaries, but as aspirational individuals with a profound fear of downward mobility.

According to him, their "rebellion" was actually a tantrum to ensure the system guaranteed their place in the pyramid of privilege.

If we apply this lens to the progressive right (the digital ephebocracy), the scenario is terrifyingly cyclical. I hope they have time to escape.

Just as Robespierre ended up on the guillotine, this youth-dominated system could turn against the regime if it isn't "pure" or "tender" enough at any given moment.

The Middle Ages and Civil Sacralism

 The Middle Ages and Civil Sacralism

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

Just over a century after the fields of Mexico were stained with the blood of the Cristero War, the nation's spiritual and political landscape is undergoing a metamorphosis that the Catholic hierarchy seems incapable of deciphering.

While the echoes of the 1926 bells resonate in a sterile nostalgia for some sectors of Hispanic Catholic nationalism, the factual reality of contemporary Mexico is sliding toward a new syncretism that has left the Church of Rome on the periphery of its own making.

The phenomenon of the Fourth Transformation, far from representing a re-edition of Plutarco Elías Calles's Jacobinism or a Masonic insurgency, constitutes the consolidation of a civil sacralism that has been able to interpret the needs of a population exceeding sixty million poor, who, abandoned by their shepherd, have sought refuge in new folds.

During his visit to Mexico in 2016, Pope Francis was prophetic when he warned the bishops about the urgent need to become more humble and the pressing necessity of stepping down from their privileged positions.

That criticism, which resonated throughout the Metropolitan Cathedral, was not merely an aesthetic suggestion, but a diagnosis of institutional survival.

The Mexican high clergy, historically closely tied to the circles of power and benefiting from a marriage of convenience with economic elites, has allowed the social fabric to unravel, leaving a void that is now successfully filled by Pentecostalism, Evangelicalism, and organizations with controversial structures such as La Luz del Mundo (The Light of the World).

Data from the Population and Housing Census of recent decades confirms an irreversible trend: the non-Catholic population in Mexico now numbers around 20 million people, a demographic and electoral force that has begun to coalesce into political organizations that replicate successful experiences of the religious right in Brazil and Central America.

This new religious war is not being fought with rifles on the hills, but rather in the management of hope and the administration of poverty.

The Fourth Transformation has built a religious populism that is not anticlerical, but profoundly para-religious.

By using language of moral purification, love of neighbor, and social redemption, the current regime has achieved an emotional connection that the Catholic Church lost by bureaucratizing faith.

Unlike the aggressive secular state of the last century, the current state apparatus embraces a popular religiosity that intertwines with prosperity theology and the mystique of the chosen people.

In this scenario, Mexican Catholicism suffers from severe deficits in legitimacy and effectiveness; its structure of ministers is insufficient to serve a growing population in urban peripheries and the most isolated rural communities.

This neglect extends even beyond national borders. The religiosity of the nearly 50 million migrants and descendants of Mexicans in the United States is a territory where the Mexican hierarchy is conspicuously absent.

Isolated both by an American Catholicism that often feels alien to them and by a hierarchy of origin that only reminds them of their roots through remittances, these millions of souls become fertile ground for denominations that offer them community, identity, and a survival ethic that traditional Catholicism, absorbed in its nostalgic Hispanism and sometimes with Francoist undertones, despises as vulgar or lacking in tradition.

This elite Catholic nationalism simply fails to understand that post-Cold War Mexico has mutated under the impact of a corrupting neoliberalism that atomized society, leaving the individual at the mercy of whoever offers them not only bread, but also a sense of belonging.

The Mexican electorate, historically pragmatic and inclined toward clientelism, doesn't vote for liberal abstractions, but rather for state support and handouts—elements that are now presented under a guise of political sanctity.

Morena has revived the corporatism perfected by the PRI, but has imbued it with a heterodox Christian soul.

The question that arises in this context is whether these new creeds, with their blend of theology of poverty and populist mobilization, have the capacity to lift Mexico out of its persistent social Dark Ages, or whether they are simply replacing one dogma with another.

The Catholic Church faces the institutional challenge of reformulating its social Catholicism, cleansing its structures of the corruption denounced by the Pope, and recovering an ethical influence that doesn't depend on the favor of the current ruler.

The upcoming political competition will be marked by this low-intensity culture war, where legitimacy will be won through proximity to the marginalized.

If the Catholic Church persists in its distancing itself from and disdain for new forms of popular religiosity, it will end up as a mere figurehead in a country that has decided to seek its salvation at other altars.

The civic sacralism of the Fourth Transformation has demonstrated that power in Mexico is built at the intersection of faith and need.

Until the upper echelons learn to walk among the dust of the slums once again, the void will continue to be filled by a new political class that has understood that, in Mexico, to govern the body, one must first win over the spirit of the people.

Memory, Blood, and Faith: A Century After the Cristero War

Memory, Blood, and Faith: A Century After the Cristero War

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

Under the echo of a conflict that refuses to be relegated to mere archives, the San Juan Hall of the Parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Puebla hosted the colloquium “The Cristero War in Mexico 1926-2026.”

Contents

THE CLASH OF TWO NATIONALISMS

SYMBOLS OF RESISTANCE: THE CUP AND DICE AND THE CALLES LAW

THE WAR ON THE PENTAGRAM: BETWEEN CORRIDOS AND AGRARIANISM

A CENTENNIAL THAT QUESTIONS THE PRESENT

The event marks the beginning of a series of reflections that, one hundred years after the Calles Law, seek to understand how faith and politics continue to dance a dangerous waltz in the construction of Mexican identity.

Far from being a cold review of the past, the colloquium served as a necessary reflection on the centennial commemorations of the Cristero War, that open wound in the Bajío region that redefined the national soul.

THE CLASH OF TWO NATIONALISMS

The panel, moderated by Juan Bernardo Galeazzi Oviedo, traced an intellectual map of the collision between revolutionary nationalism and Catholic nationalism.

Dr. Xochitl Patricia Campos López dissected the contradictions between the formation of the Liberal State and the Catholicism rooted since the Colonial era, a tension that erupted violently when 20th-century modernity attempted to impose itself on secular tradition.

For his part, Vicente Moreno Lima offered a global perspective by analyzing the position of Pius XI.

Their interventions revealed that the Vatican was observing not only a religious conflict, but also a strategic struggle by social Catholicism to curb the advance of anarchism and socialism among the Mexican working classes.

SYMBOLS OF RESISTANCE: THE CUBILETE AND THE CALLES LAW

One of the most profound moments was the intervention of Preacher Javier Soriano Contreras, who contextualized the legislative trigger of the conflict: the Calles Law.

This code, which sought to limit the number of priests and prohibit public worship, was not only a legal affront, but also the catalyst that led figures like Anacleto González Flores and the Jesuit Miguel Agustín Pro to martyrdom.

Soriano highlighted an architectural symbol of this resistance: the construction of the Christ of the Cubilete in Guanajuato.

This monument was not just stone and lime; It was a direct challenge to secular centralism, a beacon of Sinarquism and Catholic identity that sought to remind everyone who held true sovereignty over the hearts of Mexicans.

THE WAR ON THE PENTAGRAM: BETWEEN CORRIDOS AND AGRARIANISM

Popular culture was not untouched by the debate.

During the colloquium, the sonic atmosphere of the era was revived.

Traditional music, that which runs through the veins of the Bajío region, served as a chronicle of war.

Melodies such as "El martes me fusilan" and "Valentín de la Sierra" (Portraits of Personal Sacrifice), "Los Altos de Jalisco" and "El Tapatío" (Anthems of the regional identity that rose up in arms).

However, the counterpoint was provided by "Canción del Agrarista" (The Agrarian's Song).

Dr. Diego Velázquez emphasized how this piece represented the ideal of the Revolution: the end of large landholdings, as well as the indispensable redistribution of land.

This musical clash revealed that the war wasn't just for the altars, but for the furrows; a struggle where the peasant was torn between faith in God and the hope of owning the land he worked.

A CENTENNIAL THAT QUESTIONS THE PRESENT

The audience was not passive.

Poignant questions hung in the air about the influence of Freemasonry and the role of the United States in the exile of Porfirio Díaz, as well as the subsequent aggressive factionalism of all political leanings, particularly those of Carranza and the Sonora Group.

The genetic link between the Cristero movement and the evolution of the far right in Mexico was also debated.

One hundred years after the first shots were fired, the conclusion is bittersweet: Mexico seems to have opted for the "Nicomachean arrangement," a pragmatism of shadows where institutions and the Church coexist without resolving the debts of justice and poverty that the 1926 conflict already highlighted.

The lesson of the colloquium is clear: on the threshold of 2026, the Cristiada is not just history; it is a mirror that asks us if we have learned to live in plurality or if we continue to be hostages of our own dogmas.

Mexico as a Pillar of North America

 Mexico as a Pillar of North America

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

The idea that Mexico is a “middle power” is, at best, rhetorical excess and, at worst, a dangerous delusion.

The reality is harsher: Mexico operates as North America’s maquiladora region, a supplier of labor and logistics that the “Empire” could, if it so chose, replace or discipline through immediate control.

History does not lie: attempts to challenge Washington’s geopolitical gravity have ended in collapse, from the decline of Porfirio Díaz to the financial disaster of José López Portillo.

Today, the country is lost in a “halo effect” of populism that prioritizes spectacle over strategy.

While figures like Omar García Harfuch, aka “Batman,” or the defense of a “paper sovereignty” in the face of the Cuban crisis serve to fuel the domestic narrative, the real world is heading toward an unprecedented security and supply crisis.

The inconvenient truth is this: if the United States falls, Mexico disappears.

There is no Plan B in Beijing, no salvation in Moscow, no refuge in Tehran.

Latin American elites have historically used the people as cannon fodder to buy time and protection, but this capacity for manipulation is exhausted by hardship.

The Chilean path demonstrated that the only peaceful and successful coexistence with the North arises from order and institutions, not from sovereignist tantrums.

Mexico must aspire to be the "Little House" of North America; an integration that responds not to cultural supremacy, but to the relentless dynamics of regional capitalism.

Our geopolitical margin is narrow: either we democratize and use soft power to influence the bloc, or we will be absorbed by the force of events.

Beneath the surface of what analysts like Carlos Ramírez and Luis Carlos Ugalde call "Populist Neoliberalism" or authoritarianism lies an inescapable reality: we are a tributary state and a critical security zone for Washington.

The viability of the 21st century lies not in "romantic diversification" toward transatlantic or Asian horizons—which only deepen our deficit and vulnerability—but in the consolidation of our North American identity.

In this scenario, Marcelo Ebrard's strategy is not just diplomacy but an imperative for survival.

Mexico and Canada must reclaim Robert Pastor's vision: a community of interests that transcends geographical proximity.

Attempting to replace this bloc with support from Europe or Asia is a systemic miscalculation.

Our logistical structures are designed for continental integration; any attempt at isolation will only fragment the resilience that the most dynamic market on the planet provides us.

The strength of the balance of payments is the clearest indicator for decision-making.

While intra-North American trade sustains our stability, our relationship with Asian giants tends to weaken our financial maneuvering.

Globalization has been reconfigured into a profound regionalism where proximity is the supreme strategic asset.

The ruling party is entering a labyrinth of sterile factionalism and local strongmen who neglect the general welfare. The need for figures who prioritize the viability of the state over the rhetoric of conflict is emerging.

In this chaos of centrifugal leadership, technical management and strategic integration become the only tools capable of safeguarding the future.

Faced with the imminent crisis due to the situation in the Middle East, will Mexican society be able to accept a technical “Oppenheimer,” or will it choose the resentment sown by populism and “go down with the captain” rather than be saved by the expert?

The path to true freedom is not built with rhetoric, but with the order that only technology can guarantee.

In this urgent scenario, Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón stands as the Oppenheimer of national survival: the technical expert capable of harnessing the "bomb" of prosperity through a cordial and strategic relationship with the United States.

While the noise of populist attacks fades in the face of scarcity, the echo of reason points to Ebrard as the necessary architect to safeguard the economy and manage our inseparable membership in the Northern bloc.

Mexico has no time for further ideological distractions; its viability depends on leaders who prioritize the effectiveness of data over the narrative of conflict.

It is time to act as the strategic partners that geography and capital dictate, under the guidance of the one who holds the key to external harmony, or accept the consequences of becoming a forgotten and impoverished periphery.

The moment of truth has arrived.

The Bonsai Parties

The Bonsai Parties

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

Small parties have historically played a key role as intermediaries for diverse interests within the Mexican political system.

They have often been considered mercenary actors implementing strategies aimed at perpetuating the status quo.

Prominent examples include the Green Party of Mexico and the Labor Party: the former with a deeply questionable track record, while the latter illustrates the serious contradictions between social liberalism and Maoist ideologies.

Paradoxically, these actors represent part of the commitment to building democracy that drives the second phase of the Fourth Transformation.

In the complex Mexican political landscape, it is difficult to escape the veto power that small parties have acquired.

Their influence, though discreet, has become considerable.

During the years of the hegemonic party, they were mere satellites at the service of centralized presidentialism.

But in the neoliberal era, they acquired disproportionate power, becoming arbiters that facilitated the executive branch's ability to govern at a considerable cost.

The big question now is: what will their role and political price be in the face of challenges posed by phenomena such as imperialist Trumpism?

There is no doubt that these political forces have perfected a form of blackmail that could be harmful to society and even to the political systems of Mexico and its northern neighbor, the United States.

The virtual tie in the struggle for hegemony and the inability to reconcile the country's main socioeconomic currents reveal a serious problem of factionalism and a lack of political understanding.

It is crucial to find ways to overcome the gridlock represented by these empowered small parties.

One necessary alternative would be the implementation of a runoff election for the main public offices in Mexico.

While the phenomenon known as ephebocracy highlights one of the current ills of politics; However, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that "political dwarfism" is even more damaging, as it fuels private interests at the expense of the common good.

Both the Green Party and the Labor Party have demonstrated a remarkable ability to capitalize on their manipulative capacity, thus becoming decisive vehicles for shaping the country's public agenda.

This raises a troubling question: could these small parties be the force that, as General Porfirio Díaz feared, would ultimately weaken not only Mexico but also the United States? History teaches us that the greatest cataclysms often stem from a lack of attention to detail.

Perhaps, after all, the great transformation lies in the seemingly modest interests of those who see themselves as small-time reformers.

Dialogue between Donald Trump and Antonio López de Santa Anna

Dialogue between Donald Trump and Antonio López de Santa Anna

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

In the inferno where time stands still in agony, two shadows converge in a distorted mirror of history, a confrontation of betrayals and decadence.

One, with skin that reflects the burns of power, is the spirit of the United States under the mask of Donald Trump.

The other, with a cynical face and empty gaze, is Antonio López de Santa Anna, the embodiment of a Mexico that sold its destiny.

They are two Machiavellians, two demons united by the destruction of their nations.

Trump breaks the silence with an ironic and worn tone: Here we are, Santa Anna, two corpses disguised in glory in this shared ruin.

Unbridled capitalism and ambition brought me here, but you, dictator of a thousand defeats, what did you do to avoid the fall? You sold yourself to the highest bidder while your corruption fueled the machinery that devours us both today.

My wall was a symbol, but your weakness was the true foundation of this abyss.

Santa Anna responds with a bitter smile that sounds like a stifled cry: You talk about sales, New Yorker, when you turned politics into a brothel of egos.

In Mexico, we learned to survive amidst betrayal and complicity; we lost our dignity in shady deals, surrounded by factions that only sought plunder.

But you, with your imperialism and addiction to conflict, led your people into an even deeper void.

My culture of poverty is, at least, a cynical form of resistance; your war is just a business that consumes your own children.

Trump retorts with a laugh that echoes off the sulfurous walls: Resistance? What you call that is just prolonged impunity.

While we reproach each other for our failings, the horizon reveals an unstoppable tide: China, Russia, and Islam advance upon the ruins of the West.

Consumerist totalitarianism destroyed the very fiber of character that defined us.

We are no longer the leaders the world feared or respected; we are living corpses watching the empire disintegrate under pressures we once scorned.

Santa Anna adds with terminal cynicism: In that destruction, we will be dragged down together.

The corruption I fostered and the inequality you exacerbated are reflections of our inability to save the national soul.

Western culture has been torn apart by its own greed and blindness to reality.

The hope of regeneration has vanished, and all that remains is to await final defeat at the hands of the powers rising from our ashes.

Silence falls once more, heavy as an omen.

Both demons understand that history has condemned them beyond remedy.

The monster of totalitarian capitalism devours the remnants of their empires, leaving only smoke and the memory of a power that was nothing but an illusion.

In this inferno with no return, Trump and Santa Anna, symbols of a civilization in its twilight, contemplate their inevitable fall, trapped in a cycle of betrayal that condemns them to absolute self-destruction in the abyss. The "Shield" is not a regeneration, but the formalization of dependency. It is the climax of Santa Anna's betrayal and the paroxysm of Trump's expansive isolationism.

They remain two demons discussing how, in trying to salvage the remnants of their power, they ended up suffocating the souls of their respective peoples.

Trump, adjusting his golden crown, which now emits a pale, radioactive glow, points toward the world of the living: "Look at that display, Santa Anna! The Shield of America.

It is my vision perfected.

It is not just a stone wall; it is a network of steel, satellites, and algorithms that envelops the continent.

I have convinced your successors that the only way to avoid death is to hand me the keys to their house."

Isn't this a masterpiece of negotiation? I've turned the fear of narco-terrorism into the heaviest chain they've ever worn.

Santa Anna, whose iron chains clang with a dry sound, lets out a laugh that sounds like earth falling on a coffin: You're wrong to call it a victory, Trump.

What you call a shield, I recognize as my own signature on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, but extended across the entire map.

You've achieved what I couldn't: making Mexico ask to be invaded willingly.

But tell me, at what cost to your empire? By trying to fortify the south, you've turned the United States into a weary jailer.

You're spending your last bit of energy guarding a border that no longer divides two nations, but two ruins chasing their own tails.

Trump turns to him, his eyes blazing with cold fury: It's survival! China is breathing down our necks, and Russia is laughing at our former decency.

The Shield is the only way to keep the consumer feast within our borders.

If saving my economy means managing your cities and hunting your demons as if they were my own, I'll do it.