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.

Go West: Is There Still Time?

 Go West: Is There Still Time?

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

Years ago, Fredo Arias King warned that democratization in Mexico faced a fundamental challenge: the need to build a quality democracy that would break with the legacy of clientelistic corporatism, which for decades had been the backbone of the political system.

His analysis, inspired by the experiences of democratization in Eastern Europe, indicated that the key to profound change lay in adopting the experiences of post-Soviet Central European anti-communism as a unifying element that would allow for the dismantling of authoritarian structures and pave the way for solid, independent, and accountable institutions.

The songs of Scorpions and Pet Shop Boys illustrated the optimism of the time for achieving the democracy of open societies.

In Eastern Europe, the defeat of communism not only implied a political transition but also the construction of a discourse that confronted the legacy of a regime based on ideology, repression, and subordination.

Anti-communism served as a catalyst for consolidating a democratic identity and justifying the break with the authoritarian past.

The narrative was one of liberating society from an ideological enemy, which facilitated the acceptance of change and the construction of new institutions.

The experience offered a lesson: without a clear diagnosis of the system's flaws and without a discourse that mobilizes citizens around profound democratic values, the transition can remain a superficial process, vulnerable to authoritarian relapses and the capture of institutions by elites.

In Mexico, history was different. The struggle against the PRI's authoritarianism was not framed around an ideological enemy, but rather as a search for legitimacy through competitive elections.

However, this strategy took more than twenty years to reveal its limitations.

Fredo Arias King was right to point out, before Denisse Dresser, Héctor Aguilar Camín, Lorenzo Córdova, and José Woldenberg, what it would cost to avoid the necessary historical ruptures to establish liberal capitalist democracy in Mexico and abandon the old regime of the Mexican Revolution—the platypus of the ostentatious, philanthropic ogre.

Neoliberal analysts belatedly recognized that the transition was insufficient to consolidate a quality democracy.

The fragility of the rule of law, the persistence of clientelism, and the inability to transform power structures into a genuinely democratic institutional framework left Mexico in a kind of limbo, vulnerable to populism and deeper subordination to the interests of the United States.

The Chilean experience offers a valuable lesson.

The departure of Pinochet and the process of democratic consolidation in Chile demonstrated that building strong institutions, coupled with a historical memory that promotes reconciliation, can prevent suicidal populism.

The key was a transition that was not merely formal, but involved profound social and economic reforms and a commitment to a high-quality democracy that prioritized institutional values ​​and citizen participation.

Observing these processes from Arias King's perspective invites Mexico to reflect on the need to abandon the logic of anti-communism as a strategy for rupture and, instead, commit to a narrative that strengthens democratic institutions and values.

The history of Eastern Europe shows that without a clear discourse against authoritarian legacies and without a real commitment to building a high-quality democracy, progress can be ephemeral, and the risk of falling back into authoritarianism increases.

The Chilean experience, for its part, shows that the transition can be lasting and solid if institutional reforms are accompanied by a strong and participatory democratic culture.

In a context where populism seems to lurk around every corner, Mexico needs to look to the West and learn that true democratization requires more than competitive elections.

It implies a deep commitment to building solid institutions, to definitively breaking with the corporatist past, and to a narrative that mobilizes citizens around democratic values, not around ideological enemies.

Only in this way can suicidal populism be avoided and progress made toward a future where popular sovereignty is a consolidated reality, not a mere mirage.

The Mexican Episcopate and its defense of the INE-Habsburg

 The Mexican Episcopate and its defense of the INE-Habsburg

Diego Martin Velazquez Caballero

Democracy via competitive elections in Mexico, the long voted transition, died because it did not produce any improvement for the country, specifically of not influencing or certifying the development of the quality of democracy. After 2006, what has become evident is that the electoral arena is part of the bureaucratic patrimonialism that does not want to change and that, in the face of the crisis in the post-covid world, does not understand the need to rebuild the national state. The INE/IFE strengthened discretion, concerted concessions, caciquil feuderalism and corruption. The electoral route was only enough for the delegative democracies that produce so much ungovernability in Latin America, the electoral advisers -especially after Woldenberg- never worried about developing the bases of liberal capitalist democracy in society and, above all, in the rulers. The INE/IFE represents the democratic failure in Mexico.

In order to analyze the intervention of the CEM in what transcends the INE, it is important to observe the way in which PLAN B affects the interests of the prelates and clerical bureaucracy. What affects the country's important religious leaders is that the electoral reform harms the golden bureaucracies -including that of the INE- and takes away the space of influence for the organizations and intellectuals of the Mexican right. The intransigent catholicity tries to maintain its territories of influence, those that allow it to lobby and manage the evolution of the country. Some of the INE advisers maintain important links with the geopolitical purposes of the Holy See, but also with the economic classes that benefited from the neoliberal model. Lorenzo Córdova represents what Latin American sociologists call the “Habsburg Model”, that is, the feudal, patrimonial, caciquil order, based on the Iberian caste system and, above all, on the exploitation of an impoverished mass sustained by hunger. millennial. And don't you understand the reasons why populism has a Latin American patent? Loris Zannata, in the UNAM magazine, explains the deep roots of Jesuit populism. Catholicism is as populist, or more, than AMLO; with a difference, lopezobradorismo seeks to regenerate the Mexican State and catholicity only thinks of the Spiritual Absolutism of the Holy Roman Germanic Empire that, sometimes, not even the Habsburgs themselves understand, as is the case of the poor Austrian fool they brought to Mexico to promote another Counter-Reformation.

During the long electoral transition the political capital of the Catholic Church was extended to too many institutions of the Mexican political system; furthermore, the interventionist nature of the Holy See's uncompromising integral Catholicism is felt in various quarters. Morena's reform seeks to separate the INE from the powers that be. Hence the complaint from the high bureaucrats of the Mexican Catholic clergy, who are defending their fields and do not want to lose capital, influence and budget.

The political scientist Fredo Arias Kung has established critical paths to Christian democracy in Latin America and particularly in Mexico for its inability and complicity to inhibit a liberal, capitalist and modern society. The ecclesiastical bureaucracy in Mexico is linked to oligarchs, drug traffickers, abusive businessmen, caciques, authoritarianism and populism: Were Onésimo Cepeda and Marcial Maciel interested in the question of democracy? One only has to trace a little in the lineage of the high clergy to understand their attachment to the Habsburg Model of the Feudalist Treasury. The Ecclesiastical Bureaucracy and the Christian democracy are the least interested in a democratic transition; indeed, the historical ruptures would annul their capacity for intervention, management and manipulation.

The CEM uses the political thought of Catholic nationalism attached more to fascism than to democracy, they do not care that the country develops, but that Mexico continues under their control. Even in the CEM, political thought prior to the Second Vatican Council prevails and they don't even come close to learning what Mario Bergoglio seeks to change global Catholicism. The CEM's defense of the INE will be respectable when they first address Pope Francis and Liberation Theology.

Around 1924, the Delahuertista rebellion -supported by the high clergy- ended up causing a more than deep division in the armed forces and, at the same time, the influence of the United States in matters of political succession. Subsequently, the Mexican bishops manipulated the Cristero conflict to enter the political system and cohabit with the Revolutionary Family, a coexistence that they continued until they reached power in 2000 to consolidate the Habsburg Model of society and avoid democratic consolidation. The advantage in the neoliberal model was for the right; However, as Arias Kung says, they were not interested in an authentic democracy, they did not seek ruptures or transformations so that Mexico would change politically, socially and economically. Neoliberalism deepened bureaucratic patrimonialism for the benefit of the exterior; now, revolutionary nationalism only tries to compensate the impoverished masses and the state historically. It is fair and necessary.