After President-elect Álvaro Obregón was assassinated on July 17, 1928, former president Plutarco Elías Calles began to be called el Jefe Máximo de la Revolución, “the Supreme Chief of the Revolution.” Others held the presidency. From 1928 to 1934, however, no political authority in Mexico was more important than Calles.
The period is known as the Maximato, after his title. President Lázaro Cárdenas ended it on the night of April 9, 1936.
Under the PRI, the outgoing president chose the party’s candidate for his succession. The practice is called el dedazo, from dedo, “finger.” The dictionary of the Spanish Academy defines it, in its Mexican sense, as the designation of a candidate by the executive “without the usual formalities.” The writer Jorge Castañeda has argued that every PRI president used it.
Until the name was announced, the chosen man was el tapado, “the covered one.” For months, names of possible successors went around. In the end, the president decided.
On October 17, 2019, an operation in Culiacán, Sinaloa, to arrest Ovidio Guzmán López, a son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, failed, and he was released. On June 19, 2020, President López Obrador said at his morning press conference: “Yo ordené que se detuviera ese operativo y que se dejara en libertad a este presunto delincuente” (I ordered that the operation be stopped and that this alleged criminal be set free).
In October 2022, he repeated that he gave the instruction “to avoid a massacre” and said that his conscience was clear.
Mexico’s Federal Labor Law has a legal category called trabajadores de confianza, “employees of trust.” Article 9 says the category depends on the nature of the work: direction, inspection, supervision and control of a general nature, and work related to the employer’s own personal affairs within the company.
Article 185 lets the employer end the employment of such a worker “if there is a reasonable motive for loss of trust,” even when it does not match the causes for dismissal listed in Article 47.
In Mexico, a person who tiene palanca, “has a lever,” has a connection who can open a door. In a 2021 article, the researchers Arellano-Gault and Trejo Alonso describe the palanca as a mechanism for exchanging favors among acquaintances and “acquaintances of acquaintances.” It forms a network “that rests on relationships of trust.”
One participant in their focus groups said: “En México, la vida se compone de una serie de palancas” (In Mexico, life is made up of a series of levers).
In 2019, BBC Mundo asked Mexican scholars why it is hard for Mexicans to say no. Alí Albarrán of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at UNAM said: “Decir que no a alguien que te está ofreciendo algo de buena voluntad es considerado una ofensa” (Saying no to someone who offers something in good will is considered an offense). The anthropologist Roger Bartra said that “it is not very polite to say no openly.”
The article describes the common solution: “para no decir no, dicen que sí, pero no ponen un plazo” (to avoid saying no, they say yes, but they set no date).