In Posdata, Octavio Paz compared the Mexican presidency with the tlatoani, the ruler of the Aztecs. He wrote that “el tlatoani representa la continuidad impersonal de la dominación” (the tlatoani represents the impersonal continuity of domination). The president, in his reading, holds power for six years, and at the end of that term another president appears.
A phrase attributed to the historian Daniel Cosío Villegas, in El sistema político mexicano, is still quoted by columnists. It calls the system a “monarquía absoluta sexenal y hereditaria por línea transversal” (an absolute six-year monarchy, hereditary in a transverse line). The phrase is quoted in slightly different wordings.