This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, September 20th,

2004. I'm Caleb Brown. The changes in the process for selecting

judges in Mexico made some headlines but that is not

the whole story. Cato Zien Vasquez says these constitutional changes are another

step in a more substantial slide into a consolidation of power into the executive branch.

We discussed Mexico's large turn against free markets and independent institutions

last week.

So if you don't mind, Ian, just go ahead. Just tell us what's happened in Mexico over the last

six years. I think for people outside of Mexico, not just Americans or Canadians, but other Latin Americans as well.

It's not so obvious to them how badly the country has deteriorated under the presidency of

Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador, who is known as Amlo,

by his initials.

There's been a real deterioration there in all sorts of things.

Institutional deterioration, economic policy. Just the security situation is

is alarming to the to the point that the Mexican economist Isakkats has called

it the presidential term of destruction. So just during these past six years more than there's been more than 180,000 murders in the country.

That's a record in modern times and that's without even counting the 43,000 or more

disappearances during that period. At least a third of the country is under

control of narco traffickers or organized crime.

There's been dozens of political assassinations

just in the last year or so at the local level and so on. And during this period of time this

president has militarized the country in a way that hasn't been seen before.

...