The Right to Revolution: Popular Sovereignty, Revolution and the Fragility of the Rule of Law in Mexico
Alejandro Madrazo * "
... we are the true heirs of the builders of our nationality, we are dispossessed millions and we call upon our brothers to join this call as the only path left to avoid dying of hunger before the unending ambition of a 70 year dictatorship led by a handful of traitors who represent the most conservative and vendepatrias [merchants of the fatherland]. They are the same ones who opposed Hidalgo and Morelos, those who betrayed Vicente Guerrero, they ar the same ones who sold over half of our territory to the foreign invader, they are the same ones who brought a European prince to govern us, they are the same ones who established the dictatorship of the Porfirian científicos, the same ones who opposed the Oil Expropriation, the same ones who massacred railroad workers in 1958 and students in 1968, the same ones who today take form us everything, absolutely everything. To avoid this and as our last hope, after having tried everything to put into practice legality based on our Magna Carta, we appeal to it, our Constitution, to apply Constitutional Article 39 which literally states: "National sovereignty resides essentially and originally in the people. All public power springs form the people and is instituted for its benefit. The people have at all times the inalienable right to alter or modify its form of government."
Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, Segunda Declaración de la Selva Lacandona, June 1994.
Introduction Revolution in the name of the law has deep roots in Mexico’s political and legal culture. It predates both Mexican law and polity. It is not infrequent that rebels claim to have the better
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Professor, CIDE.