With the election and inauguration of Claudia Sheinbaum to the presidency, Mexico is rapidly descending into a dictatorship.

Here's the marquee case:

#Mexico's entering a #constitutionalcrisis. Pres @Claudiashein said she'll willfully fall in contempt of court after a federal judge orders congressional approval of the dismantling of the #judicialbranch halted due to legislative procedural violations-so much for the #RuleOfLaw.

— Tony Payan (@PayanTony) October 19, 2024

Sheinbaum plans to ignore the courts and do what she wants, which doesn't portend much future for rule of law there. The MORENA party of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and Sheinbaum seems to have ambitions of becoming what its less-leftist rival party, the PRI, became -- what Mario Vargas Llosa once called "the perfect dictatorship." The PRI, after all, did last about 70 years of one-party rule, roughly the same as the old Soviet Union. But nobody called it a dictatorship, or noticed the Mexicans fleeing its brand of socialism as they came north in the last half of the 20th century, not the way they noticed refugees from communism. But it was roughly the same dynamic, with the PRI only a little less horrible than Fidel Castro's Cuba or Erich Honecker's East Germany.

How much worse it could get when the one-party in question is not the crony-corruption oriented PRI, which ran itself like a blue-city machine focused on spoils for loyalists, to a far-left party focused on fundamental transformation, which is what MORENA is. Hugo Chavez, anyone?

While we may dismiss this as their own stupid decisions at the voting booth, one thing we can't dismiss is how they're turning their country into a base for all of America's worst adversaries.

They've allowed Mexico City to become a prime spy base for the Russians, similar to the PRI era, but probably worse.

They've sucked up to China, Russia and Iran, as well as all the crummy failed socialist hellholes in the region, such as Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, inviting them in, doing state projects with them, expanding their 'footprint' in Mexico, supporting their interests in United Nations votes, handing out 'free' oil to Cuba despite their state oil company's debts, all to tweak Uncle Sam.

According to Arturo McFields Yescas, writing in The Hill:

An unfriendly foreign policy towards the U.S. in on the rise. President Sheinbaum delivered a diplomatic blow to the U.S. Ambassador in Mexico, Ken Salazar, saying that she will not communicate or meet with any governmental secretary without first consulting the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This is how Mexico treats its main commercial partner and the recipient of 83 percent of its exports.

Sheinbaum has also snubbed President Biden. He announced plans for a meeting with her, but she surprisingly said no. “I don’t have plans to meet with him soon,” said Sheinbaum. She also noted that Mexico wants to be “very respectful” of the U.S. electoral process.

Sheinbaum published on X that she spoke by telephone with her U.S. counterpart, stating that they will continue to work on economic, cultural and trade matters. She omitted security and migration issues, even though these are fundamental areas for the U.S. The silence on these matters says a lot.

She likes the economics and trade. She has no plans to help out on cartel activity or migrant surges.

That's a bad direction, and sure, while they are leftists inclined towards it, it's worth noting that the Harris-Biden administration has let it take this bad direction.

Mexico has a long history of collaborating with America's enemies, from Kaiser Wilhelm II to Hitler, anything to Get Gringo. We are old enough to know that that is the historic game they are playing, so it's astonishing to hear that the U.S. is so weak to allow this to happen, and with some pretty gamy U.S. enemies.

As McFields Yescas notes:

Mexico’s irrational defense of Russia, Iran, Cuba and even Venezuela should be seen as a serious problem. Acting like nothing is happening and calling the current government a partner is not only naive but dangerous.

Nobody's using leverage, nobody's cutting deals, not the way President Trump used to cut, getting instant results.

If economics and trade are so important to Mexico, why is Joe Biden and Kamala Harris not using U.S. leverage to insist on some cooperation around the issue of migrants and free trade? They have that leverage, yet they won't do a thing about it as this problem grows.

Where's the threat to tax remittances from Mexican migrants illegally present in the states, if for nothing else, to pay unemployment benefits to the Americans who can't get jobs now that the illegals hold them? The Mexican government benefits greatly from migrant remittances even if they go to individuals within the country. The cash gets into the banking system and bolsters it, and it's a lot of cash, $63.3 billion, up 7.8% in 2023, higher than its $62 billion in state oil earnings, based on all the border surgers coming in. Do most Americans get a 7.8% pay raise in this wretched Biden economy? Nope, wages are falling, and precisely because of the migrants flowing in.

Yet nobody's talking about taxing remittances, the better to get some kind of grip on Mexican state behavior. Nor, pulling free trade privileges, which would pretty well shut the Mexican economy down.

With this much leverage on the table, it's astonishing how little the U.S. uses as Mexico runs circles around the U.S. and engages in increasingly enemy-like behavior, making itself Iran's, China's and Russia's best (and most useful) friend in the hemisphere.

This is a job for President Trump to clean up, and based on his record in his last term, he can do it. But in the meantime, it really ought to be more of a campaign issue to be held up against ditzy lightweight Harris, who has yet to do much of anything useful about Mexico even as the U.S. border czar.

Image: Eneas de Troya, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY 2.0 Deed