Austerity & Humility

ByMexico Solidarity

This editorial by Pedro Miguel appeared in the August 1, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

When officials squander public resources to pay for luxuries, they walk the fine line between indecency and corruption, between a socially reprehensible moral violation and the crime of improperly privatizing a good that belongs to everyone. But it’s much easier to prove the appropriation of a tangible asset (money, personal property, or real estate) than frivolous spending justified by “the needs of their office.”

The clearest example is the presidential plane that Felipe Calderón purchased, at the expense of the treasury, for his successor: a flying palace worth more than 200 million dollars whose capacity of between 200 and 300 seats was reduced to just 80 in order to make room for a private office, a meeting room and a room (very motel-like, by the way) with a king-size bed, a full bathroom with a shower and even a micro-gym with a treadmill.

On each trip of that aircraft, the treasury was drained with bills of 7 million pesos for internet connection, one million for cleaning supplies, and 181,000MXN for toilet paper. Discounting the obvious corruption involved in these expenses, the ruling Peña Nieto administration found these figures acceptable.

It was also normal for any low-level official to have vehicles, drivers, and assistants, and for people to be sent abroad who invented any unnecessary mission. Sadly famous were the international tours of Luis Echeverría and José López Portillo, replete with courtiers and courtesans; the outrageous vacations of Miguel de la Madrid’s teenage children, organized and paid for by the Presidential General Staff (RIP); the residences the Presidency owned on the country’s beaches; or the small mansions Vicente Fox had built in Los Pinos (“cabins,” he called them, in an exercise of sovereign hypocrisy) for himself and his family.

The difference between the old regime and the republican austerity that began to be implemented in December 2018 can be illustrated by a single figure: while in 2017 the Office of the President spent almost 4.9 billion pesos, the corresponding figure for 2019 was just over 721 million. The determination to safeguard the nation’s funds and not waste them on foolish luxuries was one of the factors—along with the fight against corruption, tax evasion, and fuel theft —that made it possible to finance the social programs and infrastructure projects of the Obrador administration.

Republican austerity does not seek to force anyone, rich or poor, to adhere to a certain standard of living; it simply demands that the tasks of government be carried out without incurring frivolous expenses and without the performance of their duties becoming a sultan’s lifestyle for any official.

For discursive and propagandistic convenience, the oligarchic reaction and its spokesmen have tried to make people believe that this guideline entails a personal and obligatory vow of poverty, in order to later portray anyone who advocates for or works for the 4T as inconsistent the moment they exceed the category of “austere” or “economic” in any area: restaurant, hotel, store, shoes, watch, vehicle, place of residence, regardless of whether the expense or property comes from their own resources and not from public money.

This manipulation of the facts not only stems from the desire for political and media clout, which has long been the sole project of these opponents, but also reflects a class-based rage because “the nacos” dare to step on sites that until a few years ago were reserved for the gilded (and thieving) elite of the old regime.

Once this point is clarified, it would be desirable for popular representatives and public employees to abstain of their own volition—because there is no way or purpose to legally force them—from spending their legitimate money on things that are or appear to be ostentatious or frivolous.

Because, despite the enormous social progress achieved in the nearly seven years of Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Claudia Sheinbaum’s leadership, much inequality and deprivation remain. Furthermore, the task of demolishing the sense of belonging and esprit de corps of what is known as the political class, which is currently a stage of confrontation between decorum and insolence, between humility and frivolity, between the new and the rotten, is largely pending.