This column by Juan Carlos Monedero first appeared in the April 24th, 2025 edition of Sin Embargo. Juan Carlos Monedero is co-founder of Podemos, collaborates in different media outlets and presents the program En la Frontera en Público.
This Holy Week, they’ve been burning the Judas Trump in many towns of the continent, also in Mexico. People forget that Judas, although from different towns, was a fellow countryman of Jesus Christ.
Donald Trump needs to bring to his knees as many countries as he can to bring him the money of those who financed his campaign and also the lower taxes he promised his voters. American voters, except for the most fanatical ones, which do exist, are scared and see that some decisions, such as expelling migrants, don’t solve problems but rather aggravate them. Trump and the global right need to regain the strength they once had and do not know how. And, as the Romans did by hiring Judas, it needs traitors.
It is a mistake to think that you can take over a country by force alone, unless you exterminate everyone, as the Americans did with the Indigenous. A terrible precedent, but even if they use 18th century laws, we are in the 21st century.
The US needs internal allies, because you can’t fight everyone at the same time. Even Hernán Cortés saw this clearly during the Conquest. In fact, the great trump card of the current empire, the US, has always been to count on collaborators. And that is why the US has invariably supported right-wing coups in Latin America, Africa or Asia: to count on loyal collaborators who will allow them to maintain the American way of life, that is, the North American way of life.
Mere force cannot maintain an occupation: the people eventually rise up. You need the subjugated people to think that they don’t have any other alternative. That is why the Romans, in addition to hiring Judas when they invaded another people, as soon as they defeated them and after executing a good part of the resistance, went to the temple of the defeated to thank their gods for having given them, the Romans, victory. Now we don’t need to because we already watch Netflix on our own.
When the Nazis began their territorial expansion, the first thing they did was to look for nationals of each country to justify the invasion. Thus they got the support of Marshal Petain in France, and set up the collaborationist Vichy Government. Their only virtue was to allow us today to enjoy the movie Casablanca. It’s a curious inconsistency that this right wing that, being anticommunist and conservative, but also nationalist, so often allows the boots of the military of other countries to leave their footprints on the homeland they claim to love so much.
The Nazis deployed a very relevant collaborationist diplomacy: in Norway they allied with Vidkun Quisling, with Mussolini in Italy, with Franco in Spain. The same with Ante Pavelic in Croatia and with Ion Antonescu in Romania.
It is true that when they lost, the collaborators were severely punished by their own countrymen and many of them were executed. How can we forget the image of Mussolini upside down in Loreto Square in Milan, after he was captured while trying to flee to Switzerland dressed in a German soldier’s uniform?
But collaborationism never ends. The invaders will always find support among the people of the country they occupy. And this is where Felipe Calderón comes into the picture.
Francisco Javier Ramírez Acuña has recently been in Europe. This PAN Senator took advantage of his intervention in the Council of Europe to fire against the reform of the Judicial Power, with the intention of sowing doubts in Europe about democracy in Mexico. As if that were not enough, he linked the reform with alleged drug trafficking interests:
“In Mexico,” Ramirez Acuña said, ”the debate on the election of judges, magistrates and ministers has been sealed with a hasty constitutional reform, whose implementation is far from being clear and efficient.”
And he continued: “Judicial independence is key to guarantee the rule of law and to avoid any form of subsidy to groups interested in biasing justice. Today this independence is being questioned by virtue of the evident participation of interests alien to the citizenship, evidently helping one or the other candidacies”.
He also took the opportunity, to see if it would increase the damage, to talk about the issue of the disappeared in Mexico, and ended by asking the Council of Europe to “protect” Mexico so that it does not go astray and fall off the cliff of dictatorships:
“Here,” he stated from Strasbourg, ”the experience of the Council of Europe in its strong defense of judicial independence can serve as a valuable reference, cooperation in this area, observation and monitoring by this friendly organization would allow us to strengthen our institutions and guarantee effective access to justice for all citizens.
Let’s leave aside the hypocrisy that it is precisely the PAN, current ally of the ruins of the PRI, which speaks of corruption of justice, when the Secretary of the Interior of Felipe Calderon, Genaro Garcia Luna, now convicted in the U.S., worked for the Sinaloa Cartel. By the way, to his wife, Linda Cristina Pereyra, a court did her a huge favor by ordering the unblocking of the bank accounts of money that, being linked to someone who had been working for a cartel, came, among other reasons, from the disappearance of Mexican men and women.
What is relevant is that Ramírez Acuña’s presence in France, in Strasbourg, was a maneuver articulated with the Spanish right wing and, incidentally, with the old geopolitics dictated from the US. All with the collaboration of Felipe Calderón. The Mexican right wing came to Europe to collaborate with the interests that try to weaken or end the Government of the 4T, at a time when Donald Trump increases the pressure on the Government of Morena and President Claudia Sheinbaum.
This PAN Senator Acuña was Ambassador to Mexico during the Government of Felipe Calderón, with whom he is friends. And it is not for nothing that he was invited to Strasbourg to this forum of the Council of Europe.
The initial framework was a document that simply sought to strengthen relations between the Council of Europe and Latin America. But in that document, the 4T came off well, and the right was not prepared to tolerate it.
The Popular Party had organized to present an amendment that was going to leave Claudia Sheinbaum’s government in a bad light internationally. The visit of the former Ambassador to the Council of Europe coincided with an amendment that the Popular Party tried to sneak in against Mexico, together with other amendments, against Venezuela and against Cuba. The support that the Venezuelan María Corina Machado does not have in her country is usually given to her by the right wing in the Council of Europe or in the European Parliament.
The Council of Europe is not as important a place as the European Council, although they sound almost the same, which is where the 27 heads of state and government of the European Union sit.
But beware, because, as the Bible says, do not despise the serpent because it has no horns. The Council of Europe, which is where Acuña spoke, and this is very important, has a clear influence on the European Court of Human Rights, which in turn unleashes a whole range of disqualifications in multiple institutions that weaken any government. They press a key here, and provoke a tsunami 9300 kilometers away.
Felipe Calderón, from Spain, does not stop in his crusade against the 4T. Supported by the extreme right wing of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, from the Popular Party, he constantly tries to delegitimize internationally the Government of Claudia Sheinbaum, accusing her in these forums of going against the independence of justice, of violating the Rule of Law or even of favoring drug traffickers. Which, as I was saying, is ironic coming from García Luna’s boss.
In the draft resolution of the Popular Party, at the end of paragraph 8, and reinforcing Ramírez Acuña’s criticism, he tried to approve the following, within a document that, initially, simply sought, as I said, to strengthen relations between the Council of Europe and Latin America:
“The Assembly [of the Council of Europe], with deep concern, considers the judicial reforms implemented in Mexico as a threat to the independence of the justice system and recommends that the Mexican authorities consider the advice of the Venice Commission.”
In other words, the Assembly proposed to the Mexican Government to reverse the constitutional reform of the justice system and, once again, to place itself under the tutelage of an international organization, which are usually subject, more and more, to enormous meddling. To put it even more simply, the Assembly proposed that Mexico renounce its sovereignty and its political reforms. Not very patriotic.
This attempt by the PAN and the PP to strike with legal arguments against the Government of Claudia Sheinbaum practically coincides with the celebration in Santo Domingo of the World Law Congress, the World Congress of Law, which will take place on May 4, 5 and 6 in Santo Domingo. And to whom are they going to award the Medal of Honor of the World Association of Jurists. Well, Norma Piña. And which Mexican politician is invited to speak at this important forum? Well, it turns out that the Mexican Senator invited is Marko Cortés, from PAN.
We must warn that part of the current political fight is cultural, and takes place in international forums where the right wing moves like a fish in water, knows the legalese and legal tricks, has contacts and, as it has been demonstrating, is attempting to use these forms to weaken the progressive governments that have defeated them in the last few years.
The aim of the “collaborationist” Felipe Calderón and the PAN was none other than to weaken Claudia Sheinbaum, even if by doing so they also weakened Mexico. Mexico is the country with the strongest ties to the Council of Europe. Since 1999 it has enjoyed observer state status in this body, just as the Mexican Congress is an observer in the Council Assembly. The declaration voted on last week sought, as I said, to strengthen relations between the Council of Europe and Latin America.
The rapporteur, Antonio Gutiérrez Limones, a PSOE Senator from Andalusia, praised Mexico in the declaration:
“The Assembly would like to commend the important contribution made by the Mexican congressional delegation as an observer to the work of the Assembly, and the role played by Mexico as an observer State in the Council of Europe, both for more than 25 years. It therefore invites Mexico and its Congress to continue to promote the work and values of the Council of Europe, thus inspiring other countries in the region and their national assemblies interested in strengthening their relations with the Organization”.
The attack previously orchestrated against Fernandez Noroña for the trip he made to Madrid, to that same forum, a few weeks ago, is not gratuitous. Because with those attacks and the scandal created, what they seek is to discourage any politician from traveling outside Mexico, so as to leave the right wing all the ground free for them to do all sorts of things.
Felipe Calderón, who is a collaborator of the Spanish and American right wing against Mexico, maneuvered for the Council of Europe to disqualify Claudia Sheinbaum’s government. It does not seem very patriotic.
It was ordinary Mexicans living in Madrid who saw the maneuver, and defended their government out of compromise. Mexican people who have allowed the 4T to win, and, on the contrary, the PRIAN to lose in its attempt to harm the Fourth Transformation. The mere will of an awakened and conscious people who began to pick up the phone, talk to deputies, secretaries, friends, to convince a few dozen leftist politicians not to leave before the vote in Strasbourg. Thus the PP and PAN amendment was defeated.
In this fast-paced world where compasses have been demagnetized, where the crisis of the neoliberal model opens the way for leftist governments, but also, where the left does not do its homework, it rolls out the red carpet to governments of the extreme right, in a world, I say, where geopolitical changes threaten the privileges of the elites, the international arena is another space of political battle. There is Trump kicking over the chessboard of the world political order or Noboa breaking international law or committing electoral fraud.
All international organizations were born with the Cold War or its influence. They need to be reinvented. Trump’s measures have become a financial war because their cannons, such as the IMF or the World Bank, no longer function as they did a decade ago. To change the world you have to be in the world.
For that very reason, embassies cannot be places of reward for golden retreats, but rather spaces of hard work that defend the interests of the countries along the lines set by the governments, and that do not become, as has happened so many times, spaces of conspiracy against governments of change.
Perhaps the most legendary Mexican Ambassador was Gilberto Bosques. He was Consul in Marseilles during World War II. He saved more than 40,000 people (Jews, Spanish Republicans, anti-fascists) from the Nazis and the Vichy regime. He rented two castles to be used as temporary shelters. He issued Mexican visas that allowed thousands to flee to America. He was even arrested by the Nazis along with his family, but he resisted and never collaborated.
Just like Felipe Calderón. It all depends on where in history one wants to put oneself.