Pain, populism and democracy – inside Mexico City’s crowdsourced constitution

Mexico City made headlines around the world earlier this year when the mayor announced that it would crowdsource its new constitution. Any member of the public could post an idea on change.org and those that received a minimum number of votes would be presented to the group of 21 scholars, public servants, activists and artists chosen to draft the text. Hundreds of proposals were submitted and hundreds of thousands of votes were cast. The expert group has now presented its first draft, igniting a firestorm of outrage, accusation and counter-accusation that threatens to engulf the whole project. Yet supporters argue that it is essential for tackling the city’s grievous problems, and part of a long process towards making its democratic institutions more representative of the people they are there to serve. The city, which has some nine million inhabitants, only got the right to elect its mayor in 1997, before which the mayors were appointees, and only since then has it also gained the ability to elect authorities to its 16 boroughs. One of the people to submit a successful proposal, Francisco Fontano Patán, a 29-year-old travel journalist, told Apolitical, ‘At the beginning I didn’t really have much faith in this – politics is quite bad in Mexico – but it has exceeded my expectations and changed my view of government. I have seen with my own eyes and worked with them and I have seen them deliver and try very hard to listen to every one of us and to help us.’ Fontano’s proposal was that the city guarantee a minimum amount of green space per resident. It has attracted some 39,000 votes at time of writing, and made Fontano the first person to present his idea to the drafters. He asked for 9.2 square metres of green space per person, the World Health Organisation minimum (and below the 16sqm recommended by the UN). The draft constitution has dropped the figure, but committed the city to increasing the green space available. “This is a crazy idea” The vituperative criticism of the draft has argued that proposals such as Patán’s are wildly unrealistic. Francisco Martín Moreno, a historian, commentator, legal expert and prominent critic of the process, told Apolitical, ‘Guarantee green space? How can they say that? If you fly around Mexico City, you will see that the green spaces are gone. We don’t have any more green spaces. To have those green spaces, they would have to confiscate houses or businesses or industries, but how can they get the money to do that? ‘Some of the provisions are really a nonsense. The constitution says everyone has the right to breathe a healthy atmosphere. OK, but let me tell you how bad the pollution is in Mexico City. So how is that possible? ‘If someone has a right, the government has an obligation. It’s a parallel conception. And it’s impossible for the government to fulfill all the rights they’re proposing. Yes, it’s aspirational, and we’ve been fighting to have a […]

Pain, populism and democracy – inside Mexico City’s crowdsourced constitution is available on www.cellulitesolutions.org

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