The Prohibition on Consecutive Reelection in the Mexican Congress

Abstract

tion of federal legislators was never brought up during the constitutional convention. In fact, the reelection of deputies was extremely common during the last two decades of the Porfirian dictatorship, which ended in 1910. Furthermore, once the political elite in Congress was replaced with a new revolutionary cohort, the reelection levels remained relatively high, comparable to other countries in Latin America today. For example, in the last legislature that permitted consecutive reelection (1932– 1934), 35.2 percent of the deputies had been reelected (Nacif n.d.). However, in 1932, the official party (then known as the Partido Nacional Revolucionario, PNR) decided in a convention of state legislators to prohibit the consecutive reelection of federal legislators. The constitutional reform was enacted by Congress by the end of 1933, going into effect for the term beginning in 1934. The official reasoning behind this move was to open up greater circulation of secondary leaders within the revolutionary party. The proponents of the reform argued that the no reelection theme of the Revolution should be applied across the board. However, there was significant opposition within the official party itself (at the time there really were no opposition parties, at least within the legislative branch). The real reason behind the reforms appears to be that the party leadership, specifically former president Plutarco Elias Calles, wanted to centralize control over the party. At the time, the main threat to the party was geographical decentralization—centrifugal forces that were pulling the party apart. The prohibition on the reelection of federal legislators