“Nocturno de la democracia mexicana are three books in one. An agile and novel analysis of the burdens imposed on us by history; a timely recapitulation of our still unfinished transition to democracy, and a warning about the authoritarian impulses of the new government.

La costumbre política mexicana, the first part of the book, can be read as a single essay on the long-lasting threads of our political history: those trademarks to which, little or much, we always return.

The second part, Casa en construcción: democracia sin demócratas, gathers essays and articles written at the pace of the first two decades of Mexican democracy: 2000-2018.

The third part, Saltando al pasado. El poder de la costumbre, explores the 2018 elections as a kind of return to habit, to the election of a strong government, with caudillista traits, after two decades of weak, unquestionably democratic but indefensibly ineffective and corrupt governments.

The underlying theme is the history of Mexico’s disagreement with political modernity in two of its secular processes: that of the establishment of the republic, during the 19th century, and that of the construction of democracy, at the end of the 20th.”