Mexican Constitution of 1857

The Mexican Constitution of 1857 is identified as the source of the amparo, a legal remedy designed to safeguard individual rights and freedoms. Its significance in the account lies in the gap between that protective purpose and its later use by powerful companies: Telmex invoked it to frustrate efforts to limit its monopoly, turning a rights safeguard into a means of evading equal application of the law.

Constitutional Origin and Purpose

The amparo dates back to the Mexican Constitution of 1857. In principle, it allowed a person to argue that a particular law did not apply to them. The book describes the remedy as originally intended to protect individual rights and freedoms, placing it within a constitutional tradition of shielding people from the arbitrary exercise of power.

That protective design is central to the contrast the account draws. A measure created to defend individuals could also be used by firms with substantial economic and political resources. The text does not describe a change to the constitutional provision itself; it emphasizes how the remedy operated in the hands of monopolies.

Use Against Telecommunications Regulation

Telmex’s position in Mexico’s telecommunications market faced formal challenge. In 1996, long-distance provider Avantel petitioned the Mexican Competition Commission to determine whether Telmex held a dominant position. The following year, the commission found that Telmex possessed substantial monopoly power in local telephony and national and international long-distance calls, among other areas.

Regulatory efforts to curb those monopolies nevertheless came to nothing. Telmex could invoke an amparo to argue that a particular law did not apply to it. In the book’s account, this use converted a constitutional remedy into a powerful instrument for maintaining monopoly power: a finding of dominance and the existence of regulatory authorities were not enough to make limits effective.

Equality Before the Law

The problem is not presented simply as the existence of a legal remedy, but as the way a remedy can work differently for actors with unequal power. In the Mexican monopolies’ hands, the amparo became a loophole in equality before the law. Rather than protecting people’s rights, it helped powerful firms resist constraints intended to apply to them.

The example is set against a broader distinction between the rule of law and rule by law. A legal system may contain formal protections while still allowing powerful interests to escape practical constraint. The amparo’s contrast between its rights-protecting origin and its monopolistic application makes that distinction concrete: the decisive question is whether law binds powerful actors as well as everyone else.

Contrast with Enforcement in the United States

The account sharpens this contrast through Carlos Slim’s unsuccessful attempt to use familiar business tactics in the United States. In 1999, his Grupo Carso bought the computer retailer CompUSA, which had granted COC Services a franchise to sell CompUSA merchandise in Mexico. Slim violated that contract in an effort to establish his own chain of stores without competition from COC. COC sued in a Dallas court, where, as the book puts it, there were no amparos. Slim lost and was fined $454 million.

The episode shows the practical importance of jurisdiction and enforcement. In Mexico, the amparo helped Telmex resist attempts to limit its monopoly; in Dallas, Slim’s usual tactics did not work under institutions that did not offer that route around the law. The contrast does not erase the amparo’s original constitutional purpose, but it demonstrates how a protection designed for individual rights could be turned into a powerful corporate shield.