This editorial by José Romero Tellaeche originally appeared in the December 11, 2025 edition of Revista Contralínea. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those ofMexico Solidarity Media*, or theMexico Solidarity Project.*
The transformation of CIDE (Center for Economic Research and Teaching) did not originate in a bureaucratic office or in the imagination of some isolated reformer. It was born in the National Palace, when President Andrés Manuel López Obrador —with his characteristic historical clarity—stated that this institution should cease being an enclave of neoliberal thought and reclaim its public vocation . It was the then-president who directly entrusted me with this task, convinced that CIDE should once again align itself, as it had in its origins, with the strategic interests of the Mexican State.
Even before the 2021 conflict, the President had clearly stated his diagnosis: CIDE had strayed from its public mission. In several morning press conferences, he pointed out that the institution had shifted to the right, that it was operating as a “second version of ITAM,” and that the State could no longer fund a center that—in practice—reproduced the interests of the private sector or trained personnel subservient to international financial institutions. He also reiterated that CIDE was founded to train public servants committed to the nation, not to legitimize IMF prescriptions or to subordinate its academic life to the criteria and hierarchies of Anglo-Saxon academia. This presidential diagnosis, formulated publicly, explicitly, and repeatedly, was not merely an opinion: it was the precise identification of an institutional deviation that the State had an obligation to correct. From this arose, precisely, the mandate that guides the transformation today: to reclaim CIDE for Mexico, for its intellectual sovereignty, and for a national development project.
That mandate entailed dismantling deeply entrenched inertia: closed structures, academic elites accustomed to perpetuating themselves, seminars transformed into personal fiefdoms, and an academic colonialism that subjected research, hiring, and incentives to the criteria of U.S. universities. Transforming that model without a single new position, without an extraordinary budget, and under the constant siege of groups that never accepted that Mexico had entered a new era was not—and is not—an easy task.
Administration: A Structural Battle
The President was emphatic: “CIDE must once again serve Mexico.” Not factional interests, not Anglo-Saxon academia, not those who sought to transform the institution into a republic independent of the state. The Presidential instruction was clear: reclaim CIDE for the nation, restore its vocation as a public center serving national development, and put an end to the model that had subordinated it to external agendas and academic circuits that had nothing to do with the country’s strategic needs.
From that mandate onward, a transformation began that unsettled those who had turned the center into their personal fiefdom. Without new positions or parallel structures, we had to do what reformers of the Mexican state have historically done: use the available tools intelligently. That is why we resorted to both competitions and invitations—both perfectly legal mechanisms—to bring in individuals capable of advancing the Presidential mission. The invitations were not arbitrary exceptions; they were strategic instruments for attracting researchers aligned with a national project.
Research is not an exercise in abstract neutrality, but a tool to strengthen the State, guide its actions, and expand its autonomy in the face of external pressures.
Those who criticize this mechanism today ignore an obvious truth: for decades, invitations served to place friends, perpetuate internal cliques, and maintain a closed circle . No one protested then. The difference is that now the invitations serve a purpose intolerable to these elites: to break their monopoly and open CIDE to researchers who don’t seek to please foreign departments, but rather to consider national development from a sovereign perspective.
The transformation hasn’t required new positions; it has required conviction and responsibility for the transformation. And that conviction translated into action: the creation of the Division of Development Studies (DED) and the profound reorganization of the Division of Multidisciplinary Studies (DEM). Within the DED, efforts were made to foster collaboration with Mexican productive sectors, strengthen national innovation, incorporate lines of research that for years had been marginalized due to ideological bias, and the study of Asian economic experiences aims to identify what can be adopted and adapted to Mexico’s needs. The DED (Development Studies Division) was created to study development from and for Mexico; while the new DEM (Development Studies Division) has moved beyond the neoliberal model and now operates from the perspectives of political economy, economic history, and structural analysis, as well as from Latin American critical thought.
It is false that CIDE was doomed to irrelevance. What was doomed was the model that placed the institution at the service of external agendas. The Presidential mandate demanded correcting that course, and so it has been done. Every act of resistance, every media campaign, every attack disguised as a defense of “autonomy ,” does not express democratic convictions: it expresses the fear of those who know that the country is changing and that they no longer dictate the agenda.
In 2024, CIDE terminated an agreement the institution had since 2014 with Tel Aviv University, condemning the zionist genocide of Palestinians.
The President’s intervention was not only legitimate; it was indispensable. Public institutions belong to the State and, therefore, to the people. They cannot be captured by private interests or by academic bureaucracies that appoint themselves guardians of knowledge. When the head of state identifies that an institution has strayed from its mission, he has an obligation to correct it. That is what Andrés Manuel López Obrador did: he restored CIDE as an instrument of the nation, not as a club disconnected from Mexican reality.
Not the sort of programming that endears one to the neoliberal handlers of the Hewlett Foundation.
The battle is not over, but the course has been set. The Presidential mandate is fulfilled through decisions, not speeches: reorganizing, opening up, inviting, building bridges when possible, and resisting when necessary. Transforming without new positions was not an obstacle: it was a test of character. And CIDE— despite the noise, the pressures, and the campaigns—is being reborn as a public institution in the deepest sense of the term.
Because what’s at stake isn’t just a research center: it’s Mexico’s right to think for itself and to build, based on its own historical experience, the analytical frameworks that will guide its development. CIDE can no longer be an automatic reproducer of foreign paradigms; it must become a genuine think tank for the Mexican state, capable of rigorously and strategically informing national decisions; a space where knowledge is generated from a nationalist perspective, committed to the public interest, and not from the comfort of imported agendas or intellectual dependencies that for decades limited our ability to imagine our own future.
We need a center that considers the country in its true terms: its productive structures, its industrial potential, its territorial challenges, its economic history, and its possibilities for sovereign integration into a world that is being reshaped. A center that trains and brings together thinkers committed to Mexico, who understand that research is not an exercise in abstract neutrality, but a tool to strengthen the State, guide its actions, and expand its autonomy in the face of external pressures.
That is precisely what inspires this transformation: the defense of Mexico’s right to produce its own ideas, to generate its own strategic knowledge, and to have public institutions that answer to the nation and not to factional interests or external academic circles. That has been, from day one, the spirit of the presidential mandate that guides and directs this task: to restore CIDE to its original function as an intellectual instrument of the Mexican State and a driving force of national thought for development.
José Romero is Director General of the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), appointed by former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. CIDE is a publicly-financed social sciences research center aiming to impact Mexico’s social, economic and political development.
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