Guidelines for the Creation of Laws and Intitutions in Order to Eradicate Poverty in Mexico

Mexico has principles that are set forth in the text of its Constitution. Said legal principles encompass: the concept of the power of the state regarding education, human rights principles, the dignity of the agricultural workers, the right to work, the right to a decent salary, the right to housing, and social welfare in general. Accordingly, all the citizens have the same constitutional rights and obligations. So, the existence of poverty is inadmissible, as it actually establishes an inequality between the citizens. We are talking about an inequality that does exist and that is not contemplated in the Constitution. 

In the present lecture, we propose a review that (even though superficial) is fundamental, as it reviews the English Poor Laws that were in force in England from the XVIIth to the XIXth Century. Its results allow us to recover the relevant aspects that said Laws played as an institution against poverty.

The situation we try to elucidate is if in Mexico we could reuse some transcendental aspects of the old English Poor Laws by adapting them to the present context; or what kind of laws may be adopted to solve the growing and searing problem of poverty. As implied by the previous information, in Mexico there are neither laws nor institutions to eradicate poverty, but only a Program related to conditional cash transfers. It is obvious that a mere program does not guarantee the rights that are set forth in the Constitution. What we would like to posit is that actions, both legal and institutional, are required in order resolving this problem: actions that take into account the economic/social context and that contribute to transform it