Throughout the Cold War, the United States supported right-leaning dictators in South America for the simple reason that they weren’t communists. Sure, they may have engaged in horrible human rights abuses, put the welfare of the rich over that of the rest of the country, and violently squelched free speech, but at least they weren’t in league with the Soviet Union. Now, it appears, the ousted communists are coming home to roost.

Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa is the third Latin American socialist president to call for an expansion of his own powers. Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was recently granted the ability to pass legislation by decree for the next eighteen months. Bolivian president Evo Morales has called for his country’s constitution to be re-written. Now, Correa wants to take the popular “re-write the constitution because the current constitution hinders my political ambitions” approach. When 57 legislators in the Ecuadorean congress objected last month to re-writing the constitution, Correa fired them. Earlier this week, Ecuador’s highest court overruled Correa and re-instated them.

A trend in Latin America is forming, and it is not a good one. Whenever a new president thinks he needs more power, he calls for the constitution to be re-written. Or, whenever rule of law fails for a president’s politics, he has the law re-written. Respect for the rule of law in Latin America doesn’t go very far. This is probably because Latin American countries have only had democracies since the 1980s, at the very earliest. Before then, military dictatorships – backed by the United States – were the norm. And the military dictatorships weren’t stable; lower generals, lusting for power, overthrew the country’s leader and instituted himself. That general, in turn, would be overthrown by another general. And so on.

But violent (or even non-violent) overthrow isn’t in vogue anymore in Latin America. So what is? Legal overthrow. Instead of using the military to force the country’s politics to behave in a particular way, Latin American leaders are using the law to force the country’s politics to behave in a particular way. Whatever the method, whether it’s re-writing the constitution or demanding extra powers, Latin American “presidents” are setting themselves up as de facto dictators.

The case of Andres Manuel López-Obrador (or “AMLO,” as he is affectionately known) is a telling one in the annals of Latin American democracy. In last year’s Mexican presidential race, Lopez-Obrador, of the socialist PRD, was pitted against Felipe Calderón of the more conservative PAN. Calderón won, but only very narrowly. López-Obrador immediately cried foul and demanded recounts, citing election fraud. There were recounts, and those recounts found that Calderón still won. In a country like the United States, with a 200-year history of democracy, the opposition might not like the result, but would have to live with that result nonetheless. (The case even went to Mexico’s election tribunal, which declared Calderón the winner. Does any of this sound familiar?)

AMLO and his supporters decried the ruling, insisting that there was fraud. Liberal critics in the United States similarly declared that there had been fraud, even though no one could cite an instance of the kind of systematic voter fraud that would have to happen in order to rig an election. (Compare this, for example, with the 2004 United States presidential race, in which many instances of systematic fraud were discovered.) Even independent vote-monitoring organizations couldn’t find any irregularities in the Mexican election. Nevertheless, AMLO and his supporters insisted that a conservative candidate could only win by fraud and AMLO vowed to set up his own parallel government in protest.

This is not how democracy works. AMLO vowed to raise such a ruckus in Mexico that no one would be able to do any government business. That’s great that he’s utilizing civil disobedience, but the government still has to operate. Did he think that stopping the government would make Calderón abdicate his position? Did he plan on stopping government for four years? In an election without irregularities, AMLO lost; it was time for him to suck it up and move on.

But, no; in what might be called the typical Latin American fashion, AMLO instead tried to “overthrow” Calderón, insisting that his tenure wasn’t legitimate. This begs the question: what would have happened if AMLO were elected president? Would he use force to get his way then, as well? In Latin American politics, if you don’t get your way, you don’t admit defeat and go home; instead, you try to use all the political machinery at your disposal to get your way. This includes even re-writing the constitution, if necessary. If that doesn’t work, would he have resorted to the old standby – namely, involving the military?

In Marbury v. Madison, the 1803 U.S. Supreme Court case that established judicial review, John Marshall determined that laws made by Congress are subordinate to the Constitution:

That the people have an original right to establish, for their future govern-ment, such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness, is the basis on which the whole American fabric has been erected. The exercise of this original right is a very great exertion; nor can it, nor ought it, to be frequently repeated. The principles, therefore, so established, are deemed fundamental. And as the authority from which they proceed is supreme, and can seldom act, they are designed to be permanent.

This original and supreme will organizes the government, and assigns to different departments their respective powers. It may either stop here, or establish certain limits not to be transcended by those departments.

The government of the United States is of the latter description. The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written. To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished, if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed, are of equal obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be contested, that the constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it; or, that the legislature may alter the constitution by an ordinary act.

Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The constitution is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it.

If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the constitution is not law: if the latter part be true, then written constitutions are absurd attempts, on the part of the people, to limit a power in its own nature illimitable.

Marshall correctly theorized that the Constitution is “a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means” so that it is not “alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it.” This is the only way that a democracy can function: with a supreme, unchangeable (at least, unchangeable as far as normal legislation goes) charter that forms the framework of the government. For two hundred years, the United States has functioned on the principle that our policies must conform to the Constitution. In Latin America, if a president’s policies and the constitution are in conflict, it is the constitution that must change. This leads to instability and ultimately undermines democracy, for if the constitution can be altered at any time, then the distinction between a democracy and a dictatorship has disappeared.

Correa’s justification for re-writing the constitution, according to The Sydney Morning Herald, is that the Ecuadorean congress has “too many vested interests in state companies and the judiciary.” But is there no better way to eliminate these interests than to re-write the constitution? At the end of the day, has democracy won a complete victory, or merely a short-term victory? What happens when the next president (and there have been six presidents in Ecuador in the last six years) decides he wants to re-write the constitution, too? Allowing a constitution to be as malleable as an ordinary law ultimately hurts a country, as it relegates the government to something that is not a long-lasting, durable institution, but something volatile that citizens are loathe to place their faith in.