Even before the tragic kidnapping of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college in late September, Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto was already teetering on the brink. His neoliberal reform agenda, systematic repression of protests and iron-fisted control over the media had turned him into the most unpopular president in recent Mexican history.

The enormous unrest that has erupted in recent days is, therefore, not only about criminality and violence but also social power and democratic politics. And what is at stake in today’s battle for Mexico is not just the future of peace and prosperity for those living south of the Rio Grande but also democracy and justice north of the border.

Before taking office Dec. 1, 2012, Peña Nieto penned an op-ed for The Washington Post in which he tried to assuage concerns about his intimate connections with the most corrupt and backward old guard of the authoritarian Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled the country from 1929 until 2000. He encouraged observers to forget about the party’s past and instead look at its “plan to open Mexico’s energy sector to national and foreign private investment.”

Writing on the eve of his first meeting with President Barack Obama in Washington, Peña Nieto claimed that such reforms would “contribute to guaranteeing North American energy independence,” since “Mexico holds the fifth-largest shale gas reserve in the world, in addition to large deep-water oil reserves and a tremendous potential in renewable energy.”

Obama, the U.S. military and Congress eagerly accepted Peña Nieto’s Faustian bargain. They would blindly support his presidency in exchange for quick action on energy reform.

Over the last two years, both sides have loyally held up their ends of the deal. In December 2013, Peña Nieto pushed through historic reforms to Article 27 of the constitution that broke up the state monopoly over the oil industry and opened the floodgates to speculation and vast private investment by international oil giants. The majority of Mexicans adamantly rejected these reforms, but they were steamrolled through the National Congress and passed by a majority of the state legislatures in only 10 days without debate and in flagrant violation of the democratic process.

Such quick legal action authorizing the transfer of public oil rents to private hands fulfilled the wildest dreams of Washington. The U.S. has pushed for years without avail to achieve similar reforms in occupied Iraq without success. But in Mexico a loyal and corrupt president proved to be much more effective than direct military occupation.

Unsurprisingly, most of the international press vigorously applauded the oil reform. “As Venezuela’s economy implodes and Brazil’s growth stalls, Mexico is becoming the Latin oil producer to watch — and a model of how democracy can serve a developing country,” wrote the editorial board of The Washington Post. The Financial Times excitedly proclaimed that “Mexico’s historic vote to open its oil and gas sector to private investment after 75 years yoked to the state is a political coup for Enrique Peña Nieto.” And Forbes magazine argued that although previous President Felipe Calderón “may have pushed for real oil reforms, it’s Peña Nieto who will get the spot in the history books.”