Americas Quarterly | Right-Wing Populism Hasn’t Thrived in Mexico. Why?

/

Eduardo Verástegui followed the playbook of right-wing, populist outsiders in his bid for Mexico’s presidency. The 49-year-old former pop singer and telenovela star turned Catholic activist built a social media following for his anti-abortion movement. A Trump ally, he brought a Conservative Political Action Conference event, or CPAC, to Mexico’s capital in 2022.

Verástegui traveled to Madrid to meet and smoke cigars with Vox’s Santiago Abascal, and attended Javier Milei’s inauguration in Argentina. “My fight is for life. My fight is for freedom,” he said, officially announcing his candidacy back in September. “It’s time to kick the same ones as usual out of power.”

But it turned out that he was too much of an outsider. On February 19, the country’s electoral agency, INE, announced an investigation into whether Verástegui illegally financed his campaign using foreign funds received from a Miami-based political consulting firm. He responded that the INE itself is corrupt—but, by January, his long shot independent bid for the presidency had already fizzled; he earned a small fraction of the signatures needed to appear on the June 2 ballot. It came as little surprise, given that Verástegui’s entertainment career, which more recently involved producing the far-right hit film Sound of Freedom, led him to spend years working in the United States and living in Miami—far from Mexico’s election circuit. And his postures, including a social media post in which he wielded a machine gun to threaten climate and LGBTQ+ activists, drew widespread derision and ridicule.

For many, his short-lived run felt like a dodged bullet—but it also raised a question. Why hasn’t a right-wing insurgent like Milei or Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro gained a foothold in Mexico, a country perceived as socially conservative and home to the world’s second-biggest Catholic population?

Read More

Americas Quarterly | Mexico City’s Mayor Race Will Echo Beyond the Capital

/

After a contentious selection process, Morena is set to name its candidate for Mexico City mayor on November 10, and the battle between Clara Brugada and Omar García Harfuch could be the first significant test to reveal Claudia Sheinbaum’s influence within the ruling party. Either of the two would be in a strong position to win what is considered both the second-most important elected office in the country and a launching pad to the presidency. That means the candidate announcement will not only shape next year’s presidential election, but national politics for years to come.

The city’s former security chief, García Harfuch, 41, leads polls and is a close ally of former Mayor Sheinbaum, now the presidential frontrunner and candidate for governing party Morena. Together, they slashed the city’s crime rates and became strong allies. But his background as an outsider to Morena’s leftist movement makes it uncertain that he will get the party’s nod, even though he is widely considered Sheinbaum’s preference.

His top rival is Brugada, 60, the former head of Mexico City’s most populated district and a loyal supporter of the movement of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, AMLO. With battle lines drawn, in October, over 800 Mexico City intellectuals signed a letter backing Brugada over García Harfuch. Public surveys put Brugada in second place. But even if García Harfuch does come out in front when Morena announces the results of its own internal polling process on Friday, a gender-parity rule could allow the party to set aside the results and give her the nomination.

The caped crusader

On a recent rainy night in Mexico City, a black-and-yellow Bat-signal lit up the iconic Monumento de la Revolución with a message across its bat wings: #EsHarfuch. García Harfuch’s backers compare him to Batman in part because of events that took place on June 26, 2020. As he traveled along Paseo de la Reforma, the capital’s most famous boulevard, hitmen linked to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel ambushed his vehicle. Two bodyguards and a bystander were killed. Garciá Harfuch took three of the more than 400 shots fired and, for many, became a figure willing to put his life on the line to combat organized crime…

Read More

Americas Quarterly | Can Xóchitl Gálvez Save Mexico’s Opposition?→

/

One early morning a month ago, Xóchitl Gálvez knocked on the door of Mexico’s National Palace. After President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also known as AMLO, accused her of planning to end popular social programs, the opposition senator decried his comments as false and secured a judge’s order allowing her to respond in person at one of his daily press conferences. When she arrived at the palace, order in hand, the large wooden doors stayed shut.

But AMLO’s decision to deny her entry had unintended consequences: It launched Gálvez’s presidential bid and, with it, what has been nothing short of a nation-wide media frenzy over her potential candidacy. Before that, she hadn’t appeared in polling for the top seat and was instead viewed as a contender to be mayor of Mexico City. Then, on June 27, Gálvez stood across the street from the National Palace where AMLO resides. “While that door was closed, thousands of Mexicans have opened theirs to me,” she said, and announced she would compete to represent the Frente Amplio Por México alliance in next year’s elections. “Suddenly, I think it hit a lot of people: She could be the one,” said political analyst Carlos Bravo Regidor.

Now the big question is whether the opposition finally struck gold or if what’s been termed “Xóchitl-mania” is a flash in the pan. After all, the opposition has struggled in the face of AMLO’s popularity and populist message to come up with names that could be considered competitive against his perceived favorite, former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, or ex-Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard. The two candidates from AMLO’s governing Morena party have long led polling to replace him when his six-year term ends next year.

Read More

Americas Quarterly | Who is the Dark Horse in Mexico’s Presidential Race?

/

They have more in common than just a last name. Interior Minister Adán Augusto López Hernández is not related to Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO, but both silver-haired politicians hail from the state of Tabasco in Mexico’s southeastern tropical lowlands. Like the president, López Hernández got his start in the PRI before eventually making his way to the party AMLO founded, Morena, in 2015. And just as AMLO rode an electoral tsunami to victory in the 2018 elections, López Hernández beat his closest rival by more than 40 points to become Morena’s first governor of Tabasco—a role he gave up to join the Cabinet.

Now a pre-candidate in the 2024 presidential race, López Hernández’s main strategy is to emphasize his similarities to the president—but will it be enough to convince AMLO’s most loyal supporters? A March 6 El Financiero poll places López Hernández third among the ruling party’s presidential hopefuls with 15% support compared with 28% for Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and 22% for Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard. Alejandro Moreno, head of El Financiero’s public opinion polling, told me that López Hernández attracts a more ideologically moderate voter while Sheinbaum or Ebrard appeal more to the party’s leftist base. That might help explain why López Hernández has been adopting the same language used by the president, said Moreno. “He has probably come to understand that he has to seek out the diehard, radical, AMLO voter that favors the other two [pre-candidates].”

AMLO has shared his stage with all three, giving each the spotlight in a test of who could win Morena’s internal poll for the party nomination and the June 2024 election after that. Sheinbaum is viewed as the top choice, while López Hernández stands as the president’s insurance policy should she stumble.

Read More

Americas Quarterly | USMCA Disputes Left on Back Seat at ‘Three Amigos’ Summit

/

For the tenth time since 2005, another North American Leaders’ Summit has come and gone and, with it, questions about how much progress was made on goals set at the last one. U.S. President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau bid adiós to their host and Mexican counterpart Andrés Manuel López Obrador with a freshly inked trilateral declaration in hand, spurring questions about whether the three governments can make good on new pledges by the next Summit. Pundits will point out which lofty goals were raised (climate change, migration, supply chains) and which ones took a backseat (U.S.-Canadian concerns over Mexico’s statist energy policy).

As is often the case with global summits, events surrounding the leaders’ January 9–10 head-to-head in Mexico City drew as many headlines as the forum itself. Biden, under pressure to address record-breaking migrant apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border, made a stop in the border region for the first time as president on his way to Mexico after announcing new immigration measures that simultaneously limit and create new paths for migration from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. On top of that, three years after they let him go free, Mexican authorities arrested the Sinaloa Cartel’s Ovidio Guzmán, son of infamous cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, three days ahead of Biden’s arrival. The arrest, which sparked gun battles and lockdowns, took place after the DEA released stark figures saying it had seized enough lethal fentanyl doses in 2022 to “kill every American” while identifying the Sinaloa Cartel as a number one target in its battle against the synthetic opioid. In Mexico, meanwhile, much was made of the fact that Biden had switched his arrival to a newly renovated airport seen as a cornerstone project of the López Obrador government but frequently lambasted by critics for lackluster transportation options and a dearth of flights.

But one moment from the meetings did raise many an eyebrow. “The time has come to end [U.S.] forgetfulness, abandonment, and disdain toward Latin America and the Caribbean,” López Obrador, often called AMLO, told Biden ahead of the two leaders’ January 9 meeting.

Read More

Americas Quarterly | What a Comedian’s Poll Performance Says About Mexican Politics

/

Eugenio Derbez rode to comedic stardom at the helm of a sitcom set in a make-believe city where people don brightly colored plush outfits. Now, scoring 19% in a September poll for Mexico’s 2024 presidential race, he has outperformed all contenders from the country’s traditional opposition parties, the PRI, PAN and PRD—even though he’s not officially a candidate.

Though his appearance in the survey might seem like make-believe, pollsters gave good reason to include the actor, who left the sitcom world behind a decade ago in favor of Hollywood blockbusters like CODA (2021) and The Valet (2022). One is name recognition—but another, as poll organizers from major media outlet Reforma put it is “his participation in topics of public debate.”

Derbez landed at the center of political controversy a few months back as the most well-known celebrity to join a campaign against the Tren Maya, an $8 billion, signature infrastructure project of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government that involves building a train circuit through the jungles and over the underground water cave system of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. The participants in the campaign, dubbed “Sélvame del Tren” (a play on words in Spanish to say “Save me from the train”), sought to stop a portion of the construction known as Section 5, which connects the tourist hotspots of Cancún and Tulum. They argued that, without appropriate studies or consultations with local residents, environmental and archaeological destruction will occur.

López Obrador, or AMLO, responded by calling the celebrities conservatives and fifis (snobs)—two of his preferred labels for his critics. Still, he invited the participants to the National Palace for an April dialogue about Section 5, which has been embroiled in a series of legal battles. The campaigners pressured to hold the meeting at the construction site instead to bring attention to environmental damage, but accepted the invitation in the capital. Then AMLO called off the meeting last minute, saying many of the famosos canceled. But it appears only one did so: Derbez. He released a video in which he was on set, saying that, out of roughly 70 participants, only he could not attend because he was under contract and filming on location.

In other words, he was doing his job—being an entertainer. And yet the actor, who has declared no intention of running for any form of political office and has made it pointedly clear that he is busy with his movie career, featured near the top of a poll to be the country’s next president…

Read More

Americas Quarterly | Why Mexico's PRI Is Cleaning House

/
Americas Quarterly | Why Mexico's PRI Is Cleaning House

Just four years ago, Mexico's President Enrique Peña Nieto, then a candidate for office, considered Javier Duarte part of a “new generation of politics” that would help shepherd his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) toward a more transparent future. On October 12, facing charges ranging from embezzlement to document forgery, Duarte stepped down as the governor of Veracruz to fight what he called a “campaign” against his leadership. 

He will have to wage that fight without the support of his party. In September, the PRI stripped Duarte of his membership rights, a prelude to removing him from the party entirely. Duarte is not the only PRI politician whose standing is in jeopardy; over the past three months, the PRI has begun processes to remove at least two other governors accused of corruption from its ranks.

Does all this mean that the PRI, so known for corruption and cronyism as it dominated Mexican politics for the better part of the past century, is ready to clean up its act? Recent moves suggest the party may be coming to terms with the fact that, if they don’t, Mexicans will hold them to account at the voting booth.

Read More

Americas Quarterly | AQ Top 5 Young Chefs: Elena Reygadas

/

"Cooking doesn’t have to have a flag,” said Elena Reygadas. The menu at Rosetta, her Mexico City restaurant, with choices ranging from gnocchi tonopales, proves her point: It doesn’t just cross boundaries between countries, but between sweet and savory. Chicozapote, a fruit that’s often a Mexican ice cream flavor, makes its way into a salad appetizer. A mole, typically served with pork, appears in a dessert. Explained Reygadas, 39, “I love the idea of breaking the rules.”

In 2001, long before Rosetta started showing up on best restaurant lists, Reygadas found herself cooking for different palates when her brother, Ariel Award winning filmmaker Carlos Reygadas, needed a caterer on a set. She had to come up with two menus; the European crew didn’t want corn and the Mexican crew didn’t want pasta.

Read More

Americas Quarterly | Why a Mexican Education Program for Syrian Refugees Only Has One Student

/

Essa Hassan landed in Mexico City in the middle of a media storm. Days after the body of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi washed ashore on the coast of Turkey, Hassan became the unwitting symbol of Mexico’s efforts — or lack of them — to assist Syrian refugees, although plans to get him to Mexico started long before the world zeroed in on the crisis.

Hassan arrived last September through the Proyecto Habesha, a humanitarian initiative with the goal of bringing 30 Syrians whose studies were interrupted by the conflict to complete their education in Mexico. The first to be accepted, he quickly found himself the subject of news coverage. “I’m still in the news,” the 26-year-old told AQ.

Read More