He isn't on the ballot, but Mexican elections are still a referendum on AMLO
He isn't on the ballot, but Mexican elections are still a referendum on AMLO
Campaign season just started. What matters and what doesn’t at the polls
This week PWS has a special dispatch on México’s elections by our amazingly talented compa Dawn Marie Paley, who is the editor at Ojalá, a feminist media outlet focussing on Latin America and publishing reports and analysis in English.
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It’s election season in México. On June 2, voters will elect a new President, congress and senate, as well as thousands of local representatives. At its core, this election can be boiled down to a vote for or against Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose outsized role as President has reshaped the country since his election in 2018.
On the presidential level, former México City mayor Claudia Shienbaum is running on the ruling party Morena’s ticket, which is part of a coalition with the Green Party and the Labor Party. Her main rival is Xochitl Gálvez, who is heading up the opposition coalition made up of México’s political dinosaur, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the right wing National Action Party (PAN), and the nominally progressive Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
A third candidate, Jorge Álvarez Maynez, will run for the Citizens’ Movement party after a botched attempt by Nuevo León Governor Samuel to put his gubernatorial duties on hold and do the same.
Polls have consistently placed Sheinbaum well ahead of her nearest rival. She’s polling at least 20 percentage points ahead of Gálvez, according to a recent poll. It would be an astounding upset were Sheinbaum to lose at the polls in June.
As the token man in the presidential triad (ha!), Álvarez Maynez is not a serious contender. His Citizens’ Movement party is positioning itself to become relevant federally in 2030 (the party currently holds the governorship of two key states).
As the campaigns kick off, you’d think there would be rules around how journalists approach campaign promises, but nope, apparently anything goes.
That’s how we end up with journalists who consider themselves Extremely Serious Writers repeating AMLO’s “abrazos no balazos” (hugs not bullets) campaign slogan six years after his election to imply he’s been soft on crime. (He hasn’t, in fact he has militarized the country beyond anyone’s wildest dreams).
The Promises
I had a look at the political platforms of México’s two main coalitions to get a sense of what the key promises on both sides are this time around. Consider this an election cheat sheet, filtering through the noise and hollow promises.
There’s a couple of areas on which both sides agree. Chief among them is that México will continue to be an export-oriented country focussed on providing low wage labor and cheap natural resources to transnational corporations (my words, not theirs).
This comes through in both platforms as support for nearshoring and for the completion of the trans-Isthmus corridor across the narrowest part of the country. Currently under construction in control of Mexican Marines, the trans-Isthmus corridor is a key part of the renewal and promotion of a series of militarized logistics and energy hubs oriented toward assembly and export.
México is near assured to have a woman President next year. The platforms of both coalitions spend a great deal of time on women and gender as key campaign issues.
In the words of Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar, with whom I co-founded Ojalá, the fact that two women are running for president is a “cheapened translation” of the power of México’s vibrant feminist movement, an attempt at mass cooptation from above.
Obviously, many women and gender & sexual dissidents aren’t buying it, and are planning another historic mobilization next week on March 8, International Women’s Day.
The ruling coalition, which is going by the name Seguimos haciendo historia (We’re Continuing to Make History), published a platform full of progressive initiatives and promises that, if fulfilled ( and that’s a big if) would lead to a green energy transition, usher in equality and justice for all, and fund public health care and education. This is the real work of political platforms and campaigns: to convince the electorate to check their box.
Morena promises to consolidate the National Guard “as a peacekeeping force and a proximity police organization with presence in the entire country,” as well as the creation of a National Investigations Agency within the force. The wording around civilian control of the National Guard, which was a key campaign promise in 2018, is ambiguous. AMLO presented a constitutional reform to keep the force under army control last week.
The opposition platform is similar, promising the sun, the moon and the stars to Mexicans in exchange for their vote. It is over three times as long as Morena’s platform, and at times diverges into long asides about imported right wing talking points like school textbooks.
The Broad Front for México coalition does get creative, calling the current government an “electo-dictatorship” and promising to restore a “family perspective” to politics.
Their platform calls for the “return of the armed forces to their primary purpose,” which those familiar with Méxican history know means a return to their role as a heavily armed domestic police force. It goes without saying that the weak anti-militarization stance of the opposition contradicts their own record on the issue.
While the opposition’s platform verses on many progressive changes they claim to want to make, it does make passing mention of introducing regressive taxation, an unpopular policy that would see millions of Mexicans in the informal sector forced into an onerous income tax system. The Morena platform does no such thing, even though experts say new pension reforms proposed by AMLO will require just that.
Campaigns and politics
Campaigns started on Friday March 1, and it remains to be seen how the proposals in each party platform will be transmitted over the next three months. Even though it wasn’t mentioned in the 2018 platform, one of AMLO’s key campaign planks was to resolve the tragic disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college in Guerrero (he didn’t).
My sense is that throughout the campaign the ruling coalition will do everything they can to avoid talking about militarization. If Sheinbaum is elected it’s likely the role of the armed forces will continue to expand, but I expect we’ll see fewer open admissions of expanded military reach. It’s a familiar strategy, one used by the PRI when Enrique Peña Nieto came to power following the disastrous sexenio (six year presidential term) of Felipe Calderón.
Peña Nieto toned down public statements about fighting the war on drugs, willing the issue to the background and focusing on the economy. But the violence didn’t stop. Two years into his presidency the 43 students were disappeared in Guerrero, and the rotten core of the violence produced by the war on drugs was exposed like never before.
But changing the message and changing the facts on the ground are two very different things. Almost ten years after Ayotzinapa, which is still unsolved and with the 43 students still disappeared, it’s clear that minimizing public statements about militarization, especially while continuing to deploy tens of thousands of troops to fight a war on the poor, means violence will continue.
The Big Headlines in LATAM
The International Criminal Court (ICC) rejected an appeal by the Venezuelan government to handle ongoing investigations into human rights violations as part of crackdowns on protests in 2017 that resulted in dozens of deaths and hundreds of arrests.
Venezuela had petitioned for the matter to be handled in their own court system- an appeal ICC struck down unanimously. The decision sets precedent that will likely be used in ongoing investigations in Colombia, El Salvador and Nicaragua.
A former US diplomat who served in Bolivia for years pled guilty on Thursday to spying on the U.S. for the Cuban government. Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, changed his plea from “innocent” at a Miami court hearing, and acknowledged that he had struck a plea deal with prosecutors.
Colombian paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso was repatriated to the country Tuesday after serving a drug trafficking sentence in the United States and being denied several requests to be sent to Italy, where he also has citizenship.
Mancuso, who has admitted taking part in the planning of hundreds of murders in Colombia in partnership with the State, will testify before Colombia’s Peace Court and offer further details on his actions during Colombia’s war.
The warlord is seeking reduced sentences in Colombia for his crimes in return for cooperation with Peace Court authorities.
Ship’s Business
Joshua survived his trip into the Amazon jungle! Though feasted on by mosquitos (the aftermath of which he is still suffering from), it was an amazing experience. He was accompanying a British hiker named Daniel Eggington on the first leg of his journey via land to Manaus, Brazil. Story soon to come on that!
He and Amy have been collaborating on a new weekly PWS podcast which we hope to launch this month after a few more trial runs.
Daniela is below decks recuperating from a dental surgery, but will be back in action next week for our Saturday feature. Pirates are nothing if not resilient.
Spanish Word of the Week
Estadounidense
Estadounidense translates literally as “United-Statesian”, and refers to people from the U.S. In English, we don’t have an exact equivalent. Most people simply refer to themselves as “American”.
But technically speaking, everyone from North, Central, or South America is an American. This distinction is often utilized in Latino writing and culture, but one that doesn’t really exist in most US writing.
Joshua loves this word for a lot of reasons. One, it is more accurate, and specificity is good in communication! Two, it references a connection between all Americans on the continent.
Somos todos Americanos, pana - We’re all Americans, mate
PLUS, it has the added advantage of excluding Europeans from the Pan-American culture. Hahah. we’re just kidding. But it is cool.
In informal writing, Joshua often refers to people from the US as “USians” in an attempt to adopt a more shorthand version of this spanish word.
Language is powerful. Why shouldn’t we use it to build solidarity between peoples?
Hasta pronto, piratas!
