On October 1, Claudia Sheinbaum was inaugurated as the first female president of Mexico. She won 59% of the votes in a three-way election between the ruling coalition allied to Sheinbaum’s party Morena, the right wing opposition coalition, and the centrist Citizen’s Movement. 

There was record turnout in this election as millions of young people, workers, and the elderly voted for Morena and their coalition candidates across the country. In fact, Sheinbaum won by 5 million more votes than Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, AMLO, the current president, did in his historic victory in 2018. 

The “We Continue to Make History” coalition of Morena, the Green Ecological Party of Mexico, and the Workers Party won back seats in the Senate and Deputies Chambers that they lost during the mid-term elections in 2021. In the Senate they will have 83 of 128 seats, and in the Chamber of Deputies they will have 373 out of 500 seats. The Senate seats are especially significant because Morena’s coalition is just 2 seats shy of the supermajority needed to make changes to the constitution that have been promised under the “Fourth Transformation” platform of Morena and AMLO. 

Unfortunately, this election is also one of the most deadly in recent history, with 97 total political assassinations, including 37 candidates or pre-candidates for political office. Most of these were running for local elected positions. 

Was The Election A Victory For Women?

Women’s suffrage was granted in Mexico in 1953, and in this election the two leading candidates were both women. Xochitl Galvez was the candidate for the Strength and Heart for Mexico coalition consisting of PRI/PAN/PRD. This representational victory was not a result of the goodwill of these leading parties, but instead of the decades of political pressure from the feminist movement which won gender parity mandates in the political parties. 

Despite this, neither candidate had a strong, feminist platform that fully funds healthcare, including free and accessible abortions for all, closes the gender pay gap, and combats the cost of living increases, especially rents, across the country. This a significant political shortcoming given that Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries for women in the world with 184 registered femicides so far this year. A strong platform of equal pay, accessible housing, and free healthcare would go a long way in combatting gender based violence and femicides.

AMLO’s Legacy 

The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the National Action Party (PAN) had been the dominant political parties in Mexico until AMLO’s groundbreaking victory in 2018. AMLO won on a program of increasing the social welfare funding slashed by decades of neoliberal austerity, re-nationalizing key sectors of the economy, and fighting cartel violence through poverty reduction and education programs.

Instead of taking the bosses head on, AMLO has tried to fund his programs through cutting waste in various government sectors. Coincidentally, this has led to austerity by a different name that has seriously hurt the public health sector amongst others. He has also focused on big, infrastructure projects such as the Maya Train to develop jobs in impoverished, rural areas despite the protests of local indigenous and environmentalist groups. 

Since coming to power, Morena has shifted from a political movement to an electoral and parliamentary machine. This was made evident in the struggle to re-nationalize the energy sector which was privatized under the previous PRI president, Enrique Peña Nieto. Since privatization, electric prices have gone up and the service has become less reliable. AMLO tapped into this frustration by promising to make the re-nationalization a central feature of his program. 

Re-nationalizing the energy sector was so popular, it gave Morena a real mass character, with popular assemblies forming across the country. As Morena got closer to power, they dismantled the grassroots assemblies, and their supporters were told to trust the elected officials to carry out the task of re-nationalization. Without the pressure of the assemblies to counteract opposition from international banks and the Mexican bourgeois, Morena senators and deputies who were against nationalization no longer saw any political consequence to being against it, and they voted it down. 

Morena Moves To The Right Once In Power

A further reflection of Morena’s turn away from a mass movement is its “open door” policy, which has led to an influx of right-wing opportunists who see the sinking ship of PRI/PAN/PRD and believe their political future lies in Morena. This has proved true as several have become senators, deputies, governors, mayors, local politicians, and party bureaucrats. This creates a massive divide between the bases of Morena who see the party as an alternative, and the party’s elected officials and leaders who come from the old establishment parties. 

Despite these growing contradictions within the party, Morena still won a landslide victory in these elections because of the reforms that have been won such as increased payments to the elderly, a subsidized work program for recent college graduates, and the more than 100% increase in the minimum wage. 

Capitalist critics are saying this victory will damage the checks and balances of democracy because the opposition is not strong enough to limit Morena’s proposed constitutional reforms, such as the judicial reform to make judges an elected position. Even though these reforms are popular, Morena’s mistaken view of its power coming from their elected seats and not from the mass movement which launched them into power in the first place will make winning these constitutional reforms untenable.  

What Can We Expect From Sheinbaum?

Claudia Sheinbaum is the granddaughter of Bulgarian Jews who immigrated to Mexico in order to escape Nazi occupation. She is a climate scientist and has her roots in the environmental movement in Mexico. Her activism and education is what led to her gaining a position in AMLOs cabinet while he was the mayor of Mexico City in the early 2000s, a position which she later won in 2018. Even though she comes from the activist wing of Morena, as mayor of Mexico City, she repeatedly criticized the large feminist marches in the city for being “destructive” and has used the city’s riot gear clad forces to attack protesters. 

Despite Mexico’s recent decriminalization of abortion, access to abortion services remain very limited for many working-class Mexicans. Sheinbaum has not indicated in any way that she will act to ensure access to safe and free abortions nationwide. She has talked a big game about feminist policies, such as an increase in pensions for women to “make up” for lower wages over a lifetime, but has no plans to increase the government budget to implement such policies. 

Sheinbaum says she will send initiatives to the Congress of the Union to guarantee shelters for battered women and their children, which would mark a turning point with respect to López Obrador’s cut in funding for these services. But Sheinbaum is unlikely to represent a real change in AMLO’s policies unless she is subjected to massive pressure from the feminist movement and beyond, with clear and concrete demands.

Sheinbaum has promised to continue the Fourth Transformation, however, the economic situation she is inheriting is going to make that more and more difficult without having a direct confrontation with the capitalist class. Mexico is currently in its largest budget deficit since the 80s. The massive victory of Morena has resulted in a fall in the value of the peso, which, although common after elections, is the largest since the beginning of Covid. Investors fear how the business climate will be in a Morena majority government. 

The massive immigration crisis in Mexico as a result of the US limiting the amount of asylum seekers and refugees will continue to put strain on Sheinbaum and the next Morena government. AMLO’s creation and use of the National Guard to reinforce border crossings has been done in collaboration with the US. From the Obama administration to now, the US has actively sent monetary and personnel aid to Mexico to try and curb the flow of immigration through Mexico into the US. 

Sheinbaum has said that she will continue to work with the US to address immigration, but that the causes of immigration should also be addressed. However, she has not provided concrete details on how that will be accomplished, especially in the Central American countries. 

The continuing cartel violence in Mexico was a major point on the campaign trail for Xochitl and the right wing coalition. Both PAN and PRI have a murderous history in regards to their approach to cartel violence turning city streets into active war zones where the military indiscriminately killed and detained innocent people. Xochitl mocked the “Hugs not Bullets” campaign promise of AMLO, which was a result of activist pressure demanding the military be taken off the streets.

Instead of taking the military off the streets, AMLO created the National Guard, which he claims is more loyal, and has used them as a military police force across the country and along the border. Even though there has been some amnesty for lower level cartel members, there still is not the rigorous poverty alleviation program necessary to take away the incentive to work for the cartels. 

Finally, the continuing Cold War between Mexico and China has led to Mexico getting an increase in foreign direct investment in order to transfer production factories from East Asia in a process called near-shoring. Even though this is leading to more jobs in certain sectors, it is putting strain on the water resources in northern Mexico where most of these factories are being built. This region is already lacking water, and more factories will mean that local governments are going to have to choose between supplying these factories or the people who live there with water. Without an organized mass movement, this conflict will fall on the side of the factories. 

Build A Movement For A Real Fourth Transformation!

The landslide victory of Morena in these elections is going to confirm amongst the Morena leadership that they can continue the parliamentary path they have been taking. At his inauguration, AMLO promised that they were going to fight for more than just surface level reforms; they were going to fight for deep transformations on the scale of Independence and the Mexican Revolution. The current program and tactics of Morena do not meet this promise, and instead represent an attempt at another capitalist path during this Age of Disorder. 

Even though Morena is preferred over the old, corrupt parties of PRI and PAN, they are not offering a real alternative to the Mexican working class, especially women and young people. There needs to be renationalization of key industries and businesses such as PEMEX that are put under democratic control, not bureaucratic management. 

Instead of overreliance on public debt, Mexico’s billionaires like Carlos Slim should be massively taxed to fully fund green infrastructure projects, jobs programs, affordable housing, and universal healthcare. Local police departments and administrations should be put under the control of democratically elected popular assemblies tasked with rooting out corruption and cartel influence. 

Without an activated mass movement which fights beyond the elections and for the program, Morena will succumb to the pressure to serve the capitalists. In order to win a real transformative program, there needs to be a democratic mass movement built, where the popular assemblies elect their own leaders to guide the campaigns. The elected leaders of Morena should be subject to recall by this mass base, and they should take the average workers wage. This will limit the interests of right-wing careerists. 

As we have seen throughout Latin America during this new Pink Tide, these reformist leaders and parties have been quickly tested given the rapid developments of the economic and political conditions. Only a mass democratic movement of the working class will be able to take on the bosses and win the demands the workers and oppressed in Mexico desire.