Claudia, Europe and the opposite conjunctures

In 1993, the historian Ruggiero Romano published Opposite junctures. The crisis of the 17th century in Europe and Latin America. The book, written in part to polemize with the readings of the theory of dependency between America and the Western world, revealed that, while the 17th century had represented a long period of economic crisis for Europe, the Latin American region had, on the other hand, experienced during that period a phase of growth and development. The book came to tell us, in other words, about the fact that the relations between the two regions were not only based on structural conditions that condemned Latin America to a position of subalternity, but also on situations that could modify the relationship with Europe according to the moment.

Precisely, the opposite conjunctures have marked much of the comparative history of the two regions. It would be enough to highlight that while Europe was previously violated by Nazi-fascist totalitarianism in the thirties and then destroyed by the Second World War, caused in the forties, America was experiencing a moment of important economic expansion and in many cases of expansion of the social and political rights.

Ruggiero’s thesis on the opposite conjunctures is once again valid when analyzing the results of the last elections in Mexico, in which the electorate has granted the candidate of the Morena movement, Claudia Sheinbaum, an extraordinary majority of votes, 60% , distancing herself by 30 points from her closest competitor, Xóchitl Gálvez. Europe and Mexico, if not all of Latin America, find themselves, at least from a political point of view, in one of those opposite situations that have marked the relations between the two regions over the centuries.

Europe is currently caught in a dangerous situation. On the one hand, from the international level, the war in Ukraine projects a formidable threat to the region for its stability and for the maintenance of continental peace, one of the most important achievements achieved by a region torn apart by two world wars, the cause of millions of dead and the holocaust of the Jewish people. On the other hand, the last decade has seen a strong consolidation of far-right leaderships that question the democratic foundations of the countries in which they aspire to govern or in which they already govern. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni, the president of the government—because that is what she has chosen to be called, explicitly questioning the most moderate demands of feminism—proudly claims her membership in a political movement that has its roots in the Movimiento Sociale Italiano, direct heir to the fascist regime. by Benito Mussolini. In Spain, the Vox party, which is the fourth political force in the country and which indirectly participates in several regional governments, emerges in direct continuity with the Franco regime. The once moderate Popular Party has partly taken on Vox’s ultranationalist and reactionary agenda on issues such as immigration, gender, civil rights and historical memory. In France, it is Marie Le Pen’s National Front that embodies what Pablo Stefanoni defines as the new rebellion of the right.

The list could continue to include the German party Alternative für Deutschland and President Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. What unites these movements that already govern or that aspire—with good possibilities of doing so in some cases—to govern is, even with nuances, a questioning of the basic norms of liberal democracy, an ultranationalist agenda with explicit features of racism, misogyny, homophobia and an explicit denialism about climate change that is nourished by positions very close to anti-science. Furthermore, these forces in international politics, before the invasion of Ukraine—and Hungary still today—had maintained friendly relations with Vladimir Putin’s autocracy.

It is against this scenario where the victory of a candidate like Sheinbaum reinforces the current opposite situation between Europe and Mexico. Although internally Sheinbaum has been strongly questioned by analysts who classify themselves in a liberal ideological area, the Morena candidate represents, when confronted with the European panorama, a progressive political option, undoubtedly far from the anti-systemic positions of the right-wing of the old continent. Faced with the subversion of the European right, Sheinbaum’s career is a monument to institutionality. Doctor in physics and researcher at UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico), she has been Secretary of the Environment during the leadership of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the Federal District (today Mexico City), and also head of government of the capital . Many aspects may be questioned about Sheinbaum, but not that of representing a way of doing politics that has worked from within the perimeter of the Mexican political system born of the democratic transition of 2000. On crucial issues such as democratic governance, civil and gender rights, use of science to combat climate change, but also in the defense of international law, Sheinbaum undoubtedly maintains more reasonable and, I repeat, institutional positions than most political groups on the European right. That is to say, while a clear anti-liberal shift is being observed in Europe, Sheinbaum’s trajectory and proposals vindicate the ancient democratic social promise of reconciling a democratic political regime with an agenda of expanding civil and social rights, in which the environmental and gender rights.

The new president will have to be judged by the facts, however, at this moment the old and new world are once again placed in one of those divergent positions that, as Romano pointed out, have characterized the relationship between the two continents.

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