In 1972, while Hunter S. Thompson, totem of delirious journalism and scathing political chronicler, was covering for Rolling Stone The campaign that re-elected Richard Nixon as tenant of the White House, wrote a question that would resonate with election campaign reporters in any corner of the world: “How low do you have to fall in this country to be president?” Partisan politics is a story: sometimes lofty and intellectual; most of the time, rather poor. Election campaigns, club fights in the mud with easy slogans and low blows. Campaign slogans can serve, at best, as red dots marking the route on a map. At worst, as a thermometer of ridicule, the punchline from a caricature.
Mexico lives these days immersed in an eternal campaign that will conclude on June 2 with presidential elections in which citizens will elect the first tenant (the polls say) of the National Palace, between two women and a third in discord: Claudia Sheinbaum , from the ruling Morena party, pupil of the current leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador; the PAN member Xóchitl Gálvez, candidate of the three-headed coalition between the right of the PAN, the left? of the PRD and the unclassifiable dying dinosaur of the PRI; Jorge Álvarez Máynez, the unknown bullet in the chamber of Movimiento Ciudadano.
By profession ‘narco-candidate’
Guilt is inherited. That’s what Gálvez must have thought, who without much originality recycled the nickname “narco-candidate” to refer to his main rival, Sheinbaum, a favorite in the polls. It all started with an investigation in the press without a route, which made journalism professionals wonder about issues such as ethics and opportunism. A series of reports in foreign media detailed how the DEA (United States Drug Enforcement Agency) investigated whether López Obrador financed his 2006 campaign with drug trafficking money. The sources were from the DEA itself and concluded that they never found evidence of these alleged donations.
The president saw it as an act of foreign interference and has not stopped repeating it. No matter what they ask, the answer ends up almost inevitably leading to attacks by “foreign governments” and “conservative groups in Mexico” through “filthy pamphlets.” The opposition saw its opportunity to take advantage and called López Obrador a “narco-president.” The insult was a trend on In the second electoral debate, on April 29, Gálvez adapted the offense and threw it at Sheinbaum, who replied: “The only declared narco-government that has existed is that of Felipe Calderón, of the PAN,” in reference to his Secretary of Security, anti-drug czar Genaro García Luna, convicted in the United States for drug trafficking.
If you don’t have a house you’re pretty cool
Gálvez has the odds to lose and that is why his strategy is that of a fierce attack: chase, hit, make noise. His outbursts have been the general trend this campaign. Sometimes by misunderstanding memes, like when he confused a parody of Santa Muerte with advertising for Morena and attacked López Obrador and Sheinbaum with the absurd accusation that his party “worships” the patron saint of thugs. Social networks had a good time at his expense.
Perhaps his biggest blunder occurred with the hangover from the first debate. In it, Sheinbaum accused Gálvez of living “in a real estate cartel house,” the name given by the Prosecutor’s Office to a plot that lasted 15 years and allowed PAN politicians in the capital to make money by granting illegal permits to real estate construction companies. in exchange for bribes. The PAN member was hurt by the accusation. Days later, he responded: “She complained to me that I live in my own house and that she lives in a rented apartment. If at 60 you have not been able to make a fortune, you are very cool, with all due respect.” The comment, in a country where buying a house is a luxury for the rich and most young people know that they will never be able to have their own home, did not sit well.
Máynez, Máynez, Máynez
They are the favorites. He’s just Maynez. The Citizen Movement candidate plays his own party. He visits universities, gets into fights with students, wears trendy sneakers and stars in the hit of the summer, a song that chants his name until exhaustion as a mnemonic trick so that we remember that he exists. It is extremely catchy: it is equally suitable for rallies, quinceañeras or parties in South Korea. The candidate, champion of a “new politics” that is very reminiscent of that of a lifetime, is aware that to win he needs a biblical miracle. So he has a good time, he bets on social networks, he goes viral thanks to a communication team smarter than hunger and, meanwhile, little by little and without raising suspicions, he closes the gap with Gálvez. The last guest at the ball is suddenly so scary that the decision makers in the PRI and PAN have asked him to withdraw from the race and leave the way clear for them. Of course, “for the love of Mexico.” Máynez responds with the grace of which he had nothing to lose and yet he begins to see something to gain: “Let them decline [ellos] for me”.
A “mere procedure”
Xóchitl Gálvez knows that he is running the last sprint: he has to take risks, go off script and use all the tricks in the deck. Sheinbaum is in a long-distance race. He doesn’t change the pace, he doesn’t even look back to see if his competitors are approaching. For her it’s easy: she started with light years ahead and all she needs is to avoid that stumble, so that fatigue doesn’t bend her legs in the final stretch and loosen her tongue with an unfortunate statement that muddies her calculated interventions. Gálvez looks for her and searches for her tickles – he says that she has survived the campaign by “playing dead” – he holds out his cape clearly visible, but, the brunette, like someone who hears it rain.
No one, however, can endure the constant exposure without over braking a couple of times. Sheinbaum’s winning poise finally betrayed him on Monday, May 6, after meeting with the Mexican Business Council, when he said that he only has “the process of June 2” missing, D-Day.
Gálvez’s mouth watered and he tried to capitalize on the slip: “It takes a lot of arrogance to reduce a vote by 100 million people in a democratic process to a mere procedure. “Pride is a sin that is paid for in life.” He didn’t work out too much. Sheinbaum is made of Teflon.
your country is falling
Gálvez can also spin fine lines. Again in the second debate, an inexhaustible source of insults, he went to the newspaper library to air two of Sheinbaum’s great scandals. The earthquake of September 19, 2017 caused the collapse of the Rébsamen private school, in Tlalplan, the mayor’s office of which she was head of the delegation. Although the court found the school director guilty of illegally building a floor weighing more than 230 tons that the foundations could not support, the shadow of the tragedy has always hovered over Sheinbaum. There is the fall of Line 12, a subway route, traveled by workers returning from the day to their humble neighborhoods, which collapsed during rush hour in May 2021 and left 26 dead and a hundred injured. Three years later, Gálvez loaded the ammunition: “Lady of lies, a school collapsed because you did not apply civil protection, the Metro collapsed due to lack of maintenance. “You are not going to be president, the country would fall.”
The wonder priandilla
Again, the second debate, that pitched battle so rich in anecdotes and so poor in proposals. The real estate cartel was big game, a prey too juicy to let escape. Sheinbaum rebelled against the insults of his rival and went on the offensive with less skill than force. “The only extortion that the PRIAN candidate knows about is that of the real estate gang,” he shot, putting the case of the Benito Juárez real estate cartel back on the table. And at the same time, in a rhetorical display, he combined PRI and PAN in the same word, a somewhat simplistic way of telling Gálvez that he is part of the old structure that governed Mexico for decades, the party of institutionalized corruption, the perfect dictatorship and the Tlatelolco massacre.
This survey is missing yeast
Italian football has already taught it: when you are winning, the best thing is to withdraw the entire team into your own area, make an insurmountable human wall and let the minutes pass until the referee whistles the end of the game. There is no need for grand gestures or flourishes, just keeping the score in your favor. Among them is Sheinbaum, who seems sufficiently adept to proclaim that his opponents would need yeast to inflate his results. “No matter how much dirty war, how much lies, how much slander, they don’t rise in the polls, we should give them a little [levadura] Royal, let’s see if they go up, but not even like that, really,” he launched at the end of April. Ingenuity, unleashed. Let Ricky Gervais tremble.
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