Claudia Sheinbaum. Xóchitl Gálvez. Jorge Álvarez Máynez. A brilliant scientist, expert in environmental issues—of Jewish origin: a rarity in Latin American politics—convinced leftist militant. A self-made engineer and businesswoman—in this case, with indigenous ancestry: another strange thing, at least since Benito Juárez and Porfirio Díaz—who on several occasions has defined herself as center-left. And a young internationalist from a small party that is located in social democracy. Up to this point, the Mexican case looks like an anomaly in a world that is increasingly leaning to the right and whose ultra side occupies increasingly relevant spaces: the victory of a Milei or a Bukele here is, for the moment, unthinkable. On the contrary, the three candidates identify more or less with the same ideological spectrum – at least in words -, proof of the chilling inequality that the country has not managed to overcome since its bumpy transition to democracy and to which are added its unprecedented levels of violence, the fragility of its rule of law and the corruption of its elites.
Up to this point, the millions of citizens who will go to the polls on June 2 seem to have three government programs with concomitant priorities: turning Mexico into a more egalitarian, fair and honest society. Unfortunately, neither the candidates – in all the polls they occupy the first places – nor the candidate are enough for themselves. Each one is, however, the frontispiece of a story—I would almost say: of an insoluble equation—that surpasses them and complicates the possibility of choosing between them.
Sheinbaum is the candidate of Morena, the movement founded by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, as well as two small parties that in fact are businesses at the service of their leaders (the most cynical of them, the Verde Ecologista, in the past supported the right). As if that were not enough, a few months before the start of the campaign, the president decided, in an unprecedented act of machismo, to impose her own agenda on her, which she has followed to the letter so as not to lose her support. . His proposal includes a wealth of measures that could not even remotely be judged leftist: continuing with the militarization of institutions – today the Army not only controls public security, but also the construction of infrastructure and tasks as crazy as the management of customs and airports or an airline—, the destruction of the autonomous bodies that supervise the Executive, the submission of the Judiciary, a punitive drug policy that seeks to severely punish drug dealing or the expansion of informal preventive detention, a clear violation of human rights. human rights for which Mexico has already been condemned by international organizations.
Gálvez’s case is not better. She is supported by the National Action Party (PAN) and, in particular, the operators of former President Felipe Calderón – that is, the one who launched the war against drugs in 2006: the main cause of the increase in violence and the introducer, by the way , of informal preventive detention—; the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which, after returning to power in 2012, was characterized by excessive corruption; and the last strongholds of the old left entrenched in the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Furious enemies for decades, these three organizations are only united by their animosity against López Obrador, which has prevented Gálvez from having a minimally coherent agenda.
Finally, Álvarez Máynez, from Movimiento Ciudadano – a party managed at will by its founder, Dante Delgado, a former ally of the president – is the replacement, after a bizarre operation, of its first candidate, Samuel García, the controversial governor of Nuevo León who in no way embodies a leftist option, but rather a populist fatuity similar to that of other figures in his group.
If the profiles of Sheinbaum, Gálvez and Álvarez Máynez are attractive, the burden of their coalitions and traveling companions disfigures them. Suddenly, we must choose between an environmentalist who defends militarization or informal preventive detention; a center-left businesswoman who has stopped speaking out in favor of women’s right to decide, changes her speech every day and, when confronting current militarization or corruption, is accompanied by those who started the first and benefited from the second; and a politician whose party incorporates both progressive and ultra-conservative candidates among its ranks.
How to choose in this bleak panorama? Ignoring that Sheinbaum promises to comply with the most authoritarian and capricious dictates of López Obrador and trusting that he will eventually distance himself from him when he obtains victory? Forget that the most unpresentable leaders of the PRI and the PAN control Gálvez’s campaign and imagine that he will get rid of them if he wins on June 2? Opt for Álvarez Máynez knowing that, beyond the contradictions of his party, his participation is almost testimonial?
As in so many places, in Mexico the public discussion has raged to such an extreme—largely due to López Obrador’s populist stubbornness to disqualify each of his critics—that any show of good sense has been pushed aside. For the supporters of the two candidates (in this dilemma, Álvarez Máynez becomes irrelevant), the victory of his rival announces the apocalypse: the destruction of Mexican democracy—as a group of intellectuals recently insisted—or the return of elitism and the plundering that characterized the PAN and PRI regimes. Their exchange of accusations—Sheinbaum and Gálvez refused to shake hands in the debates—prevents them from accepting that the country they aspire to govern is already brutally destroyed because of those who support them.
Since 2000, the three major political forces have succeeded each other in power and all three are responsible for Mexico having a number of dead and missing people typical of a civil war—almost half a million deaths and tens of thousands of missing people—and for impunity is absolute: less than one percent of these crimes have been solved. Both the PAN and the PRI and Morena have plunged us into this abyss: believing that the arrival of one or the other will suddenly change things is a fantasy. What Sheinbaum and Gálvez should take into account, just like their irate supporters, is that no place with the severity of the problems that Mexico – a country that is a cemetery – has made progress in terms of violence or inequality without a minimum consensus among its different political forces, especially if—as is desirable—none obtains a qualified majority in Congress.
For this election to become a watershed, it will not be enough to celebrate the triumph of a woman. The true—and essential—new thing would be that, regardless of who wins, these two women could leave behind the stubbornness, arrogance and machismo of Calderón and López Obrador—the presidents who have done the most damage to the country in decades. and that deep down they look like two drops of water—and together they could open an authentic public discussion on how to save Mexico from the barbarism into which its allies have plunged it.
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