Claudia Sheinbaum wiped the floor with Xóchitl Gálvez, beating her by some 30 percentage points. This article, published in Persuasion on May 27, suggests that her victory is disastrous for Mexico. It’s well-written, and I would guess that the author, Enrique Krauze, is correct:
But I don’t speak Spanish and I've never lived in Mexico. I’ve never paid especially close attention to Mexican politics, either, so I’m not confident in saying that. Some of our readers have a very deep knowledge of Mexico, its history, and its politicians. I’m hoping they’ll join us here to tell us what they make of this. Is his analysis is basically right?
If you’d like to read more by Enrique Krauze, he’s written about the results, in Spanish. (Use Google Translate if like me you don’t read Spanish.)
A few more articles about the election caught my eye: In Persuasion today, Quico Toro writes that Claudia Sheinbaum is an enigma: The only thing we really know about her is that she seems to agree with AMLO’s every word.
A request to the media: Could we please stop making a song and dance about it whenever a woman wins an election? Writing excitedly that a woman has been elected for the first time as if it’s a breathtaking, never-before-imagined, dog-on-its-hind-legs marvel is ridiculous. Women get elected quite often these days. They’ve been getting elected for years, in almost every major democracy. Has Sheinbaum no other qualifications for the presidency?
Mind you, the answer to that question, by many accounts, is no—her greatest qualification seems to be her ability to cleave so closely to AMLO that no one knows whether she’s ever had an idea of her own—still, journalists should write about her as they do any politician. The first paragraph of their article should describe her career, her campaign, and her ideas. The “first-woman-ever-to-be-elected” paragraph should only be written if there’s some reason this would be exceedingly unexpected and unlikely, and if it’s included, it should be appended to the bottom of the article, not put in the first sentence.
The degree to which the polling was off—wildly off, it seems—is noteworthy. I wonder why, and I wonder if that has wider implications?
I’m looking forward to hearing from my readers about this.
I am not ready to put Claudia Sheinbaum on a pedestal (merely) for being female, intelligent, and pragmatic, and don’t understand the euphoria there. Why is that combination of characteristics even newsworthy?
The high turnout in this election cheered me. Mexico’s voters— who have every reason to feel downtrodden and disenfranchised— put those in the US to shame.
If Sheinbaum can govern apart from The Party as constructed by AMLO, it will be a good thing for Mexico. If entrenched interests prevent her from doing so, well, plus ça change.
I don't speak Spanish but have developed a fondness for Mexican culture and people. My husband spent much of his life there so I have a little context. Going back to the eighties, the era of benazir Bhutto, Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher was the first time little girls like me knew we could do anything. I still think it's significant that a woman is elected, with a science background in a country coming to grips with it's socialist leanings. Especially at a time when women's rights are backsliding. The blending of reason, science, femininity, and a possible green productive future for Mexico and Mexico/us/Canada relations is promising if delivered.
When I type naive ideas like this I'm aware of all the downsides.
I was disappointed to see a pic of sheinbaum with yanis varoufakis who likes to slam the US regularly, but won't discuss his silence on Libya. Tweeting pics of dead children is crass beyond al human comprehension. It's a full co opting of a people by media with no skin in the game.
If possible, I hope she dispenses with all the BS and does what's pragmatic for Mexicans.
Claire, this is a useful public service. All three reports are pursuasive. The two from "Pursuasion" and the one from the reporter with a Catalan name and Northumbian accent deal with reported issues. However, I think they miss the point. The PRI's 70-year liberal and then neoliberal monopoly on public discourse led inexorably to the Progressive discourse of Manuel Lopez Obrador, and I am personally pleased to see that Mexican democracy has found a way to "institutionalize" this progressive moment.
A major element in this "institutionalization" is the election of a woman in what has been an historically patriarchal and paternalistic society. I think the real issues are 1) the institutionalisation of a progressive political discourse, and 2) the empowerment of the female electorate.
As an outside observer who has never lived in Mexico, I prefer not to say anything about constitutional reforms, or about military and judicial reform. Water stress and demographic pressures on the United States' southern border may be the next big issue on the horizon. That said, I am confident Democracy is safe in Mexico, at least for the next six years.
Let me add a few more analyses and comments readers sent to me. (Readers! I took the paywall off of this so that everyone could contribute, there's no need to send me email separately--just jump right in.)
Emiliano Polo sent this article he wrote for the Wilson Center. He thinks that even with the landslide victory, the Morena party has destroyed so many institutions that Sheinbaum might soon find out she doesn't have the leverage she thought she had to carry out some of her plans. "The Day After the Election: Mexico’s Potemkin Government" https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/day-after-election-mexicos-potemkin-government.
Finally, a very well-informed reader (who didn't say I could use his name, so I won't) wrote: "I’m in Mexico City for the elections. Claudia will not be in charge — she is Mexico’s Medvedev. The regime remains the same. Confrontation with the United States, which is not to say conflict, is now inevitable."
If anyone else has read or seen commentary on the election that strikes you as interesting and well-informed, please do share it here.
Well, let’s think a bit. A hard leftist, the protege of an incumbent hard leftist, gets herself elected president of a Latin American country. What could possibly go wrong?
Just skimming Ms Sheinbaum’s Wikipedia, it looks like she was previously head of government for Mexico City 2018-2023. During that time I heard about complaints that too many Americans were moving there for remote work, which is probably not a negative indicator of quality of life. The murder rate in the city remains high, but seems to have dropped noticeably.
But there have been several (many?) recent examples of the polls being wrong - far wrong.
Many polls are partisan.
Probably because the political parties pay for the polls and they are more likely to commission a second poll if it says what they like.
And most of us learn what the polls say from the media (as opposed to reading the polls ourselves (question wording, leading questions, and actual answers), including the media's bias.
So while polls are interesting (we certainly quote them), they may not tell us as much as they promise.
Claire, you were early to post some years back regarding the drug cartels' control of at least 3 Mexican states. From everything I have read (no expertise claimed here) AMLO couldn't/ wouldn't fight the cartels. So if Sheinbaum is AMLO's protegee as most coverage seems to indicate, the cartels should retain their undue influence over Mexican national politics and their control over their regional strongholds.
To AMLO's point -- the cartels are powered by the money of American (and European) drug users. Until America and the EU can find a way to legalize hard drugs while also all but forcing users to get treatment, that money will continue to flow in. It would seem that Portugal was succeeding with this kind of policy until it cut funds for drug treatment. Unfortunately after some years the Portuguese government thought they could get away with spending money only on enforcement; the number of addicts grew from there. My understanding is that Switzerland still does well with a variation of the model that had previously succeeded in Portugal.
Whatever. Mere decriminalization without heavy incentives/ resources for treatment has not looked good in places like Portland and San Francisco, and because of that the Republican "War on Drugs" policy seems to have gathered renewed popular support even in the US center-left. So the dire Mexican situation can be expected to continue.
Switzerland still doing pretty well with its focus on keeping users a functional part of society ("harm reduction"). Hard drugs are not legalized, but their use is seen as more of a public health problem than a criminal issue. Portugal's policy (as Switzerland's) has been primarily focused on three substances: cannabis, heroin, cocaine. In recent years both countries began keeping more statistics on MDMA / ecstasy use (and policies are still more about testing substances for contamination rather than working with habitual e users). The real harm reduction work is still focused on the Big Three. As drug use patterns diversify, it gets harder to come up with a harm reduction policy that suits all substances. Both countries (ironically I divide my time between the two; no correlation with their drug policies!) live in fear of a wave of synthetic opioids coming in. No one has a plan for that.
From Jim Geraghty in National Review. There's a lot more as well. "Americans spend a lot of time discussing, and being angry, about the situation at our border with Mexico, but comparably little time discussing what’s going on in Mexico. We certainly don’t spend much time talking about the Mexican government. Earlier this year, new evidence emerged contending that AMLO had been cozy with the notorious Sinaloa Cartel for a long time, while the record of the cartel’s extensive and lucrative ties to China — in production of fentanyl and methamphetamine — grew clearer and clearer. That discovery barely made a ripple in the U.S. news cycle.
Nor did many Americans notice in April when Mexico’s national police agencies contradicted AMLO’s spectacularly implausible claim that no fentanyl is produced in Mexico:
The head of Mexico’s detective service acknowledged Tuesday that the country is “the champion” of fentanyl production, something that appears to run counter to past statements by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
López Obrador has hotly denied in the past that any fentanyl is produced in Mexico, saying Mexican cartels only press it into pills or add finishing touches.
But Felipe de Jesus Gallo, the head of Mexico’s Criminal Investigation Agency, said that since the 1990s “Mexico has been the champion of methamphetamine production, and now fentanyl.” He spoke at a U.S.-Mexico conference on synthetic drugs in Mexico City.
Experts agree that cartels in Mexico use precursor chemicals from China and India to make the synthetic opioid and smuggle it into the United States, where it causes about 70,000 overdose deaths annually. . . .
“Believe me, methamphetamine production has become industrialized, it’s not just in the mountains anymore,” Gallo said. “We now expect to see (drug) laboratories not just in the mountains of Sinaloa and Sonora, but in Hidalgo as well, Puebla, and also in Jalisco.”
You cannot solve a problem if you refuse to acknowledge it exists.
Perhaps it’s just bad luck for Mexico that the presidential election occurred two days after the first conviction of a former U.S. president, an event destined to dominate the U.S. news cycle for at least a week. To the extent that the U.S. media has noticed Mexico’s next president, former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, it has mostly offered shallow assessments and “yas queen!” cheerleading for Mexico’s first female, and Jewish, president."
This is a good point: "Americans spend a lot of time discussing, and being angry, about the situation at our border with Mexico, but comparably little time discussing what’s going on in Mexico." It's very true and it's very strange. It's hard to understand our policy options without understanding the government on the other side of that border, isn't it? Like discussing the problem of rockets landing in Israel without ever asking what's going on in Lebanon and Gaza. Obviously, Mexican politics matter!
Why do Americans discuss Mexican politics so rarely, I wonder? Considering its proximity and that number of Americans who believe the unsecured border is our most urgent problem, you'd think Mexico would receive much, much more attention in the news than any other country. But I don't think I'd have known much about these elections at all if I hadn't searched for news about it.
And yes, as I said--the media's insistence that Sheinbaum has done something remarkable simply by being a woman rubs me the wrong way. I don't think journalists realize how patronizing that is. Women don't need this. We've now got quite a long record of voting, governing, owning property, serving on juries, graduating from universities, and holding down jobs. We don't need extra, Special-Olympics-style applause when we accomplish things (or when we screw them up).
I am not ready to put Claudia Sheinbaum on a pedestal (merely) for being female, intelligent, and pragmatic, and don’t understand the euphoria there. Why is that combination of characteristics even newsworthy?
The high turnout in this election cheered me. Mexico’s voters— who have every reason to feel downtrodden and disenfranchised— put those in the US to shame.
If Sheinbaum can govern apart from The Party as constructed by AMLO, it will be a good thing for Mexico. If entrenched interests prevent her from doing so, well, plus ça change.
Here's another analysis I found interesting--from a writer on Substack whom you may, like me, find interesting generally:
https://thatpatchwork.com/p/mexican-democracy-on-the-brink?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2&hide_intro_popup=true
I don't speak Spanish but have developed a fondness for Mexican culture and people. My husband spent much of his life there so I have a little context. Going back to the eighties, the era of benazir Bhutto, Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher was the first time little girls like me knew we could do anything. I still think it's significant that a woman is elected, with a science background in a country coming to grips with it's socialist leanings. Especially at a time when women's rights are backsliding. The blending of reason, science, femininity, and a possible green productive future for Mexico and Mexico/us/Canada relations is promising if delivered.
When I type naive ideas like this I'm aware of all the downsides.
I was disappointed to see a pic of sheinbaum with yanis varoufakis who likes to slam the US regularly, but won't discuss his silence on Libya. Tweeting pics of dead children is crass beyond al human comprehension. It's a full co opting of a people by media with no skin in the game.
If possible, I hope she dispenses with all the BS and does what's pragmatic for Mexicans.
It’s populists versus cosmopolitans – with the former decimating the latter
Oh, I was hoping you'd join us for this conversation! I put out the David Agren bat-signal.
(Did you really leave that comment *eight hours* ago? That means I've been working eight hours straight without leaving my desk. Time for a break.)
Claire, this is a useful public service. All three reports are pursuasive. The two from "Pursuasion" and the one from the reporter with a Catalan name and Northumbian accent deal with reported issues. However, I think they miss the point. The PRI's 70-year liberal and then neoliberal monopoly on public discourse led inexorably to the Progressive discourse of Manuel Lopez Obrador, and I am personally pleased to see that Mexican democracy has found a way to "institutionalize" this progressive moment.
A major element in this "institutionalization" is the election of a woman in what has been an historically patriarchal and paternalistic society. I think the real issues are 1) the institutionalisation of a progressive political discourse, and 2) the empowerment of the female electorate.
As an outside observer who has never lived in Mexico, I prefer not to say anything about constitutional reforms, or about military and judicial reform. Water stress and demographic pressures on the United States' southern border may be the next big issue on the horizon. That said, I am confident Democracy is safe in Mexico, at least for the next six years.
What makes you confident?
Let me add a few more analyses and comments readers sent to me. (Readers! I took the paywall off of this so that everyone could contribute, there's no need to send me email separately--just jump right in.)
Here's our man Peter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRaJldFTJ1Y
Emiliano Polo sent this article he wrote for the Wilson Center. He thinks that even with the landslide victory, the Morena party has destroyed so many institutions that Sheinbaum might soon find out she doesn't have the leverage she thought she had to carry out some of her plans. "The Day After the Election: Mexico’s Potemkin Government" https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/day-after-election-mexicos-potemkin-government.
Finally, a very well-informed reader (who didn't say I could use his name, so I won't) wrote: "I’m in Mexico City for the elections. Claudia will not be in charge — she is Mexico’s Medvedev. The regime remains the same. Confrontation with the United States, which is not to say conflict, is now inevitable."
If anyone else has read or seen commentary on the election that strikes you as interesting and well-informed, please do share it here.
Well, let’s think a bit. A hard leftist, the protege of an incumbent hard leftist, gets herself elected president of a Latin American country. What could possibly go wrong?
Our #1 trading partner, exceeding China, #12 largest economy world wide. Agree we ought pay more attention.
I know, right? Why isn't there more reporting on this? It's a bit odd.
Just skimming Ms Sheinbaum’s Wikipedia, it looks like she was previously head of government for Mexico City 2018-2023. During that time I heard about complaints that too many Americans were moving there for remote work, which is probably not a negative indicator of quality of life. The murder rate in the city remains high, but seems to have dropped noticeably.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/06/how-data-helped-mexico-city-reduce-high-impact-crime/
https://hoyodecrimen.com/en/rates
It looks like she did Ph.D thesis work at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
She seems to have been born and spent most of her like in Mexico City, not the provinces.
Polling can be accurate.
But there have been several (many?) recent examples of the polls being wrong - far wrong.
Many polls are partisan.
Probably because the political parties pay for the polls and they are more likely to commission a second poll if it says what they like.
And most of us learn what the polls say from the media (as opposed to reading the polls ourselves (question wording, leading questions, and actual answers), including the media's bias.
So while polls are interesting (we certainly quote them), they may not tell us as much as they promise.
Claire, you were early to post some years back regarding the drug cartels' control of at least 3 Mexican states. From everything I have read (no expertise claimed here) AMLO couldn't/ wouldn't fight the cartels. So if Sheinbaum is AMLO's protegee as most coverage seems to indicate, the cartels should retain their undue influence over Mexican national politics and their control over their regional strongholds.
To AMLO's point -- the cartels are powered by the money of American (and European) drug users. Until America and the EU can find a way to legalize hard drugs while also all but forcing users to get treatment, that money will continue to flow in. It would seem that Portugal was succeeding with this kind of policy until it cut funds for drug treatment. Unfortunately after some years the Portuguese government thought they could get away with spending money only on enforcement; the number of addicts grew from there. My understanding is that Switzerland still does well with a variation of the model that had previously succeeded in Portugal.
Whatever. Mere decriminalization without heavy incentives/ resources for treatment has not looked good in places like Portland and San Francisco, and because of that the Republican "War on Drugs" policy seems to have gathered renewed popular support even in the US center-left. So the dire Mexican situation can be expected to continue.
Switzerland still doing pretty well with its focus on keeping users a functional part of society ("harm reduction"). Hard drugs are not legalized, but their use is seen as more of a public health problem than a criminal issue. Portugal's policy (as Switzerland's) has been primarily focused on three substances: cannabis, heroin, cocaine. In recent years both countries began keeping more statistics on MDMA / ecstasy use (and policies are still more about testing substances for contamination rather than working with habitual e users). The real harm reduction work is still focused on the Big Three. As drug use patterns diversify, it gets harder to come up with a harm reduction policy that suits all substances. Both countries (ironically I divide my time between the two; no correlation with their drug policies!) live in fear of a wave of synthetic opioids coming in. No one has a plan for that.
From Jim Geraghty in National Review. There's a lot more as well. "Americans spend a lot of time discussing, and being angry, about the situation at our border with Mexico, but comparably little time discussing what’s going on in Mexico. We certainly don’t spend much time talking about the Mexican government. Earlier this year, new evidence emerged contending that AMLO had been cozy with the notorious Sinaloa Cartel for a long time, while the record of the cartel’s extensive and lucrative ties to China — in production of fentanyl and methamphetamine — grew clearer and clearer. That discovery barely made a ripple in the U.S. news cycle.
Nor did many Americans notice in April when Mexico’s national police agencies contradicted AMLO’s spectacularly implausible claim that no fentanyl is produced in Mexico:
The head of Mexico’s detective service acknowledged Tuesday that the country is “the champion” of fentanyl production, something that appears to run counter to past statements by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
López Obrador has hotly denied in the past that any fentanyl is produced in Mexico, saying Mexican cartels only press it into pills or add finishing touches.
But Felipe de Jesus Gallo, the head of Mexico’s Criminal Investigation Agency, said that since the 1990s “Mexico has been the champion of methamphetamine production, and now fentanyl.” He spoke at a U.S.-Mexico conference on synthetic drugs in Mexico City.
Experts agree that cartels in Mexico use precursor chemicals from China and India to make the synthetic opioid and smuggle it into the United States, where it causes about 70,000 overdose deaths annually. . . .
“Believe me, methamphetamine production has become industrialized, it’s not just in the mountains anymore,” Gallo said. “We now expect to see (drug) laboratories not just in the mountains of Sinaloa and Sonora, but in Hidalgo as well, Puebla, and also in Jalisco.”
You cannot solve a problem if you refuse to acknowledge it exists.
Perhaps it’s just bad luck for Mexico that the presidential election occurred two days after the first conviction of a former U.S. president, an event destined to dominate the U.S. news cycle for at least a week. To the extent that the U.S. media has noticed Mexico’s next president, former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, it has mostly offered shallow assessments and “yas queen!” cheerleading for Mexico’s first female, and Jewish, president."
This is a good point: "Americans spend a lot of time discussing, and being angry, about the situation at our border with Mexico, but comparably little time discussing what’s going on in Mexico." It's very true and it's very strange. It's hard to understand our policy options without understanding the government on the other side of that border, isn't it? Like discussing the problem of rockets landing in Israel without ever asking what's going on in Lebanon and Gaza. Obviously, Mexican politics matter!
Why do Americans discuss Mexican politics so rarely, I wonder? Considering its proximity and that number of Americans who believe the unsecured border is our most urgent problem, you'd think Mexico would receive much, much more attention in the news than any other country. But I don't think I'd have known much about these elections at all if I hadn't searched for news about it.
And yes, as I said--the media's insistence that Sheinbaum has done something remarkable simply by being a woman rubs me the wrong way. I don't think journalists realize how patronizing that is. Women don't need this. We've now got quite a long record of voting, governing, owning property, serving on juries, graduating from universities, and holding down jobs. We don't need extra, Special-Olympics-style applause when we accomplish things (or when we screw them up).