Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Under the pious pretext of presenting his “latest book,” Andrés Manuel López Obrador emerges from hiding to save Morena and Claudia Sheinbaum’s presidency in crisis. November 2025 was the month that saw the collapse of the credibility, moral authority, and internal unity of the movement he had founded and left in Sheinbaum’s hands. Both the party and the government are sinking into confusion and disorder, internally and externally.
The president is barely able to coordinate with congressional leaders, who, in turn, have interests and instructions that do not necessarily coincide with hers. What’s more, many legislators repeatedly mock and sneer at Sheinbaum when they talk about her. Morena’s internal unity is only skin deep. The humiliation suffered by the former president’s son, Andy, at the behest of Morena operators seeking to marginalize his influence and political weight has struck a deep chord, creating an atmosphere of revenge and resentment among the party’s leadership. Internal betrayals have become an everyday occurrence.
November 1 began with the assassination of Carlos Manzo, mayor of Uruapan and a staunch opponent of the ruling party’s policy of making deals with drug traffickers. The government immediately accused his bodyguards of the crime to “clean up its own image,” while the secretary of defense declared that Manzo’s protection “was impeccable.” Of course, without acknowledging that the man was already dead. The murder of Carlos Manzo shook national and international public opinion and was seen as an event in which the Morenista state government was involved. The incident sparked demonstrations across the country.
That crime mobilized the nation. Paranoia paralyzes political actors or leads them to make serious mistakes. The biggest and most public of those mistakes was the repression in the Zócalo on November 15, when the capital’s police were ordered to charge against citizens protesting Manzo’s murder. The police used the old tactic of provocation: they hired people to form the “Black Bloc” and proceeded to create a situation of prolonged chaos on the Zócalo plaza. This chaos allowed the authorities to justify the attack on citizens who were expressing their dissatisfaction with the government.
The repression was intended to frighten the population so that they would not protest again. Fear and mistrust, however, do not contribute to good governance. The president was seen by many as a repressor of peaceful demonstrations. The deterioration of her image is evident, even though polls are published to show a false image of peace and consensus among the population.
The messy resignation of Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero, shrouded in a cloud of rumors and accusations of a cover-up of key Morena and federal government officials for acts of corruption and links to drug trafficking, took a toll on the national and international reputation of Sheinbaum and her government. It deepened the impression among investors and citizens that the rule of law in Mexico had been broken.
Additionally, the echoes and alarm bells surrounding judicial reform continue to resonate. The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation is quickly convincing friends and strangers alike that the “res judicata” criterion has been discarded and that the justices are about to whet their appetite for political revenge, turning the legal criterion upside down. There will be no certainty or legal security in Mexico. Everything will depend on political gamesmanship. “To hell with the law!” seems to be the new slogan.
In addition to the above, which discourages investment in the country, there is the official data on economic stagnation. There is no growth. This situation puts the federal government at a crossroads: tax revenues decline when the economy stagnates, while expenditures grow, especially for social programs, the weight of debt, and pensions. Along with this, current spending on the unproductive white elephants left behind by AMLO, the Mayan Train, Dos Bocas, PEMEX, AIFA, and Mexicana de Aviación, is leading the country to technical bankruptcy.
Faced with this situation, AMLO seems convinced that it is deteriorating rapidly and that it is up to him to rescue Morena and Sheinbaum. He is coming now, before it is too late. The question is whether he is capable of offering solutions to the major national problems (insecurity, violence, economic stagnation, and corruption), or whether his intervention, with his usual proposals, will cause a greater crisis and ultimately lead to the collapse of the political group he imposed on Mexico.
@rpascoep
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