Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Xóchitl Gálvez unexpectedly burst onto the scene of a country hungry for a change with a future. Nobody expected it, although many longed for it. It seemed obvious: the failure of López Obrador and his accumulation of unfulfilled promises could not be followed by “more of the same”. Sheinbaum and her repetitive litany of attacks on the opposition without charisma or conviction to follow the same path as her puppet master causes rejection and nettle rash. Also, the costly “campaign” without making any substantive or innovative approach to address the country’s multiple crises.
Candidates Ebrard, Adán, and company also turn out to be a bad joke, with their campaigns that are not campaigns, without offering anything different from what the circus owner allows them to offer. That boot-licking contest to see which of them looks better with the master of their destinies is a spectacle that should embarrass anyone who claims to be a leftist.
“Left”, which used to be synonymous with culture, information, and critical reflection, has now become, at least in Latin America, and undoubtedly in Mexico, precisely the opposite: an exercise of genuflection before the official power, without own ideas, without serious reflection and debate, and of total submission. A shame.
Morena decided that its candidates would not debate. This rule contradicts the very spirit of a campaign, which is precisely a place for debate and discussion of ideas that strengthen society, the thinking citizenry, and the “polis” (the work of politics in general). This is because the great “giver” of power, President López Obrador, does not accept that they offer anything different from what he has said or preached.
In the face of this farce, the freshness of the debate and the opposition’s witticisms emerge. That opposition that López Obrador declared “morally defeated and dead” and where, by the way, some opposition figures are neither new, fresh, nor refreshing. Such is life in the desert of Mexican politics.
It is precisely for these reasons that there is hope, much hope because a fresh, different, and witty face has appeared in the face of the lack of empathy of the ruling party and the boring repetition of past opposition figures. Xóchitl Gálvez bursts into the national scene not only as a breath of fresh air in front of the partisan bureaucracies but also as a representative of the opinion trend that postulates to return political rationality and emotional intelligence to the exercise of power, as well as tolerance to diversity with science and transparency.
The idea that a woman would win the next election was disseminated during this six-year term. Lopez Obrador’s message was not because he is a feminist; of course, he is not! He uses women who subordinate themselves to his political designs. That is why he wants Claudia to be his candidate. Because only in her he sees the woman who repeats without hesitation everything he says and who will protect him and his family after the end of his six-year term.
What was not anticipated by Morenismo, and much less by the President, is that a female figure would appear in the opposition that could not only compete with his candidate Claudia but also surpass her in wit, empathy, charisma, and political offer. While Claudia’s campaign languishes in the absence of genuine empathy, her style of being a puppet of power, and the appearance of not wanting to be in a campaign, Xóchitl is reaping the sum of social, trade, business, and even union organizations, as well as personalities from a whole range of ideological and political positions and opinions. She is attractive to young people and minorities.
The Morenist addition of sympathies is exclusively among the adherents of his flock, believers of the unique and excluding vision of the President, who condemns anyone who does not share his opinion to the fire of hell. Xóchitl’s totality represents a great diversity of social classes, world views, and differentiated axiological opinions, but all coincide in a common premise: respect for diversity, democratic practices, and transparency.
Two women who represent radically different projects. Claudia’s vision, where the woman accepts to be the continuity of the presidential dictates, gathers an increasingly smaller fringe of the Mexican social consensus, insisting that the only possible route for Mexico is to continue with internal confrontation, polarization, and the imposition of a single idea that of the President isolating Mexico from the rest of the world.
Xóchitl, on the other hand, represents an expanding social and political fringe that identifies, in her, the capacity to lead a new vision that does not believe in going back to the past or staying where we are today, with López Obrador’s failed project. Xóchitl represents a future for all opinions and visions, based on the construction of new consensus in the face of the challenges of a Mexico inserted in global modernity.
Perhaps the great irony of the current political process is that Morena opened the propaganda by speaking about the “historical inevitability of the victory of a woman in the Presidency”, assuming that she would be a Morenista. But they never imagined the possibility that a woman would indeed become President, but that she would not be from Morena, but from the opposition. Today, this scenario is opening with all its force with the emergence of Xóchitl Gálvez in the campaign.
And President Lopez Obrador knows it and does not know what to do in the face of the new reality.
The main problem lies in the weakness of his favorite candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum. As already described, she is a candidate who lacks charisma and all that a winning candidacy requires. Until now, the President assumed that his popularity would surpass the six-year term and would sweep the Morenista candidacy. But today, he doubts it and is right to doubt it. Xóchitl’s candidacy casts doubt on all the assumptions that guided the President until now. Mainly two assumptions: Morena would put the first woman as President of Mexico, and Morena’s victory was a “historical inevitability”. Neither of those assumptions can now guide the President’s party.
It is just as possible for Xóchitl to win as it is for Claudia to win, which destroys the entire political scaffolding and its assumptions for President López Obrador. Moreover, given the current scenario, López Obrador has no choice but to name Claudia as his candidate, with all the dangers of a weak candidacy. It is impossible that, after years of Morena’s rhetoric about women, now, faced with an attractive female opponent, Morena will nominate a male candidate. In a turn of historical irony, today, the opposition will be the one to define the ruling party’s candidate.
With the nomination of Xóchitl Gálvez, the opposition will change the whole electoral equation for 2024. By saying, “I will run”, Xóchitl kicked the clear board that the partisan bureaucracies had been imagining. And, suddenly, everything changed.
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