Antonio Navalón
Six years is a long time when you are starting, when it is the beginning of the dream, and when you want it. And yet, six years can pass in the blink of an eye when you lose sight of the fact that power is not eternal. Power has its own timing. First, you have to be aware of its existence and want to achieve it. Then you have to define what you want it for and get others to believe in that purpose, even if only temporarily. Later comes the most complicated part: keeping it. Maintaining it requires understanding that human behavior is not so different from the subjects studied in physics or geology. Just as strategic minerals change their value and function depending on context, power also mutates over time, shaped by circumstances and individual ambitions.
In theory, there are proven facts and stable structures. In practice, everything changes. Human virtues and flaws constantly reshape what seemed to be a firm balance. Time moves on, and it’s not that new actions can’t be taken in the years to come; it’s that unforeseen behaviors alter the initial calculation of resistance and cohesion. For years, Morena was the backbone of the Mexican political system, sustained by unquestionable loyalty to its founding leader. That internal discipline allowed it to impose decisions on allies, adversaries, and peripheral actors. The key was always the same: the real impossibility of challenging the univocal voice of the top leadership.
Today, the scenario is different. Former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is, at best, 500 years away from here. He has formally retired from institutional public life and is reconstructing the pre-colonial history of our country and doing historical justice at the tip of a machine, a computer, a dictation, or however the former president of the Republic works. His symbolic influence remains, but the daily exercise of power is something else. Political practice no longer responds to a single will, and it is not, to put it in popular terms, a mess. It is a hell of a mess.
The internal reality of the ruling movement shows signs of natural fragmentation. It is not only a matter of ideological differences, but also of disputes over space, candidacies, resources, and territorial control. This dynamic is not unique to Mexico; it occurs in all political projects that transition from charismatic leadership, where everything was possible and controlled through morning press conferences, to the institutionalization or formalization of power. Time passes, and, surprisingly, there are no reports on, for example, the case of fuel theft; criminal connections; or the recording in which Rear Admiral Fernando Guerrero Alcántar allegedly denounced the former Secretary of the Navy, José Rafael Ojeda, for corruption, bribery, and everything else that supposedly went on under him.
It is also surprising that, in that version—which circulates as a version, not as a sentence—the only justice to which the complainant could be entitled was divine justice, in the form of bullets in Manzanillo. The harshness of that narrative, real or not, explains why so many prefer to remain silent: because in today’s Mexico, even stories that are not proven feel plausible, and that plausibility alone is a symptom. There are too many things, too many episodes, too many shadows. Someday, they will give rise to novels, not science fiction, but more like detective or suspense sagas, and even then, I fear we will not be able to explain what happened fully. Meanwhile, time is running out, and the parties that really call the shots—those that never had anything more than convenient, unlimited loyalty to the Tabasco leader—now hold all the cards.
Faced with this scenario, President Claudia Sheinbaum must exercise effective authority in a system where power is distributed across multiple centers. The question is not only who she will respond with, but how she will consolidate a political leadership that transcends the inertia of the previous leadership. If they touch a single cent, a single multi-member seat, or that practice so healthy for family life, where when one stops being governor, one’s wife takes over so that everything remains in order, the game is over. And in the face of that, the question is inevitable: who will the president answer with?
The questions are multiplying, and the answers are becoming more necessary every day. Will there be electoral reform, or won’t there be? Under what terms? And this is without ignoring the fact that the political balance is more delicate than it seems, since today Morena depends more on its allies in the Labor Party and the Green Party than they would like to admit or accept. Will this reform affect the business of having a political party as a golden inheritance, to maintain the right to vote and to feel, for a few hours, that we are free, democratic, and independent? If not, where does that leave the current political authority? If the others win, what can we expect? If they are the ones with the power, who will be able to replace—after two years—a president who is there but cannot rule?
Time is running out. And in the meantime, like a cruel twist of history, while we dream, hope, and long for the soothing effect of the World Cup, measles, infrastructure defects, and insecurity could at any moment fuel the idea—even if only as a political threat or a means of pressure—that it is “not recommended” for the World Cup to come, or that it should not come as we imagine it. Between the collective dream and political reality, Mexico is at a turning point. Six years seemed enough to consolidate a historic project. Today, the question is whether the remaining time will be enough to sustain it without major fractures.
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