Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
President Lázaro Cárdenas expelled the former President Plutarco Elías Calles from the country on April 10, 1936, 16 months and a few days after taking office. The former president had become an obstacle to the government project that Cárdenas wanted to promote. This historic event taught future generations a lesson: if the federal executive branch does not fully exercise its power, then it will not govern the country.
Today, Andrés Manuel López Obrador seeks to control Sheinbaum’s presidency, whether through legislators, members of the federal cabinet, some governors, and even the armed forces. This poses an existential challenge for President Claudia Sheinbaum. Among other things, because she is a woman. Submitting to the dominance of the male who controls the Morena party will discredit the effective role of women in politics. In the political arena, it means that her role as president is to follow the manual and ideological roadmap that AMLO wrote some time ago. No possible variations to the script are allowed.
Now, 14 months after assuming the presidency, the president faces the same challenge Cárdenas faced, and on almost the same timeline. With midterm elections on the horizon, political tension is mounting within Morena. Cárdenas acted as a military man; Sheinbaum will have to act as a politician.
The window of opportunity to decide whether to remain hostage to the maximato or free herself from that threat is rapidly closing. The 2027 elections are just around the corner. The debate over who will dictate Morena’s lists has already begun: will it be AMLO or the president? Electoral reform only makes sense for the president if she endorses the lists. If it is not her, there is no point in carrying out this exercise, as it involves many political costs.
Mexico’s internal conditions are those of a contained crisis that could explode at any moment under any pretext. Criminal violence continues unabated and uncontrolled, the signs of recession in the economy are showing their danger and depth, social discontent is volcanic, and the president has little control over her own political ranks. A bureaucratically strong but politically weak presidency is a reality that portends negative situations for Mexico in the short term.
For the United States, Mexico is a quasi-failed state due to the close relationship between politicians and drug traffickers. And Cuba, its other neighbor, is a state in rapid decline. Washington views both of its southern neighbors as national security threats. It seeks to “bring order” to the entire Caribbean Basin, turning it into a secure zone from its national security perspective. To achieve its goal, it considers that the “decoupling” of Mexican politics and politicians from drug trafficking is at the heart of the bilateral conflict. This is how Trump has expressed it. The statement by a Morena spokesperson defending drug trafficking “as an important generator of jobs in Mexico” simply reinforced the international perception of the functional alliance between politics and organized crime.
In this context, it is incomprehensible that the president would challenge Washington with massive shipments of gasoline to Cuba. Considering Mexico’s serious internal problems, including the president’s political weakness, her action seems reckless. Unless what she is seeking is to provoke the United States into taking extractive actions in Mexico, taking away Morena politicians who are a hindrance to her in her quest to exercise presidential power without constraints.
Who would she seek to eliminate from her political map to define Morena’s candidates in 2027 and, in addition, clear the way to exercise presidential power to the fullest? López Obrador and his family? Adán and his associates? Uncomfortable governors? Monreal and his family? Who else is on the U.S. prosecutors’ lists?
If this hypothesis is true, it is obviously a risky and potentially destabilizing gamble. But it may be the only route she has to free herself from the political control that is suffocating her, given her internal political weakness. Thus, she can be indignant with Washington and defend “sovereignty,” but she can also begin to breathe more easily in the National Palace. She will dictate her lists of candidates for 2027 and continue to govern through agreements with the opposition after the electoral process.
The window of opportunity is closing. The time to decide is running out.
@rpascoep
Further Reading: