Claudia Sheinbaum is betting her rest on the consolidation of the model started in 2018. The president of Mexico raises his tone and averts any hesitation in Morena’s ranks. The blows due to the crisis after the assassination of the mayor of Uruapan are the opportunity in the National Palace to unite the movement and define the next opponent. A new all-or-nothing Obrador movement is on the way, the first in form for AMLO’s heir.
The march on Saturday 15 November, which brought together contingents of different origins in a gelatinous manner and whose culmination of violence must be analyzed separately, raised the alarm in the regime. It is Sheinbaum’s first face to face with those who challenge the government from the street, Morenoist territory par excellence. Before and after the demonstration, the president showed her teeth. You won’t find someone weak in her, was the message.
In the 2024 presidential elections, Sheinbaum had the merit of winning the most important office in the Republic and, at the same time, she was given the mandate of a political force that believes that Mexico’s entire democratic system must change at its roots. The enormous number of votes received by the candidate, practically 60% of the votes, gave her a double-edged strength. He governs the country and he governs the factory.
Viewed in retrospect, the first year of Claudia’s six-year tenure was spent easing the bureaucratic strains of what her predecessor had begun to install. On the one hand, time and effort to correct the six-point deficit in domestic product, the fat cows sacrificed by López Obrador in the electoral binge; and, on the other, days dedicated to correcting health problems, establishing a new judicial system, developing laws both for the energy sector and for concentrating more power, such as the one that has weakened the protection of citizens. He supported, in short, the administration of the house.
The president’s reprieve occurred on weekends; touring the country to get in touch with the popular roots of the movement and also monitor firsthand the progress of the work and policies. Catharsis and vigilance. Emotion and a careful eye on what your collaborators do or don’t do. First-hand information to return to the desk for modification or redirection. The people’s vitamin P, fundamental for the media battle that awaits you every Monday in the capital.
A whole year more or less like this. A Treasury minister who no longer wanted to be there for a long time has left, he has left the Financial Intelligence Unit to apparatchik. Change like someone who cuddles bonsai. Movements to expand your margin, settle your style. Claudia Sheinbaum, however, was experiencing her own transformation at the same time. Beyond the technical spirit, a spirit that can also be seen in the controversial results of the change in the police model, the president has introjected the awareness of the time of the rude tone.
For those who followed his work in the morning conferences, it is not surprising that the possibility – if there ever was one – of a certain moderation, self-containment or even presidential openness towards those who thought differently is weakening. The thread of Sheinbaum’s speech has tightened, high-sounding terms have taken up space and, sooner or later, the “government of technicians” has put on the mask of the rude Jesús Ramírez Cuéllar: Andrés Manuel’s spokesperson now gives interviews in the name of Claudia Sheinbaum.
There is no transmutation of the president here. The items on display are not foreigners. His radicalization is temporary, but not imposed. It is because he reads that a hardening is necessary if the order is to be carried out. The second-year Sheinbaum will be more demanding within the government, less tolerant outside the movement and more pragmatic than her colleagues. She is responsible for her team’s results – whether two or three are truly presentable is another question – but the result of the Uruapan crisis is that she fully takes on the defense of the movement. He must be the shepherd of the whole tribe, without distinction. Or, to put it with biblical eyes, his sacrificial work is above all for the lost sheep.
Forced parenthesis: Claudia’s shift towards an even more partisan, conflictual and intransigent role cancels what she resisted compared to the alternation model (1997-2018). From the opposition, from the academy or from the press, the costs in terms of good governance of the crazy vision that rewards loyalty and not efficiency can be outlined; It can be shown that the people pay the cost of the stupidity of supporting the inexperienced and incapable; the gross theft and even the Nordic petulance of many can be shown. But he won’t take a step back.
Given the above, and precisely to immediately understand the implications of the tone that the president has already activated, it is after the crisis due to the murder of Mayor Carlos Manzo on November 1st that Sheinbaum clearly expressed the components of what will be “the personal style of government” (a concept chiseled by Daniel Cosío Villegas to glimpse the impact of a single character in a country).
In the three weeks that have passed since the violent death of the charismatic Manzo, Sheinbaum has given promising, if initial, results, also with regard to the authorship of one of the most heartfelt executions in various strata of Mexican society in a long time, who took on, without grimaces or tremors in his voice, the first-person defense of the presidential figure, and with similar vehemence of the entire Obradorism, of the movement without exceptions.
Until further notice, that correlation will be the trend. Whether or not he will soon become the undisputed leader of the Obrador movement is another question. It takes on its rightful role. He must take the tribe to the next stage. And traumatic events such as the assassination of a popular mayor, which could mean at the same time a failure of his government, given that Manzo had asked for help, and a stain on his movement due to suspicions about the involvements – to call them superficially – of the morenistas of Michoacán, will make him attack the opposition and critics more harshly.
The strategy involves defining the opponent in a new category. Enter the scene, says Sheinbaum, the far right. He incites Obadorism by underlining that now the enemies are – in addition to the PRI and the PAN, the traditional parties of the past which years ago, in the desire to distort it, he equaled them by calling them PRIAN -, those of the far right.
It’s not that in Mexico there aren’t those who fight for and against the worst of the right. It is very useful that Morena waves progressive flags to warn that the left is retreating in South America. That in Argentina and Bolivia the terrible results of those close to Morena took their side to lose the electorate is something the Obrador movement will never recognize. After all, it doesn’t matter: it is better to denounce the reaction conspiracy to reawaken the antibodies of Mexican progressivism as much as possible.
And if for this reason the President herself had to be put on the ballot to bring the icing on the cake, so be it. So, Sheinbaum is pushing legal reform to coincide with the recall, originally scheduled for the fourth year of her six-year term, with the 2027 midterm elections. Does this pose any risks for you? That his defeat could benefit Monreal or Adán Augusto? She assumes so.
When Claudia Sheinbaum loudly argues throughout the week that ends that we must not give in to her, and points the finger at the far right as the new enemy to be defeated, she assumes that in the results of her government, after the new laws and reorganizations of the first year, she will have her trump card in the revocation; It also starts from the assumption that the distance with colleagues in Congress can no longer exist, nor with the party: the president will lead the defense of all those who many already considered indefensible.
For the pastor of the new movement the most important thing, the task that he will carry out with all his zeal from the highest offices, will be to hand over the baton in five years without even those who persist in losing themselves in corruption being lost along the way. That flock was the one he received with the baton of command, and he will do everything to hand it over entirely to his successor.
