The strong protests against Claudia Sheinbaum’s government last Saturday left a rare image in Mexico, which has historically functioned as a containment dam against the regional and global far right. Growing social unrest due to the country’s insecurity, fueled by the murder of the mayor of Uruapan, Carlos Manzo, and frustration with seemingly endemic corruption, opened a small breach in the wall that was quickly exploited by leading exponents of the far right. The Argentinians Eduardo Menoni, Agustín Antonetti and Agustín Laje, the Spaniard Javier Negre and the American Alex Jones lead the list of those now seeking to widen the small gap in a country that is central to their agenda but which resists its penetration.
Mexico is among the 15 largest economies in the world and is the second largest in Latin America, behind only Brazil. It also shares a border of more than 3,000 kilometers with the United States, where the ultra discourse has President Donald Trump as its biggest defender and main interest in its success in its southern neighbor. Everything that happens in the Latin country matters and resonates outside. “Among the remaining left-wing governments on the continent, Mexico is clearly the most important and the most successful. Not even Lula in Brazil has the strength that Sheinbaum has today,” says Lisandro Devoto, a political scientist at UNAM. This makes it a priority target.
Mexico is also the main link between countries and regions, adds Mario Santiago, a far-right expert from the Mora Institute: “Vox and some other actors in Spain translate the debate on the new European right into Latin America, and the first bridge of arrival of this circulation of ideas, texts and characters is Mexico.” “Lately, for obvious reasons, Argentina occupies that place, but has much less projection in the region,” he completes.
The demolition of the Mexican wall is of vital importance for the discourse of the far right in carrying out its crusade and this is noted by the interested parties themselves. “Mexico is a key country for the freedom to dominate Latin America and for the freedom to have an extremely important country on its side,” said hoax spreader Javier Negre, who announced he will “double down” his bet and invest in widely distributed Mexican media to gain presence in the territory. Both he and the rest of the agitators sought to amplify images that, taken out of context, illustrate a country where the government is trying to stay afloat amid social protest. “To the extent that you get a photograph, a close-up of someone injured, the narrative of chaos begins, which is what they tried to build,” says Mario Santiago.
These types of strategies, successfully implemented in other countries, never end up having an effect in Mexico. “It seems to me that they are still in a moment of experimentation. To launch an image and another, try a symbol, try another, to see which ones really come together”, considers the specialist. “For years they have been trying, they put in money, they put in effort, they put in resources and they don’t get it”, also underlines Ernesto Bohoslavsky, author of the book Minimal history of the Latin American right, who considers Mexico proof of the “irreducibly national character of politics”. “There is the risk of thinking that international actors have a lot of weight when it comes to making politics in each country, and perhaps they have more weight in smaller countries, but in a country like Mexico it is more difficult for external actors to be involved,” fumes the expert.
The “international conspiracy” approach that the Government tries to outline is also a bit “cheating” for Mario Santiago, since other local factors come into play to which the Executive must pay attention without minimizing them. The North American country has its own fertile soil that makes it susceptible to these discourses that permeate little by little. Claudia Sheinbaum’s government enjoys extraordinary popularity ratings, but not her party, Morena, which loses support in every new poll, rapidly widening the gap to the president.
The party in power is perceived by some sectors of society as the new face of corruption in a country where this phenomenon has remained unpunished over the last century thanks to other parties. The recent scandals committed by some of its members, such as the senator and former governor of Tabasco, Adán Augusto López, also appear at a time of profound institutional change in the country, of which judicial reform is the main exponent. “There is a process of concentration of power, of elimination of counterweights, in a more exhausted party system, where the opposition has been greatly weakened,” summarizes Devoto.
In this context, local figures emerge who try to capitalize on the discontent of those who do not feel part of the vast Morenoist majority. Businessman Ricardo Salinas Pliego, who argues with the government every day and who opposes it most fiercely, was the main spokesperson for these unrest, experts agree. It is no coincidence that he is outside the political sphere, which is deeply discredited, even if the tycoon occasionally jokes with the definitive step of entry. Specialists see in him the possible replacement of an Eduardo Verástegui who never took off and whose political capital was pulverized after the dispute with the ultra-Argentine president Javier Milei, which animated the celebration of CPAC, the main meeting forum of the conservatives. “It is likely that thanks to Salinas Pliego the congress will be organized again next year in Mexico,” says Mario Santiago, who does not rule out the billionaire becoming the next leader of a unity movement. The Mexican opposition leader himself, the conservative Jorge Romero, expressed it clearly in an interview with EL PAÍS this weekend: “If he is encouraged, he advances and we see that he grows in spirit, obviously we don’t rule him out.”
Mexico’s path in the last century, marked by the centuries-old tradition and the hegemony of one party, the PRI, which includes all political tendencies, has vaccinated the country against the possible formation of far-right parties, which has been rejected several times. “Those who today claim the extreme right or that freedom enjoyed only by the privileged, do not know the history of Mexico and our people,” the president said in her speech this Thursday on the occasion of the 115th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution.
Nothing yet indicates that a movement can gain strength quickly enough to constitute a real opposition to the president’s push. No country, however, enjoys absolute long-term protection in a context where borders are increasingly permeable to what happens around them. “The far right has already penetrated, on a smaller scale, and beyond what happened this weekend,” says Mario Santiago. Its susceptible audience, adds the expert, is the same as in many other places: “Under 18s, young people who enter the world of work and resent it, men who, for different reasons, feel offended by what they identify as gender ideology and, of course, the middle and upper classes and the economic elite who feel offended for different reasons after the triumph of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.”
