The turbulent days are over for Andrés Manuel López Beltrán. The scandal that triggered his luxury trip in August to Tokyo, Japan, put him in the spotlight of public opinion and then with a low profile, which caused him to suspend his activity as secretary of the Morena Organization – the party founded by his father, former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador – and make his appearances scarce. López Beltrán has emerged from the shadows to return to the political scene and resume the tour that began across the country at the beginning of the year. The goal is to affiliate 10 million people with the ruling party. His return was accompanied by a handful of nuances and symbolisms that presage an incipient bifurcation at the heart of the ruling party. The number two of the political group returned alone, without the accompaniment of the party’s national leader, Luisa María Alcalde, who is also following in the footsteps of the territory.
The pause that López Beltrán made in the internal life of the party was evident. In parallel, Morena’s leadership undertook a damage control campaign that included Morenistas’ fierce defense of the son of their moral leader but not of the president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who explicitly responded: “Power is exercised with humility and simplicity.”
López Beltrán’s publications on his social networks serve as a reflection, with notable leaps in time. The Secretary of the Organization went from publishing consecutive appearances from October last year to July this year, to publishing just four times in the last few months contents: a statement to explain his trip to Japan, a photo of the first Sheinbaum Government Report he witnessed, a second statement to clarify the trial of an amparo to prevent him and two of his brothers from being arrested in the midst of the huachicol tax plot that exposed a corruption network involving members of the Navy. Finally, a photo of the Mexican president on the occasion of her first year in office follows, published five days after that date. And there weren’t any more until recently.
Coahuila was the state that the politician chose to leave in the shadows. “We evaluate the work of our coordinators and strengthen our efforts to achieve our objectives,” we read in the text attached to a series of photographs in which he appears flanked by local leaders on October 17. Culiacán, Sinaloa, another northern state, was the second stop with a difference of 20 days. “There are only a few days left to say goodbye to the year. Let’s make the last effort!” He published a snapshot of himself with the militants.
His last appearance highlighted the distance with Alcalde. The Secretary of the Organization visited La Paz, Baja California, eight days after the leader of Morena had visited the same city and with the same objective, the same promotion of the membership campaign. “We are close to reaching the goal of 10 million, we have already exceeded nine million. We are doing very well”, the mayor told militants in the north-west of the country on Friday 31 October. In less than a week, López Beltrán was present in the same territory, but with a different leadership. “It is clear that, with dedication and unity, we will close out this year with success in every corner of the country,” the publication reads. He also stopped in Tijuana, a city that the leader visited a month ago.
These glimpses of distance have come in turbulent times for the political group which is trailing a series of scandals that have affected its ethical principles: do not lie, do not steal and do not betray. One of the cases is that of Hernán Bermúdez Requena, secretary of Security of the State of Tabasco when Morena’s current coordinator in the Senate, Adán Augusto López, was governor, and was prosecuted for his links to organized crime. Even if the first scratch of this bad period came from the family unit of the founder of Morena. López Beltrán and his trip to Japan. Added to this equation is the premature start of the 2027 midterm elections, promoted by the Mexican president. The political forces have begun to move their pawns and the unit with many names alluded to by President Sheinbaum and the party in power, at the slightest provocation, finds itself on swampy ground.
