Claudia Luna Palencia
Journalist
These elections are special: for the first time in the history of Mexican democracy, after a little more than two centuries, there will be a woman at the head of the government. Both candidates are also capable, mature, professionally well-prepared women with a long career in politics.
However, both of them represent a very different Mexico. Claudia Sheinbaum, the favourite of the still populist president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has also been one of the founders of the Morena party, the same party that backed López Obrador as its candidate.
Sheinbaum is a 61-year-old politician, academic and scientist, and among her many political posts is that of head of government of Mexico City, between 5 December 2018 and 16 June 2023.
López Obrador sees many qualities in this physics graduate who has a doctorate in environmental engineering; she is a former head of Mexico City’s Ministry of the Environment.
She knows Mexico City well, perhaps one of the most complicated cities to govern, not only because of its demographics: 22,505,315 inhabitants, but also because of the accumulation of problems ranging from insecurity, marginalisation, inequality, wide belts of misery to air pollution and now a lack of water.
Sheinbaum is Morena’s candidate for the Presidency of Mexico and faces Xóchitl Gálvez who has stood up to her with her acid speeches, insisting, time and again, that Sheinbaum and López Obrador are the same thing. Or, rather, the same discourse, and they are the expression of the most rancid populism. One that has surpassed the most demagogic years of when the PRI established what Mario Vargas Llosa came to call “the perfect dictatorship”.
Xóchitl Gálvez is a politician, engineer and businesswoman. She is also 61 years old and recently left her seat in the Senate for the right-wing National Action Party (PAN). Gálvez is also as experienced as Sheinbaum in getting to know deep Mexico, both have worked it street by street and neighbourhood by neighbourhood.
Gálvez served as national commissioner for the Development of Indigenous Peoples between 2000 and 2006, and is well loved among indigenous peoples and communities. For decades, López Obrador worked politically to make his presence known throughout Aztec geography so that all indigenous communities would know him.
While Gálvez is close to former president Vicente Fox and former president Felipe Calderón, who has taken refuge in Madrid, Sheinbaum is practically López Obrador’s right-hand man and is also the bishop so that the president can retire to his ranch La Chingada to write his memoirs without any fear of being investigated by the courts, neither he, his wife, his children or any of his siblings.
Sheinbaum is not going to get him into the mire of corruption investigations. He is not a man who is going to go into exile outside Mexico; his greatest aspiration now is to retire to his ranch and live out his last days in peace and very occasionally continue to give his opinion, give advice and say how things should be done here, there and everywhere.
For her part, Gálvez is the antipode of populist “lopezobradorsista” thinking. As the candidate of Fuerza y Corazón por México (a coalition formed by the PAN, the PRI, the Partido de la Revolución Democrática and others), she represents an impossible union of parties of the right, centre and centre-left. In practice, Gálvez represents all those who do not want López Obrador, nor his candidate Sheinbaum; she represents all those who want to break with the populist mosaic, its bureaucratic cream and the spiral of subsidies that generate an idle society. In the midst of this scenario, of everyone against López Obrador and of breaking with continuity, the elections on 2 June will also have the largest voter register in its history: 100.04 million Mexicans registered and a nominal list of 97.53 million people ready to vote.
Mobilisation is also buoyant. No one is talking about abstaining or staying at home; there is talk of a vote for change and a vote for punishment, and also a vote to stop the caste from returning to power or a vote against the corrupt.
López Obrador has wanted to make his six-year term the anti-corruption mantra, although investigations have been pointing the finger at his sons or his brothers in unclear business dealings and even benefiting from being the son of or the brother of.
Who is going to win the elections? There are many polls. Some polls give a very narrow victory for Sheinbaum; others give that dreamed-of (but also very narrow) victory to Gálvez. None rule out post-election problems if both are declared winners on election night and neither concedes.
What is certain is that anything can happen in this rough-and-tumble Mexico: on 2 June, not only the presidency is up for election, but also 128 seats in the Senate; 500 seats in the Congress of Deputies; eight governorships; one head of government in Mexico City; as well as 31 local congresses; 1,580 town councils; 16 mayoralties and 24 municipal councils. The campaign has been stained with blood, with candidates assassinated and multiple threats.
If when López Obrador entered the presidency in 2018 the problem of drug trafficking and insecurity against citizens was advancing like a cancer, these last six years have ended up phagocytising the country: according to data from the National Search Commission there are 114,926 missing persons. The real figures could be three times higher.
The Mexico that either Sheinbaum or Gálvez will govern is controlled by the various drug gangs that have been creating their fiefdoms of power and their mini-armies equipped with powerful weapons to fight toe-to-toe against the Mexican Army itself, which is partly destined to destroy synthetic drug plantations and laboratories.
In this time of women, the challenges are not only internal. In six years of presidency, López Obrador’s trips abroad have been few and far between, and he has practically absented himself from major forums and ignored the European Union (EU). He travelled to the United States four times and went to San Francisco for the APEC Summit in 2023.
His trips have been few and far between. The international vacuum that Mexico has been leaving with this policy of ostracism (pending only trade relations with the United States and Canada) has been filled by Brazil, which has acquired enormous international prominence as the representative of Latin American interests.
It is not known whether Sheinbaum will follow the same pattern with a low profile in international relations; what is clear is that Gálvez intends to recover the Aztec country’s role as a regional protagonist.
Mexico has already been governed by PRI, PAN and now Morenistas with López Obrador, who claims left and right that he will not interfere in the process. Although he does not disguise his open support for Claudia Sheinbaum.
Xóchitl Gálvez has many things working against her to win: first, the very system created by AMLO, with an extensive clientelist network of young and old people; many subsidies go to generations that literally do not give any economic blow.
Second, the northern neighbour is already distracted by its own elections, which will be equally traumatic. Both countries face, in varying degrees of impact and magnitude, a deep internal polarisation of their respective societies. Both Republicans and Democrats are well aware that Mexico has lost control to the growing power of drug trafficking and criminal organisations, many of which even drive migration flows. This means that the White House does not expect, whoever governs Mexico after 2024, to turn the tide in the fight against organised crime.
I dare say that the United States has lost interest in the political fate of its southern neighbour years ago (I do not mean to say that it does not mind having an autocracy as its main trading partner).
It is true that Gálvez uses a flowery language that is closer to the people, she is talkative, open, approachable and wears typical Mexican dress; however, this does not mean that she is accepted in all social spheres in a country that is still classist. And that should not be lost sight of either.
On the other hand, López Obrador (AMLO) has a very good idea of the voter’s profile and is betting on the deep Mexico, the same one that he intends to put in Sheinbaum’s hands electorally. For certain, the only thing that is certain is that Mexico will soon experience elections that will leave a woman in presidential power… unless there is an attack.
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