Andrés Manuel López Obrador is not on the ballot in Mexico's presidential election on Sunday. But it might as well be.
The vote is widely seen as a referendum on the Popular but polarizing president known for lifting millions of Mexicans out of poverty while weakening some of the country's key institutions, emboldening the military and failing to stop an epidemic of brutal gang violence.
Claudia Sheinbaum, The López Obrador protégé and former mayor of Mexico City is a heavy favorite to win the election, largely because she has promised to advance his signature projects, including social assistance programs and efforts to reform the judiciary.
Candidate Claudia Sheinbaum arrives at a campaign rally this week in Mexico City, where she served as mayor.
(Eduardo Verdugo/Associated Press)
Meanwhile, his main opponent, Xóchitl Gálvez, A businessman and former senator who represents an opposition coalition, he has tried to tap into resentment among the middle and upper classes against the current president, widely known by his initials, AMLO.
“This is about AMLO,” said Lila Abed, acting director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington. “I think that many people who will vote for [Sheinbaum] They will mentally vote for him.”
If Sheinbaum truly emerges victorious, Abed said, one question will rise above all others: “What role, if any, will AMLO play in the next six years? Will he actively participate in the decisions she makes as president?
Sheinbaum has dismissed suggestions that López Obrador could control his presidency behind the scenes as misogynistic.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador appears at a campaign event with Sheinbaum, his protégé and great favorite to succeed him.
(Fernando Llano/Associated Press)
In some ways, the heated debates about López Obrador's record and legacy have overshadowed a more compelling story: the near certainty that the next president will be a woman.
It would be a novelty in Mexico, a traditionally conservative country known for sexism and high rates of violence against women. Women have made significant strides in politics here since a 2019 constitutional reform established quotas requiring gender parity in all elected positions at the federal, state and municipal levels. They now represent about half of Congress.
Sunday's elections are the largest in Mexican history. In addition to a new president, voters will elect 128 senators, 500 congressional deputies, eight governors and the mayor of Mexico City, in addition to thousands of local officials. Mexican presidents serve a single six-year term.
Beyond breaking down gender barriers, the election has important political implications for both Mexico and the United States.
The two nations share a sometimes turbulent partnership on security issues such as immigration, organized crime and drug trafficking, all while trade between them approaches $1 trillion a year.
López Obrador has mainly cooperated with Washington on key issues, even as he regularly attacks its policies and even American culture, denouncing “abusive meddling” and what he considers The moral decline of the United States. Sheinbaum and Gálvez, for their part, have committed to maintaining close ties with the United States.
“The two countries are so economically integrated that they both know that disrupting them would have very profound consequences,” said Tony Payán, director of the Center on the United States and Mexico at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. “No one wants that to happen.”
The future of relations between the United States and Mexico may depend less on who wins the elections in Mexico than on the outcome of the US presidential race in November.
Former President Trump, who has criticized immigrants and free trade, once threatened to impose tariffs on Mexican imports if the country did not do more to prevent migrants from reaching the U.S. border. López Obrador quickly agreed, even as critics accused him of doing Washington's “dirty work.”
In recent months, Mexico has sent troops to push migrants back from border fences, kick them off northbound freight trains and return them to southern Mexico, often to try again.
But with the 2,000-mile border a major political issue in the United States, experts say Mexico's new president will continue to feel intense pressure from Washington to crack down on immigrants.
Neither Sheinbaum nor Gálvez have provided much information about how they might approach the issue.
Presidential candidate Xóchitl Gálvez holds a rally this week in Los Reyes la Paz, on the outskirts of Mexico City, ahead of Sunday's elections.
(Fernando Llano/Associated Press)
The biggest political challenge for the next Mexican president is how to stop rampant cartel and gang violence. Polls indicated that security is the main concern of voters in Mexico.
While murders have decreased slightly in recent years, Mexico still has one of the highest homicide rates in the world. It is five times larger than that of the United States.
And those figures do not include the “missing” – mostly victims of gang violence, whose ranks have ballooned to more than 100,000 during López Obrador's presidency.
A complex mosaic of criminal groups controls much of Mexico, with many local governments in the pocket of organized crime.
“Cartels need local political allies to operate,” said Víctor Clark Alfaro, a veteran human rights defender in the border city of Tijuana. “There is widespread corruption in local government.”
Mexico's criminal justice system is largely broken. The vast majority of crimes are never solved.
López Obrador handed over many security tasks to the military, an admission that the police and civilian justice system were unable to handle the crisis. But experts say soldiers are not well equipped to take on civilian law enforcement.
The national election campaign only dramatized the extent of the criminal reach in Mexico. At least 31 candidates were killed, and attacks on political figures reached record levels.
“Political stability and the future progress of the country depend on the ability to confront and overcome this wave of political violence,” wrote journalist Yuriria Sierra in the Mexican newspaper Excélsior.
In addition to feeling domestic pressure to reduce violence, Mexico's next president is also likely to face intensified demands from Washington to curb the cartels' drug smuggling operations, especially trafficking in fentanyl, the synthetic opioid blamed for dozens of thousands of deaths in the United States. one year.
U.S. lawmakers have expressed growing frustration over what they see as an inadequate response from the López Obrador administration, which has also limited U.S. drug trafficking agents' access to Mexico.
“Mutual trust between the United States and Mexico has deteriorated in recent years,” said the Wilson Center's Abed. “Security cooperation has deteriorated. “There will have to be a rebuilding of mutual trust.”
Vowing to reduce violence, Sheinbaum has talked about policies such as expanding police and National Guard training, improving law enforcement's intelligence-gathering capabilities and providing educational opportunities to young people to deter them from joining organized crime.
“Where should our children be: on the street or in school?” Sheinbaum asked his supporters in his campaign closing speech Wednesday in Mexico City's historic Zócalo.
It sounded a lot like López Obrador's “Hugs, Not Bullets” strategy: attacking the root causes of crime instead of trying to take down cartel bosses.
Gálvez, the opposition presidential candidate, has promised “no more hugs” for criminals. But she has also provided few details to support her reassuring vows to make the violence go away.
Gálvez greets his followers in Huixquilucan, Mexico, in April.
(Marco Ugarte / Associated Press)
“I propose to return peace and tranquility to their families,” Gálvez told a crowd at his campaign closing event in the northern city of Monterrey.
The near-daily accounts of murder and mayhem clash with an alternative national vision: Mexico as a growing hub for international companies eager to move operations from Asia or Europe to be closer to U.S. markets, a phenomenon known as nearshoring.
“Right now, Mexico has a huge opportunity on its hands with the nearshoring movement, with its growing place as a trading center in the global economy,” said Falko Ernst, senior analyst at International Crisis Group, a nonprofit research group. .
But he said its full potential may not be realized “if ways are not found to contain Mexico's slide into violent chaos.”
Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.
