Stunned and confused, a legion of right-wing journalists and commentators in Mexico are struggling to understand the results of the June 2 election. The left-wing candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum, with 35 million votes, doubled the score of the right-wing coalition. Voters turned their backs on this coalition, supported by a group of intellectuals very influential in public opinion, which presented itself as the savior of democracy. However, voters preferred the ruling party despite its security flaws, its contradictions on the environment and its limits in foreign policy. It should be noted that the right-wing coalition seems to ignore class inequalities, while poverty has fallen by five million people in recent years.
How to interpret the elections in Mexico? It is necessary to analyze them from the point of view of democratic and societal evolution, otherwise the interpretation of the results risks being superficial. Here are some observations beyond the results of the ballot boxes.
The first observation is the accession of a woman to the presidency, Claudia Sheinbaum, with 59.3% of the votes. This event is part of a broader movement, that of increased representation of women in politics. Electoral strategies allowed Congress to approach gender parity. As of 2021, the percentage of women MPs in Mexico is 49.2% (and 50.8% in the Senate), putting the country ahead globally. For comparison, the average in the Nordic countries is 40%. In the region, Brazil has 17.7% women parliamentarians (Brasil by Fato2022) and Colombia, 28.8% (compared to 19% previously, El País, 2022). In the House of Commons in Canada, there are 30.6% women (Statistics Canada, 2023).
A second observation shows a country with secular institutions. While in other countries in the region religious images are present in government offices, in Mexico the offices remain neutral, the result of a republican tradition stemming from the Reforma movement in 1857-1860, which established a secular country. The government’s position was so radical that it was not until 1992 that the country re-established diplomatic relations with the Vatican.
In this context, there was no questioning of the fact that the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), is a Presbyterian Protestant and that the president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum, is Jewish. As mentality evolved, the right-wing coalition candidate, Xóchitl Gálvez, appealed to the Christian faith, but this did not resonate with the electorate. She only had 27.9% of the votes, and yet the population is predominantly Catholic. This is significant in a world where leaders like Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Narendra Modi in India, and even Putin support religious fundamentalisms.
Certainly, there are still expressions of anti-Semitism, which I myself denounced in 2012. It is important to preserve a political class without religious and racial fundamentalism, in a context where the country welcomes significant migratory flows from Haiti, Latin America and even the United States.
The third observation is the extreme polarization of the campaign, which ended up harming the democratic debate that the country badly needs. It is said that this is due to the brawling tone of President AMLO, but the journalist Joaquín López-Dóriga also attributes this responsibility to the right disguised as civil society, which has radicalized the debates. However, this polarization is also and above all the expression of a strongly divided society, weighed down by great and old inequalities.
Alexander von Humboldt said at the beginning of the 19th centurye century that Mexico was the country of inequality. Unfortunately, part of this structural situation persists today. The interests of groups and parties, exacerbated by a climate of confrontation, gave rise to numerous incidents during the electoral campaign.
The best known observation is that of violence, which has increased especially in certain regions. But this violence has several faces and uses: certain media sell it and trivialize it, and it has become a way of differentiating the North from the South. Rather, we must understand the problem and its causes, in particular a dysfunctional justice system. During the election campaign, we witnessed mutual and childish accusations from political parties on security and environment issues, among others. However, to resolve these problems, we must build consensual public policies, because to date, all parties, in turn, have failed to build these policies.
The new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, as well as the entire political class have the responsibility to weave these policies together. It is particularly necessary to establish an independent justice and public security system that guarantees the safety of citizens. To undertake this task, we must overcome the prevailing polarization and partisanship.