Claudia Sheinbaum’s epic electoral victory would not have been possible without AMLO’s enduring — indeed, ripening — popularity. The question is: what will she do with her newfound power after the hand over on Oct. 1?
The word “historic” tends to slip too easily into newspaper headlines in post election analysis, but in the case of Mexico’s elections this past weekend, history was most definitely made — on a number of fronts. For the first time in over 200 years of (relative) national independence, Mexico has its first female president. As the Washington Post reported with time-honoured sensitivity, “Mexico is famous for its macho culture,” yet it “has just elected its first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, in what was essentially a race between two women engineers.”
The Post contrasts this landmark achievement in Mexico with the “two-man contest” about to take place in the US between Biden and Trump, while predictably ignoring Robert Kennedy Junior’s independent candidacy in the presidential race. It correctly points out that Mexico is “eclipsing its northern neighbour on gender parity in governance”, and not just in the highest office: “women hold half the seats in Mexico’s legislature — roughly double the percentage in the U.S. Congress” — and there is a larger share of female governors than in the US.
Electoral Bloodbath
The elections were historic for another reason: the sheer scale of the bloodbath. It was a bloodbath both literally and electorally. This year’s election season was the deadliest in Mexico’s modern history, with a total of 37 candidates assassinated over the course of the campaign. Hundreds of others pulled out of the race in Chiapas and Michoacan, two of the deadliest states. The explosion of violence was a reminder that security remains one of the most important issues facing Mexican society — and one which Sheinbaum will have to grapple with from day one of her administration.
According to projections made by the National Electoral Institute, or INE, the 61-year-old former Mexico City mayor garnered around 58-60% of votes. That is around 30 percentage points more than her conservative rival, Xóchitl Gálvez, and some 50 percentage points ahead of the only man in the race, centrist candidate Jorge Alvarez Maynez. It is also six percentage points more than Mexico’s outgoing President Andres Manuel López Obrador’s vote haul in 2018 (53.2%) and according to El País, the highest vote count of any presidential candidate in recent history.
Support for Mexico’s traditional parties, the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which in Gálvez fielded a unified candidate who was uniquely unqualified to govern, once again crumbled, both at the national and state level. Sheinbaum’s ruling MORENA party also benefited from a mass exodus into its ranks of PRI governors, senators and representatives, some, unfortunately, with long histories of corruption.
Sheinbaum’s crushing victory would not have been possible without López Obrador’s enduring — indeed, ripening — popularity. As the US pollster Gallup reported just days before the election, López Obrador (aka AMLO) is ending his six-year term with record high approval ratings of 80%, making him one of the world’s most popular national leaders. It puts to shame his presidential counterparts in North America. After less than four years in office, Joe Biden is the least popular US president in 75 years, according to Newsweek, while Trudeau’s approval ratings consistently hover at or below 40%.
In 2023, confidence in the national government was twice as high in Mexico as it was in the U.S. (30%). What’s more, public approval of, and confidence in, the government actually grew over time, as opposed to steadily or rapidly declining. When was the last time that happened in your country?
As millions in Mexico head to the polls on Sunday to choose President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s successor, he ends his term with record high approval ratings (80%).
This rating makes him one of the most well-liked leaders in the world.
When Obrador came to power in December… pic.twitter.com/An5t3D9zGf
— Gallup (@Gallup) May 30, 2024
First Jewish President
Sheinbaum is not just Mexico’s first female president; she is also its first Jewish president — no mean feat in a country with one of the largest Catholic populations and whose Jewish community represents just 0.03% of the populace. A daughter of a Sephardic mother and an Ashkenazi father who were both active in left-wing movements in the 60’s, Sheinbaum is not a practising Jew. During the campaign she described herself as “non-religious.”
Like her parents, Sheinbaum’s background was in academia before entering politics in the late ’90s. Per Wikipedia:
“[She] studied physics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where she earned an undergraduate degree in 1989. She earned a master’s degree in 1994 and a Ph.D. in 1995 in energy engineering…
In 1995, she joined the faculty at the Institute of Engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She was a researcher at the Institute of Engineering and is a member of both the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores and the Mexican Academy of Sciences. In 1999, she received the prize for best UNAM young researcher in engineering and technological innovation…
In 2007, she joined the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) at the United Nations in the field of energy and industry, as a contributing writer on the topic “Mitigation of Climate Change” for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.
A Sheinbaum presidency is unlikely to result in a substantial shift in Mexico’s stance toward Isreal and Palestine. The North American nation has maintained ties with both Israel and Palestine for decades and has consistently held a fairly neutral position on the Middle Eastern conflict regardless of the ruling political party.
“If we take sides we would not help to bring about what should matter most to all of us: that the war stops, that there are no more deaths, dead, murdered in Gaza,” said AMLO last week. “That is why we have acted very cautiously.”
AMLO has repeatedly condemned the violence in Gaza and called for a ceasefire, though he has so far refused to call Israel’s onslaught of the enclave as “genocide”. But unlike many of his peers in Latin America, his government does not recognise Palestine as a state, though it did reclassify the Palestinian Authority’s diplomatic mission in Mexico City last year from special delegation to embassy. Last week, just days before the election, it requested to join the genocide case filed by South Africa against Israel.
Sheinbaum, like AMLO, has condemned Israel’s systematic attacks against civilians. She has also called for a cease-fire and reiterated her support for a two-state solution. During Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip in 2009, she wrote a letter to the Mexican daily La Jornada condemning what she described as “the murder of Palestinians”:
My maternal grandparents came to Mexico fleeing Nazi persecution. They were saved by a miracle. Many of my relatives from that generation were exterminated in the concentration camps. Both families decided to make Mexico their homeland. I was raised as a Mexican. Loving its history and its people. I am Mexican and that is why I fight for my country. I cannot and do not want to deny my history; to do so would be, as León Gieco says, to deny the soul of life. But I am also a citizen of the world, because of my history and because that is how I think it should be…
Therefore, because of my Jewish origin, because of my love for Mexico and because I feel like a citizen of the world, I share with millions the desire for justice, equality, fraternity and peace, and therefore, I can only see with horror the images of the State bombings… No reason justifies the murder of Palestinian civilians… Nothing, nothing, nothing, can justify the murder of a child. For this reason, I join the cry of millions around the world who are calling for a ceasefire and the immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestinian territory.
“Total Power”
Following these elections, Sheinbaum’s ruling MORENA party and its coalition partners will have sizeable majorities in both of Mexico’s legislative houses and possibly even “super majorities” — i.e. more than two-thirds of the seats. This, as the Atlantic Council notes, “allows for constitutional changes which could not be obtained thus far by the López Obrador administration.” The MORENA coalition also won at least six of the eight gubernatorial seats up for grabs, as well as Mexico City’s all-important mayoral race. As a result, it will control at least 23 of Mexico’s 32 states. From Jacobin‘s Kurt Hackbarth:
According to [INE’s] conteo rápido, or fast count, the landslide was expected to carry over into Congress as well, with MORENA and its allies winning up to 380 of 500 seats in the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, and up to 88 of 128 seats in the Senate. This would put the center-left coalition within range of its ambitious goal of achieving a qualified majority of two-thirds, which would allow it to pass constitutional reforms on its own (together with the state legislatures it controls). And not only did MORENA win the all-important mayorship of Mexico City with candidate Clara Brugada, the MORENA coalition is also set to pick up at least six of the eight governor’s races up for grabs…
In 2018, the conservative parties Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and National Action Party (PAN) ran separately; this year, they ran in coalition. But instead of adding in numbers, the coalition wound up subtracting.
The front page of the news magazine, Proceso, sums it up nicely: “Total Power”. Of course, as Lord Acton once warned, too much power can be a dangerous thing, even for a political project that commands the widespread support of the public. There is a concern, not only among MORENA’s opponents, that without any meaningful counterweights or balances, the party could end up taking greater control of the federal system and even recreating the one-party system that governed the country for roughly 70 years.
A History of Outside Meddling
That said, Mexico’s government will always face opposition and interference from beyond its borders. In fact, MORENA’s electoral triumph has occurred despite a coordinated international campaign between the US Drug Enforcement Agency, Western think tanks and media to paint AMLO and MORENA as being in league with Mexico’s drug cartels. During the presidential debates, the conservative candidate, Xóchitl Galvez, repeatedly called Sheinbaum a “narco candidate,” to no avail.
As I noted in February, the accusations were unsubstantiated and their main source was a DEA informant who had earned a reputation for fabricating testimonies. The “exposé,” published simultaneously by two US publications and a German broadcaster, came just eight months after the Mexican government locked horns with the DEA over revelations that the agency had run a covert, 18-month incursion into Mexican territory, in direct contravention of Mexico’s 2020 National Security Law. In the end, these attempts by the DEA and international media to hijack the political debate ended up backfiring, as I warned could happen:
Most of Mexico’s corporate press will happily lap up and amplify any allegations against AMLO or Sheinbaum, whether demonstrably true or false. That said, it is unlikely that these allegations will have any material impact on Mexico’s elections and could end up backfiring. My guess is that those who already despise AMLO will despise him a little more while those who support him will continue to do so, just more fervently. In other words, it will help to fuel political polarisation in the country while increasing distrust of the DEA among AMLO supporters, who continue to represent over 60% of voters.
In fact, AMLO, now in his last year in office, is the second most popular national leader in the world after India’s Prime Minister Narendi Modi. I would argue that the main reason for this is that Mexico’s economy has fared far better than AMLO’s doomsaying detractors have consistently predicted over the past five years. In the IMF’s latest nominal GDP forecasts, in December 2023, Mexico placed 12th in the ranking of the world’s largest economies, having overtaken Spain, Australia and South Korea in the past two years.
Given the economic sweet spot Mexico finds itself in right now, with the peso strong, unemployment at its lowest level in 20 years and investment pouring into the country from companies looking to take advantage of the nearshoring trend, all Sheinbaum had to do on the campaign trail was pledge to continue where AMLO left off while refusing to be goaded by the opposition’s “go-negative” campaign. Which is what she did.
As Hackbarth documents, her 100-point program includes “extending social programs and scholarships, continuing annual minimum-wage increases, consolidating Mexico’s push toward national health care, building a million affordable homes on a rent-to-buy plan, constructing seven long-distance train lines, mandating that companies investing in the “nearshoring” phenomenon provide higher wages and benefits, and — in what is certain to continue raising the hackles of multinational energy interests — a public sector–led energy transition building on Mexico’s state-owned oil, electricity, and lithium companies.”
The hackles have been raised throughout AMLO’s five-and-a-half-year mandate, with Western media, NGOs and think tanks relentlessly trying to depict AMLO as a threat to both Mexico’s economy and democratic system. In 2018, the Financial Times‘ Latin American editor, John Paul Rathbone, described him as a bigger threat to liberal democracy than Brazil’s strongman president Bolsonaro.
When AMLO and Bolsonaro were elected, the FT’s Latin America editor wrote that the democratic socialist posed a bigger threat to ‘liberal democracy’ than the fascist.
AMLO leaves office with 80% approval ratings.
Bolsonaro is now being investigated for planning a military coup. pic.twitter.com/k30NED9pk5
— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) June 3, 2024
Contrast The Economist‘s depiction of AMLO with Time magazine’s near-messianic treatment of his predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto, whose PRI government would end up being one of the most corrupt of modern times. [Peña Nieto, like two other former presidents of Mexico, Carlos Salinas de Gotari and Felipe Calderon, is now a full-time resident of Spain].
In 2022, the Index on Corruption, a London-based NGO that has been around since the Cold War and which bashfully describes itself as “the global voice of free expression,” even named him as “tyrant of the year.” As we reported at the time, the NGO’s donors include the Charles Koch Foundation, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, Google, Facebook, the European Commission and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
The irony was palpable: a non-profit whose stated mission is to defend free expression and combat censorship worldwide accepting funding not only from three of the companies that, partly at the behest of certain governments, did more than just about any other to censor online information and debate in 2022 but also NED, which has spent the past 40 years trying to pull off soft coups and colour revolutions in Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe.
Looking Ahead
Lastly, a few brief thoughts on the challenges, opportunities and possible betrayals that may lie ahead. One very obvious difference between Sheinbaum and AMLO is their leadership style. AMLO is a stay-at-home president who has left Mexico to attend overseas events and engagements on probably fewer than ten occasions since taking office in late 2018. To his credit, he has not once attended the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos. His focus has been squarely on the domestic agenda, and there are few national leaders on the global stage who have done such a good job at dominating national politics.
One of the main keys to AMLO’s success is the hours-long morning press conferences, or “mañaneras”, that he has chaired at the National Palace more or less everyday from Monday to Friday since the beginning of his presidency. This has enabled him to communicate directly with the Mexican people, cutting out the middlemen and women in the broadly hostile domestic and international media and nipping in the bud many crises before they bloom. It has allowed him to control most of the key narratives at a time when most Western governments are rapidly losing control of the narrative and having to resort to ever more blatant forms of censorship.
In this particular area, Sheinbaum will not be able to fill AMLO’s shoes though she is determined to keep direct lines of communication with the Mexican public open. As she herself admitted in an interview with the Russian journalist Inna Afinogenova a few months ago, “(AMLO) has an extraordinary form of communication that is recognised by locals and foreigners alike” as well as an encyclopedic knowledge of Mexican history, culture and geography, “so we have to adapt something special to our personality, but there must continue to be this awareness of the people of Mexico and this direct communication.”
There are certainly areas where Sheinbaum could improve on AMLO’s performance, including the environment (a subject on which she is an expert), women’s rights, and security, an area in which she has already excelled. As mayor of Mexico City (2018-23) she was able to reduce intentional homicides in the capital by half. Since 2019 Mexico City has accounted for almost a quarter of all high-profile arrests in the country. And unlike many other parts of the country, most of those arrests were carried out by local police — and not the army or national guard.
Sheinbaum attributes much of this success to her administration’s extensive use of data and surveillance technologies to tackle serious crime. As Biometric Update reports, over the last decade “Mexico City has installed the largest video surveillance system in the Americas, altering the way criminal investigations are conducted for better or worse.”
This highlights another key difference between AMLO and his successor: whereas AMLO is very much an old school Mexican politician with nationalist sensibilities, Sheinbaum appears to be more of a technocrat with globalist leanings. Before entering politics, she received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, one of the world’s longest-standing proponents of technocracy. During her time as mayor of Mexico City, her administration also received funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
In January, Todd Martinez, director of the sovereign debt group at Fitch Ratings, remarked in a seminar broadcast to investors that while “Sheinbaum does come from the left-wing Morena party, she seems like more of a technocratic figure.” And technocrats can apparently be trusted — at least by the investor class. Interestingly, the word “technocratic,” denoting a system of governance based on technical approaches, is often used pejoratively by AMLO to refer to the ultra-neoliberal administrations that preceded him.
This invites the question: to what extent will Sheinbaum, a committed environmentalist with apparent globalist leanings who is determined to move ahead with the energy transition, stay true to AMLO’s political project, which is largely based on principles of energy (mainly oil) and food independence and security? Will she be another Lenin Moreno, the Ecuadorian president hand-picked by his predecessor, Rafael Correa, to continue the country’s economic development along largely left-wing lines, who, once elected, handed in Julian Assange to British authorities in return for an IMF loan? Or will she stay loyal to her long-time mentor?
For the moment, there is no way of knowing. Something else that is not yet clear is who she will have to deal with in Washington after the November elections. If Trump wins, as is widely expected despite his legal entanglements, will he follow through on his plans to covertly send “kill teams” into Mexico to take out cartel kingpins? Even if he doesn’t win, relations between the US and Mexico are likely to remain fraught, especially if the US, as the Council of Foreign Relations’ Shannon K. O’Neil suggests, seeks “to boost economic ties with Mexico by enforcing free trade rules and insisting on the fair and equal treatment of businesses.”
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Sheinbaum appears to be more of a technocrat with globalist leanings. Before entering politics, she received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, one of the world’s longest-standing proponents of technocracy. During her time as mayor of Mexico City, her administration also received funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
My first thought was is this another Javier Milei, but both Yanis Varoufakis and Jeremy Corbyn have come out to endorse and congratulate her. I’m not sure what to think when when someone who, from a religious affiliation standpoint, represents 0.03% of the population, coincidence?
Coincidence? Maybe yes maybe no. Seems like built in separation of church and state, which sounds good to me. This struck me: It is also six percentage points more than Mexico’s outgoing President Andres Manuel López Obrador’s vote haul in 2018 That sure looks like a ringing endorsement of AMLO’s policies and work so far.
A short while ago, a few weeks, I saw her in an interview with a non mainstream decidedly leftist site (in my view). She was impressive, not given to hyperbole or platitudes. (My computers internal search engine is on the fritz and won’t give any results even for Mexico, I don’t know why not, but I can’t provide a link, yet).
Below are two histories on the Mexican revolution of 1910-1920. A compelling contemporary history of how AMLO has broken with the neo-liberal interim is on call, but I don’t have it. It is very telling to me who is at the forefront of those attacking him, as with Chavez/Maduro and Lula. When the Nazis are burning books it is a better to have yours near the top of the pile.
A YouTube video I found worthwhile:
The Storm that Swept Mexico
A review from ISR (International Socialist Review) on the Stuart Easterling book
Understanding the Mexican Revolution
That’s all I have. I wish her and the Mexican people the best, Porfirio Diaz (a tyrant) on Mexico: so far from god, so close to the United States.
The interview was by Rania Khalek of Breakthrough News and Zoe Alexandra of @PeoplesDispatch, it was a year ago.
EXCLUSIVE | Interview with Mexico’s Leading Presidential Contender Claudia Sheinbaum
So Varoufakis, who I read on here a few years back was part of SYRIZA and who double crossed his Greek constituents, endorses her.
Then also she gets an endorsement from Corbyn, the UK version of Bernie Sanders. Always has something progressive to say yet when the chips are down never fails to bend the knee to the neoliberals and lick their boots.
I smell a betrayal coming.
Also does anyone know whats going on with Moon of Alabama? Hopefully the site owner is OK.
Er, Varoufakis resigned as Finance Minister when his Prime Minister ignored the result of the referendum he called, so what you say about him is the opposite of what actually happened.
Er, Corbyn was removed as leader of the Labour Party and then expelled from the party itself by the neoliberals, actions which he could have avoided had he actually “bent the knee to the neoliberals”, which as far as I know he never did.
Berndt is apparently undergoing surgery and his last report suggests that Moon of Alabama will be back in the next couple of days. I hope your knowledge of global politics has improved by then.
While your point about Varoufakis is correct, the referendum was a sham. It was scheduled and held in July, for a bailout that expired June 30. And the referendum was also held illegally. Under the Greek Constitution, there is a process for referenda, which includes official funding of groups to advocate for and against the referendum, and at least 30 days between the announcement of the referendum and the poll date. There was only 2 weeks notice, and the required information/advocacy process didn’t happen.
This was a gambit by the Prime Minister, Tsipras, to buy more time. But as heavy-handed as the Troika were, they’d spent lots of time on him when it had been apparent for some time (and I pointed out on the site back in February to much consternation) that there was no bargaining overlap between the Troika and Greek positions. The gig had been up in Feb (as one Greek MP in Tsipras party pointed out but was ignored), that Greece had accepted a mini-bailout which included also accepting an IMF “memorandum” as in committing to austerity like labor “reform”. The Troika could have dropped the hammer then since the Greek banking system was on ECB life support via an emergency program called the ELA, meant only for short-term banking system support. The Greek banks were borrowing from it massively, permanently, and the ECB had to renew approval every two weeks.
To put it another way, Greece succeeded in the difficult task of uniting the entire Eurozone against them, including other debtor countries like Italy, Spain, and Portugal, who could/should have been allies.
The US briefly was interested in interceding on behalf of Greece, but stopped when Syriza was unwilling to reform the Greek tax system, which really was terrible (just about no taxes collected). The US had wanted Greece to go after media oligarchs for back taxes, since Greece could cancel broadcast licenses if they did not comply. But Syriza did not do so. It had depended on their support to win the election and was not willing to turn on them.
So after the referendum stunt, and it was a stunt, the ECB yanked ELA support, putting the banks in crisis, killing tourism, and making imports close to impossible. Business failures mounted, fish were rotting in ports due to the inability to buy enough fuel, and drug supplies were drying up.
Greece folded in less than three weeks. Tsipras was forced to accept worse terms than had been offered in February.
She’s NOT religiously affiliated. She has Jewish ancestors who she does not deny, but she has said she’s an atheist and her parents were atheists. Is Judaism in someone’s BLOOD? How does that happen? I think it’s more interesting that Mexico elected an ATHEIST president than that they elected someone whose ancestors were Jewish.
I have a bad feeling, they did pull a Ecuador. Hope i am wrong in this but this person remind me too much of Trudeau and the rest of young neoliberals dressing as left wing
I also have a bad feeling based on the article’s last few paragraphs. Unless AMLO is kept as a close advisor, she might become another Lenin Moreno. Technocrat, surveillance technologies, American NGO funding…that’s a lot of red flags.
Why did AMLO not seek a second term anyway?
The Mexican constitution doesn’t allow a second term for presidents.
Oh. Term limits like that are just a way to ensure corporate interests never fully lose their grip on the country. If a leader is extremely popular with the people, not to worry, he can’t run again and the corporations can field their candidates again.
~If a leader is extremely popular with the people, not to worry, he can’t run again and the corporations can field their candidates again.
It didn’t work out so well this time, Sheinbaum beat her rightist opposition candidate by 30%, that’s quite a trouncing.
Living in Mexico the story against her is that she is a puppet of AMLO, as was selected by him as she didn’t threaten his popularity and was easy to control, yet competent.
He began the Morena party, which now a a majority of state governors and with likely help from the greens and others may be able to swing a 2/3 supermajority to push through constitutional changes. This seems to be why the peso is falling as it creates uncertainty. AMLO has been working to increase the power of the presidency at the risk of oversight, which is deemed dangerous.
60% supposedly voted in the election, meaning 40% did not.
The opposition had serious issues with past corruption tainting their reputation, and their “free market” orientation (meaning corporate capture in the end) vs strengthening Mexican sovereignty of (opposed by the US) AMLO and Morenas position, didn’t hurt amongst those who could discern such nuances.
The academic class in Mexico seems to consistently feel they know better and have ideas that use technology to make these improvements. We have seen this playbook globally. Often seems their programs are directed at others, not themselves or their peers.
Will be interesting to see how this develops and the peso’s response.
Thanks for the info and if you have time keeps us updated.
I am guessing quite a few among said academia carry accreditation from north of the border.
Not allowed…
Can a president serve 2 terms in Mexico?
Under Article 83 of the Mexican Constitution, the president is limited to a single six-year term, and no one who holds the office even on a caretaker basis is permitted to run for or hold the office again.
Sheinbaum is not a globalist. She has fully committed to continuing the AMLO lead 4th transformation. The overwhelming strength of the Morena party will help back her up. Things are looking up in Mexico. This expat very happy to be living here.
Thank you, Nick, especially for sharing what centrist media thought of AMLO.
This sort of thing from “serious and smart” people should not be forgotten or underestimated. Some years ago, after the election of a leftist leader in South America, Labour MP and dodgy former clergyman Chris Bryant tweeted about yet another Latin American country swinging left and forecast doom.
A British academic specialising in the region corrected Bryant. Bryant then tried to have the academic banned from Twitter. Bryant will soon be a minister and being considered for a Foreign Office post with responsibility for Latin America.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1795610887363125276
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
This is a very interesting study by King’s College London on the coverage of China in British media.
https://kcl.ac.uk/news/british-media-china
No surprise, it found that coverage of China is systematically negative across all mainstream media outlets, with an “almost total lack of any positive coverage of China in the British media”.
And interestingly whilst you often hear the media defend themselves by saying they criticise “the government, not the people”, the study found that’s not the case at all: “it is China, not just the Communist Party of China, that is framed negatively in the British media”.
They also looked at whether having journalists based in China made the coverage more balanced and found they emphasized the negative just as much as their colleagues in Britain. An example is The Economist’s Chaguan’s columns, written by David Rennie who’s Beijing-based: their analysis “identified negative coverage in 84% of Chaguan’s columns, with only four reports (1.5 %) being coded neutral-to-positive, and none clearly positive.”
Even the Financial Times, often considered the most nuanced media out there, was found to be stunningly biased. The study looked at 133 “Big Reads” on China written during a period of 4 years (2019-2022) and found that just 2 (1.5%) had been positive versus 115 (86%) negative, and the rest neutral.
As the study notes, this “has important implications for Britain’s policies towards China” because”if media coverage is predominantly negative, public opinion is bound to sway the same way. This, in turn, makes it more likely that the UK will adopt a more critical policy toward China”.
In other words, what we’re looking at here is what Chomsky calls “manufacturing consent”. Think about that next time you are tempted to think the West has a “free press”…
8:19 PM · May 28, 2024
This is important. The PMC/Liberals/Chattering classes reading this will interpret the synecdoche as appropriate to reinforce the necessary confirmation bias, and the adjustment will be done unconsciously, just like Party members do in 1984.
This is unconsciously understood by the authors too.
From the beginning “Claudio Sheinbaum’s epic electoral victory would not have been possible without AMLO’s enduring — indeed, ripening — popularity. The question is: what will she do with her newfound power after the hand over on Oct. 1?”
Shouldn’t it be Claudia and not Claudio?
It most certainly should be. Thanks for the heads-up, Kouros.
Thank you for this post, Nick. As the former mayor of Mexico City I have no doubt that she would be highly qualified for running the country. I notice on the news tonight the first smears where it was claimed that she would be a puppet to AMLO. Yeah, nah! It will be interesting to see if she continues Mexico’s policies for reducing their artificial dependencies on North America. If they can be reduced, then a lot of Mexico’s problems will start to go away.
where it was claimed that she would be a puppet to AMLO. Like that’s a bad thing. She won big, a undeniable endorsement of AMLO’s tenure. I do love when the talking heads implode.
“I notice on the news tonight the first smears where it was claimed that she would be a puppet to AMLO.”
A disabling trick of local governing by Latin American colonists was to limit official terms in office to a single term which was almost never long enough to assure lasting policy changes. AMLO needs a close follower as president. Notice how Dilma Rousseff, after Lula, was removed from the presidency in Brazil.
If they keep calling her a puppet of AMLO I would include a possibility of that being an attempt to distract her into responding to public perception ratings to gain approval and thereby be manipulated
into a desired direction, not likely perhaps but still…..
You were mayor of Mexico City? And here I was thinking you were just an average Ocker. Stone me!
“…a race between two women engineers.” I find the engineer part more impressive than the women part.
She may have a 100 point plan, but part of her legislative majority appears to be due to the mass exodus of PRI politicians. Will they play the role of spoiler?
Sheinbaum seems to have genuine engineering (and physicist) creds. I wonder about the oppo candidate. During the Tory party leadership contest in the UK Kemi Badenoch claimed to be an engineer. In fact she used to be a computer programmer before becoming a banker. i.e. not an engineer.
Congrats to sheinbaum and thanks for the thorough write-up, Nick.
I worry less about the Ecuadorean precedent and more about the Brazilian precedent. Dilma Rouseff was set up nicely by the outgoing Lula administration. Lula had used a nice up-draft in the commodity cycle to really make improvements to Brazilian society. However, there were plenty of neo-liberal flaws in his approach and when those contradictions caused problems, and the commodity cycle turned, Rouseff’s instincts were to compromise with capital. The problem is that capital will demand that you slit your own wrists (politically) to gain their favor. They’re the worst friends one can imagine.
The old guard in Brazil reasserted their own power and dominance though the car wash corruption scandal. When Rouseff tried to compromise, and give concessions, the old guard seized on this and demanded austerity. Once Rouseff was seen to have betrayed her political base, and caused a deepening recession, she was ripe to be thrown out of power.
I have no doubt the jackals in Mexico will be looking for a similar opportunity. Sheinbaum and Morena will need to be vigilant, lest they end up dead or in prison. This is Mexico, and these opponents play rough.
Dilma Rouseff was accused of putting numbers in the wrong column to make the budget look better, IIRC. A shoddy charge for something that probably every government does, certainly the right wing predecessors, whose supporters in the congress were impeaching her. Shameful.
I’m skeptical. Talk is cheap. Until I see what actions she takes, I’ll continue to be so. It’s so easy for the US to turn these South American Presidents.
Yikes! As a Canadian and Permanent Resident of Mexico, I sure hope that your bad feeling turns out to be unfounded. There are reasons to be optimistic: Sheinbaum’s seriously accomplished STEM career stands out sharply against that of the extremely wealthy dilettante son of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot, Justin, who became a Prime Minister himself largely due to his looks, charm, and progeny, from a stint as a drama teacher at a posh private school.
And, its shortcomings not withstanding, Morena has far better cred’s than the campaign-from-the-(pseudo)-left-govern-from-the-right Liberal Party of Canada. Being the accomplished mayor of a city that is one of the world’s biggest, and arguably its most challenging, is a more than credible apprenticeship.
Mexico, for all its contradictions, has a history of revolution, and now, thanks to AMLO and Morena, a bigger real economy than Canada’s; Ecuador it is not.
She’s no slouch, and no sleeze — I too, hope you are wrong.
According to the internet most of Trudeau’s vast wealth came in the last few years , profiting from his promotion of vaccines, since he publicly announced his wealth.
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/justin-trudeau-discloses-details-inheritance-023515379.html
And of course being a school teacher is not a real job.
Lots of real reasons to dislike his and the Liberals policies, not these talking points, especially when comparing to Poilievre’s working history.
Sheinbaum’ s real challenge will be dealing with Trump and Pierre “jail not bail” Poilievre, especially when the trade deal comes up for renegotiation in 2026.
Mexico needs to follow Hungry and others and throw out NGOs
How will Mexico and the US adopt to the increasing presence of Chinese companies and capital in Mexico?
The Inflation Reduction Act allows for a $7500 credit for electric vehicles produced in North America. When BYD opens EV factories in Mexico, will that hold true?
I’m sorry to see AMLO go. I simply see international economics establishing future politics. Claudia is obviously capable of good policies, she’s too smart not to be. My question is, What will our defunct political establishment do with such a forward-looking neighbor? Do we still have some shred of peaceful coexistence left and how long can we maintain it without our consumer-demand for trade goods? China will be a problem as it builds its new canal and RR across the south of Mexico. Or was that just a proposal?
~China will be a problem as it builds its new canal and RR across the south of Mexico. Or was that just a proposal?
The proposal for another canal was across Nicaragua but has been scrapped. It was a bad idea that goes way back.
Nicaragua cancels Chinese plan for controversial canal 10 years on
It’s not a canal but rather a transoceanic network of railway lines called the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepecthat, which cross-crosses Mexico’s narrowest point connecting the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. It has been in the works for over a century but is scheduled to finally begin operating some time in the next year or two. According to the government’s (possibly rose-tinted) estimates, it could reach full capacity by 2033, with the trains carrying some 30 million tons of cargo per year — roughly half of the Panama Canal’s capacity.
Can you judge a newly elected President by her detractors? She has some of ” all the right detractors”.
In a reverse-psychology way, the Economist’s opposition is a pretty good initial endorsement.
I think AMLO’s accomplishments will continue to be worthy of study for some time, as a case study in how to stand up to the ravages of globalization among other things.
Left-leaning leaders tend to fare poorly once the might of global capitalism and aligned forces (led as always by the US government and media) are trained on them. History is littered with failed examples. To not only succeed for 6 years but leave with such a sky-high approval rating is an amazing accomplishment.
I would argue another accomplishment was to go quietly after the term limit and not use his sky-high approval to pursue constitutional reform to stay in power longer. Yes, people are calling it out as a risk and rightly so, but I think to try and hold power would have been a greater one. If the policies are to endure, then they need to stand on their own merits and not be tied to a single powerful leader. Any sort of antidemocratic actions to retain power would have been called out loudly by the neoliberal West and used to discredit him (and they wouldn’t have been wrong, even if they’re perfectly willing to use the same tactics when it suits them).
I dare say, one … “hopes” she will protect the corn seed. Permanent Resident in Mexico, water is life, as is corn for the people❤️🇲🇽💚
I see that the “journalist” who denounced her mentor used to work for the World Bank. Yes, she has the right detractors.
Ok. Watched the interview with Rania.
Sheinbaum is very likable and seems sincere.
She is definitely competent and smart.
I like that she’s been with Morena from the start and she’s had real changes in transportation and safety in Mexico City not just “social justice” stuff.
Still .. like how the article ends I am cautious and I find it hard to believe that there weren’t any other qualified candidates not from a .03% minority.
The first year actions will show if she’ll continue doing AMLO’s work or not.