Editor’s Note: In the current issue of National Review, we have a piece by Jay Nordlinger called “Latin America: A Brisk Political Tour.” This week, Mr. Nordlinger has elaborated in a series. The previous parts are at the following links: I, II, III, and IV. The series concludes today.
Yesterday, I described politics in Brazil as a game of ping-pong — between Left and Right (and, more specifically, between the populist Left and the populist Right). In Mexico, the political game is different. The populist Left is in charge. There is hardly anyone on the other side of the net, it seems.
The country’s president is Claudia Sheinbaum, elected last year. She succeeded Andrés Manuel López Obrador. More than his successor, she is his protégée. There is a phrase she is said to dislike, intensely: “the obedient daughter.”
“AMLO,” as López Obrador is popularly known, is a messianic figure. In 2006, Enrique Krauze wrote a well-known essay about him called “The Tropical Messiah.” (López Obrador hails from the state of Tabasco, which is in the southeast of the country, on the Gulf of Mexico.) Sheinbaum is not a messianic figure: “more like the apostle of the messiah,” says Krauze today.
López Obrador was president from 2018 to 2024. He is a populist par excellence, someone in the Chávez class, or even beyond. Gabriel Zaid, a venerable writer, dubbed him “el poeta del insulto,” “the poet of the insult.”
Every morning, AMLO held a mañanera, which was superficially a press conference but mainly a show: The Andrés Manuel López Obrador Show. He would dole out insults and set the agenda for the day — also the tone of the country. Mexico at large vibrated to the president’s beat. In the front rows would be bloggers, YouTubers, and the like. These were AMLO supporters, belonging to “the blessed social media.” In the back rows would be traditional journalists, belonging to “la prensa fifí” — “the fancy press.” They would serve as foils.
Those were López Obrador’s terms: “the blessed social media,” “la prensa fifí.” He had a thousand such phrases and coinages.
But he was not a mere entertainer (neither was Hugo Chávez, unfortunately). He is an ideologue with dead-serious aims. During his years as president, he worked to accrue power to himself and the party he founded, Morena. He did all he could to undermine the independence of the judiciary, the independence of the electoral commission, and so on.
President Sheinbaum, too, holds a mañanera, but she is less flamboyant than her predecessor and mentor. While alike in ideology, they are different in nature. He is an instinctual political animal; she is an intellectual and scientist. Sheinbaum majored in physics and earned a Ph.D. in energy engineering. She did her research at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California. She taught for a while. But she wanted politics and got it (eventually landing in the top spot).
Born in 1962, she comes from a Jewish family. Her grandparents were immigrants. On her father’s side, they were Ashkenazi Jews from Lithuania; on her mother’s, Sephardic Jews from Bulgaria. This background was barely an issue in last year’s campaign — though Vicente Fox and some others tried to make it one.
Fox is a former president and a figure of the Right. He retweeted a kind of campaign poster, which mocked Sheinbaum as a “Bulgarian Jew” and declared another candidate “the only Mexican” in the race. (The “only Mexican” was Fox’s preferred candidate.) Promptly, Sheinbaum circulated a copy of her birth certificate and said, “I am 100 percent Mexican, the proud daughter of Mexican parents.” Fox apologized to the Jews of Mexico.
But he doubled down two months later, putting on his all-caps key and tweeting, “JEWISH AND FOREIGN AT THE SAME TIME.” He meant Sheinbaum, of course.
She won 31 out of 32 states. Even her foes have an observation to make: We are a traditionally and heavily Catholic country. And we elected Claudia Sheinbaum president, in a landslide. That says something about us: our pluralism and inclusiveness.
If Sheinbaum has a “Jewish identity,” she does not show it, in public. This has been pointed out by Jews in particular. There is an old story: Too Jewish for antisemites, not Jewish enough for others.
Her family of origin was very left-wing, and so is she. She is unreconstructed, you could say. Where others went social democratic or even liberal, she did not. “She’s like a ’68-er,” says one journalist in Mexico City. Enrique Krauze says that, for Sheinbaum, the god never failed. (In 1949, there was a famous book, The God That Failed, edited by Richard Crossman, comprising essays by noted writers who had become disillusioned by Communism.)
As president, Sheinbaum has continued López Obrador’s policies. The transition has been seamless. AMLO continues too. By that I mean, he is still the driving force in Morena, and Morena drives the country’s politics. Later in her term, will Sheinbaum become more her own woman, putting her own stamp on the country, maybe a different stamp? Or will she remain “the obedient daughter”?
She is widely popular, incidentally, polling at something like 75 percent. I might mention an issue of nomenclature, too.
In my installment yesterday, I said that pretty much all Brazilians refer to the country’s president, Lula da Silva, as “Lula,” whether they like the president or not. In Mexico, it’s different. Fans tend to refer to the president as “Claudia”; non-fans, “Sheinbaum.”
The non-fans have a deep concern: that Sheinbaum, López Obrador, and Morena will destroy Mexican republicanism; that they will neuter the judiciary and other institutions to the point of leaving their own power essentially unchecked.
“Morena could be the new PRI,” says the aforementioned journalist. The Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or “PRI,” controlled Mexico for most of the 20th century. Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian writer, called it “the perfect dictatorship.” It was perfect because it did not seem like a dictatorship. It was “camouflaged,” as Vargas Llosa said. The PRI and its corruption absorbed everyone, including the intellectuals.
Ernesto Zedillo made a famous remark. He was a PRI president (1994 to 2000) but as liberal democratic as they get in Mexico, and in most other places, too. Once, he was asked, “What are the three things Mexico needs most?” He answered, “The rule of law, the rule of law, and the rule of law.”
The same applies to Latin American in general. And to the whole wide world.
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