Opinion: Mexico’s noisy, colorful and unserious elections will not bring about real change

The largest elections in Mexican history will take place on June 2. Citizens will vote to fill more than 20,000 offices: electing a new president and governors from eight of our 32 states, filling the Senate and House of Representatives (the equivalent of the U.S. election). House of Representatives) and installing a new head of government for Mexico City and thousands of other communities.

If that sounds hectic, that’s because it is. In Mexico City, which is braving a month-long heat wave, literal tons of political propaganda are on the streets. Every spare wall, footbridge and lamppost is overtaken by multi-coloured plastic signs and smiling faces of the candidates. When plastered together, most end up crumbled, half-torn, or destroyed. Clara Brugada and Santiago Taboada, political rivals running for head of the government in Mexico City, have accused each other’s teams of undermining propaganda. It will be hung again within a few days.

Despite the bright colors of the posters, these matches can only be described as gray – the opposite of exciting. Instead of being about the future, they are stuck in the past.

In Mexico, people often see the president as a bad guy. Things seemed different when left-wing Morena party leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador ran for office in 2018. As mayor of Mexico City from 2000 to 2005, López Obrador expanded the Periférico, the city’s largest urban highway; the city center renovated; provided government pensions for citizens aged 70 and over; inaugurated the Metrobús system; and rebelled against President Vicente Fox.

Despite a prominent bribery scandal, López Obrador positioned himself as an outsider and often spoke about the fight against the Mexican power mafia, politicians and businessmen who acted against Mexico’s true interests. López Obrador lost in 2006 – by just 0.56% – and again in 2012. During these years, he traveled around the country calling himself the “legitimate president” who had won the 2006 elections.

In 2018, he won a decisive victory, beating his number two by 31 percentage points and becoming Mexico’s first “president of the people,” as he would put it. He launched a daily two- to three-hour press conference at 7 a.m. called the “Mañanera” to speak to his people. He opened the Mexican White House as a museum to the public.

Many Mexicans believed that this man might be the change the country needed after decades of corruption and scandals. On Sunday, July 1, as López Obrador’s victory was announced, hundreds of thousands gathered in the Zócalo, the central square, in Mexico City for a moment of joy, hope and catharsis. I went there with my mother; she was really happy because she had supported him for years and thought it would never be possible for him to win. That day, López Obrador hugged himself, in front of the roaring crowd, as if he were hugging us all and saying, “I love you.”

López Obrador called his movement “La Cuarta Transformación,” or the Fourth Transformation, suggesting that his presidency would mark a historical shift comparable to the Mexican Revolution of 1910 – an era of “Primero los pobres,” in which the poor come first..

Reality has not lived up to expectations. The president promised to fight the interests of private sector elites, but promoted an austerity model and cut government spending that erased dozens of government programs in favor of a model of direct monthly payments for some disadvantaged groups. These payments, made via bank transfers, have been denounced for irregularities and for being used as a way to condition votes, and have only increased the power of the private sector. About 30 million Mexicans lost access to health care.

López Obrador has tended toward divisive, authoritarian, populist rhetoric. He also made changes to the police and military that made Mexicans less safe. In many states today, including Michoacán, Zacatecas and Guanajuato, organized crime factions force residents in mining, transportation or agriculture to pay fees just to do their jobs. The country is experiencing a crisis of more than 300,000 internally displaced people who have been displaced due to violence.

Nearly six years have passed and López Obrador is facing the end of his term. Many people are happy with the monthly payments; Salaries have also increased. For many Mexican voters, the president still represents a moral alternative to politicians from traditional parties. He was, they say, chosen by the people.

But for the rest of us, the mood is no longer cheerful – only skeptical. These elections have brought with them a huge flow of resources. They’ve been loud. Cars drive through the streets with boomboxes announcing the names of the candidates. Politicians dress in the colors of their parties (phosphorescent orange from head to toe for the Movimiento Ciudadano party). It’s like being at a carnival – loud, colorful, not serious – and on social media the frenzy is even more intense: you can see videos of candidates dancing and giving away Cheetos with their faces stamped on the packages.

The flashiness is not accidental. Money is the driving force behind these elections. It is the criterion for the selection of local candidates, who pay a fee to stand as candidates. It flows out to thousands of advisors to fuel the endless publicity and influence votes. Organized crime money finances campaigns and buys candidates. The whole exercise feels like a marketplace, not a forum for ideas.

Election day can be a chaotic day. Election violence has already reached a record high, with more than thirty candidates murdered. Mexicans expect the same kind of disruptions seen in the 2021 midterm elections, as well as confrontations between candidates as the results are close.

There is one change that is certain: Mexico will have its first female president. Physicist Claudia Sheinbaum, the candidate for Morena, has been mayor of Mexico City for the past six years, and all polls suggest she will win. She is running against another woman, former senator

Sheinbaum, López Obrador’s designated successor, has promised continuity: defending the poor and representing the people, fighting corruption and upholding the principles of La Cuarta Transformación. But her promises are hard to believe. Sheinbaum’s government in Mexico City has shown no responsibility for incidents of negligence, such as the 2021 collapse of a subway line that resulted in the deaths of 27 passengers, reduced investments in public transportation and failed to deliver on promises to ​​greener, less polluted city. . She also works within a divided, divided party – and a movement so identified with one charismatic politician that many wonder whether it can outlive its creator.

Xóchitl Gálvez, meanwhile, is inexperienced and little known. Her candidacy reflects the inability of traditional parties to produce strong opponents. It’s like none of the big names wanted to compete against Morena.

Idealists might say that these elections are a decision between two visions of Mexico’s future. To my mind, they are something less profound: a reaffirmation of a movement that portends extraordinary morality while replicating the vices of previous administrations. It feels as if the current Mexican political system is guided by the idea, and not the reality, of electoral change. Through elections we can put a woman in power, an outsider in power, another party in power; we can punish the ruling party, or the traditional parties.

Change alone is not difficult. What is difficult – extremely difficult – is change that makes things better.

People here are all talking about the elections, but to me they feel like background noise. More competition does not necessarily translate into more democracy or better democracy. It is the struggle for power that really drives Mexican politicians. There is little to say about the exercise of power itself, or whether leaders are at all interested in what happens on the day following the election.

María Guillén is an editor at Nexos magazine. She lives in Mexico City. This was written for Zócalo Public Square, a media company of Arizona State University.