Mexico’s Vote for Autocracy

As Mexico’s June 2 presidential election draws near, more is at stake than a competition among political parties. For the past five and a half years, the country’s prototypical populist leader, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, has driven a process of democratic backsliding that mirrors developments in countries across the globe. Democracies are no longer dying primarily as a result of military coups carried out by generals with tanks and rifles. Mexico’s democracy, like many others, is being destroyed by a freely elected and popular president who has manipulated democratic institutions and seeks to change not just the rules of the electoral game but also the entire political system so that his party remains in power.

López Obrador’s party, the Movement for National Regeneration (Morena), is mobilizing its supporters to vote for a refurbished autocracy disguised as a democracy. Many Mexicans have succumbed to its allure. The president’s daily press conferences routinely portray his party as concerned for the poor, combating rapacious elites, and defending national sovereignty against internal and external threats, including opposition parties and foreign influence. López Obrador himself governs through polarization. He divides the population into two camps: “the people” versus “the enemies of the people,” the dispossessed versus those who disdain them, the popular movement that seeks change versus the conservative opposition that wants to maintain a status quo that works only for the elites.

López Obrador’s government has taken steps to alleviate poverty, including large cash payments to poor families and an increase in the minimum wage. But on his watch, criminal violence has run rampant, and with many of the education and health programs that formed Mexico’s social safety net replaced by clientelism, the poor are left to fend for themselves. Meanwhile, the president has consolidated his control of state institutions, pushed forward legislation that violates the constitution, and carried out an assault on the judiciary and the agencies that oversee elections. His party rules with the overt support of the military, which the president has empowered at the expense of democracy. The armed forces now serve as the country’s police, build major public works, and control immigration and infrastructure. They have accrued unprecedented economic power and are accountable only to López Obrador himself.

During the electoral campaign, Morena has slandered opposition politicians in state-controlled media and used the state apparatus to harass political opponents. The Mexican military has deployed Pegasus spyware to monitor activists, journalists, and human rights defenders. López Obrador has also used his public platform to doxx his critics. When a federal agency dedicated to government transparency decried the doxxing as a violation of Mexican data protection statutes, the president declared in his morning press conference that he was “above the law.”

For the last 30 years, Mexico’s transition to a fledgling and imperfect democracy has been built on the ideal of competitive elections, autonomous electoral institutions, checks and balances, and the containment of presidential power. All of that is now at risk. López Obrador has already distorted the country’s political system to tilt the electoral playing field in his party’s favor. He has shown himself willing to sacrifice anything in order to win, including democracy itself.

UNFREE AND UNFAIR

For much of the twentieth century, Mexico was ruled by a single party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The transition to a competitive electoral system began in the 1990s, when civil society and opposition politicians pressed for reforms that would assure free and fair elections by establishing a level playing field for all parties and limiting the power of the executive to influence the outcome. Mexico thus has extremely restrictive electoral laws that bar the president from promoting candidates during the official campaign season and prohibit the use of government funds for party purposes. On paper, the laws do not allow López Obrador to tip the scales in favor of Morena.

Yet since the start of his term, he has tried to fix the system to assure a return to dominant-party rule. His party passed legislation that would have reduced public financing to political parties by 50 percent, prevented parties from uniting behind a common presidential candidate, prohibited political advertising on private media, and lifted the restriction on the sitting president campaigning for a successor. After the Supreme Court struck down the laws as unconstitutional, López Obrador and his party changed tack, calling on their supporters to deliver Morena legislative majorities in the upcoming election. With large enough representation in Congress, the party can modify the Mexican constitution and enact its antidemocratic electoral reforms. Under López Obrador’s plan, Supreme Court justices and members of the autonomous election agency would be elected by popular vote, effectively handing control of both bodies to Morena and putting an end to incipient checks and balances. The militarization of Mexican politics would also become permanent, as the president intends to remove the constitutional provision that prevents the government from extending the army’s expanded mandate past 2028.

The president has made a habit of defying the electoral authorities.

López Obrador has blurred the line between government and party. His administration has used social programs as a form of refurbished clientelism: one development initiative, for example, has mobilized 30,000 “servants of the nation’’ who were initially tasked with carrying out a “welfare census” but now go door to door threatening the beneficiaries of cash payments that the handouts will end if they do not pledge support for Morena’s presidential candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum, the former mayor of Mexico City. Sheinbaum reinforces that idea on the campaign trail, claiming without evidence that if the opposition were to win, social programs for the poor would be eliminated. Government largess has thus become a tool to bolster Morena’s fortunes—a tactic that the PRI also relied upon to maintain its hegemony. López Obrador uses his morning press conference as a bully pulpit, pushing partisan propaganda and demonizing the opposition. Mexico’s National Electoral Institute has entreated the president to stop this practice on the ground that it violates campaign law. Yet López Obrador has made a habit of defying the electoral authorities, and Morena has received more (and larger) fines than any political party for illegal campaign activities.

López Obrador also revived dedazo, an infamous practice associated with the PRI whereby the outgoing president handpicked his successor. His modern twist was to choose a woman—all past Mexican presidents have been men—and simulate a primary process to lend his personal selection an air of legitimacy. Before the presidential campaign officially began in November 2023, billboards and murals with Sheinbaum’s image and the hashtag #EsClaudia (#It’sClaudia) appeared throughout the country. In early 2023, Sheinbaum started touring Mexico to tout the success of López Obrador’s administration. It is still unclear who financed the signs and the tour, but electoral laws clearly prohibit public officials from using public funds to promote themselves for electoral or partisan purposes. The timing and financing of Morena’s internal primary raised further concerns that the party’s campaign tactics broke the National Electoral Institute’s rules. At the end of the complex, opaque process, Sheinbaum was declared the winner.

López Obrador chose a successor who has proven her loyalty to his agenda. As a candidate, Sheinbaum has adopted every last one of the president’s preferred policies, even those that seemed to go against basic tenets of environmental engineering, in which she holds a doctorate. She has embraced petro-nationalism, for example, applauding the disbursement of $80 billion to prop up the state-run oil company, Pemex, and supporting subsidies for other inefficient state energy companies whose operations impede the transition to renewable energy. Sheinbaum has also stood behind López Obrador’s scheme to staff institutions such as the National Human Rights Commission and the Energy Regulation Commission with loyalists who lack technical or professional expertise. And she has signed onto the president’s plans to extend the military’s expanded mandate and introduce elections for judges. Lacking a political base of her own, Sheinbaum has promised continuity with and consolidation of López Obrador’s “transformation.” She has copied his rhetoric, his antidemocratic positions, and even his way of speaking. As president, she would find it difficult to separate herself from her predecessor in any case: weak public finances and the debt accrued by Pemex will constrain the next leader’s ability to pursue new policies or correct López Obrador’s mistakes, and the possibility that he could propose a recall election if she strays from his chosen path will hang over her.

López Obrador chose a successor who has proven her loyalty.

Opposition parties from across the ideological spectrum have banded together in an attempt to defeat Morena. But the opposition alliance—which includes what remains of the PRI, the center-right National Action Party (PAN), and the small, center-leftParty of the Democratic Revolution (PRD)—is divided and discredited. More important, it cannot match Morena’s access to public resources, cash disbursements from social programs, and the vast propaganda machinery of the Mexican state. The president has described the opposition’s presidential candidate, Xóchitl Gálvez, as a corrupt defender of the oligarchy that spent years plundering Mexico. Other members of Morena have accused her of misconduct during her time as leader of a technology company that had contracts with the government—some going as far as claiming she engaged in money laundering. Although all parties receive public financing, a practice meant to ensure equal competition, no opposition party can raise enough money to compete with government-backed candidates who benefit from illicit disbursements of public funds and state patronage. Business leaders know that aiding the opposition could cost them lucrative public contracts or spur the government to pursue allegations of corruption or tax evasion. Morena governs 23 of Mexico’s 32 states, which means that the financial and operational capabilities of regional authorities are also at its disposal.

Sheinbaum began the presidential race with a 30-point lead that seems almost impossible to close. Her close association with López Obrador has worked in her favor; the president remains popular even as polls show disapproval with his government’s handling of domestic security, the economy, and corruption. Sheinbaum’s main rival, Gálvez, is charismatic and quick on her feet, and her indigenous background could enhance her appeal among segments of the Mexican electorate. But Gálvez also represents parties that much of the public associates with corruption, elitist rule, and a history of bad governance. It was this very establishment that most voters shunned in the 2018 election that propelled López Obrador into office. Moreover, Jorge Álvarez Máynez, a candidate representing the center-left Citizens’ Movement, could split the opposition vote.

Morena seems poised to win the presidency, but the presidency is not the only important office up for a vote this election. All 128 seats in the Senate and all 500 in the lower house, local congresses in 31 states, nine state governorships, and the mayoralty of Mexico City will also be on the ballot. Morena is hoping to win large enough majorities in Congress to pass constitutional reforms without the support of other parties. Such a result would allow Morena to fully capture the judiciary and electoral institutions. Recognizing this danger, the opposition alliance has urged its supporters to cast a voto útil (useful vote) to deny the ruling party control of Congress. Even if that effort succeeds, however, Morena will dominate Mexican politics. Without a legislative majority, Sheinbaum would not be able to change the constitution, but as president she would still be able to name a Supreme Court justice in November, tipping the scales on the court in Morena’s favor. Either way, the party would have a means of undermining judicial checks on its antidemocratic program.

A CLOUD OF FEAR

When López Obrador came into office, he promised to reduce the violence that plagued the country. But his policies have failed to significantly lower the rates of homicides, disappearances, and femicides. His government adopted a strategy of “hugs, not bullets,” which aimed to address the root causes of violence by making cash disbursements to the poor and having the military construct massive public works, such as the Mayan Train railway and the Dos Bocas oil refinery, in the impoverished south. But 171,085 homicides took place in the first five years of López Obrador’s presidency, according to official government data—already more than the 157,158 homicides during the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012­–18) or the 121,613 reported under Felipe Calderón (2006–12).

The violence is generating a climate of heightened intimidation, undercutting the prospect of free and fair elections. Ahead of Mexico’s 2021 midterm elections, more than 30 candidates were assassinated; at least 24 candidates for local congress and mayorships have been killed so far in 2024. Most of the victims were challenging the incumbent, but apart from this common feature, all political parties were targets of violence.

Making matters worse, criminal organizations have infiltrated the electoral process. They resort to murder to decide who can compete and who cannot, and they use dirty money to finance campaigns that promise to protect their interests. The U.S. media outlet ProPublica, The New York Times, and the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported in January that U.S. law enforcement agencies had been investigating possible funding from cartels for López Obrador’s presidential campaigns in 2006, 2012, and 2018. Mexican journalists from the news organizations Animal Político, Latinus, Proceso, and Reforma and the civil society organization Mexicans United Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI) have also uncovered evidence of corruption among the president’s sons, their friends, and public officials and businessmen close to the ruling party. No official inquiries have taken place, and no charges have been filed against those implicated in these independent investigations—instead, the government accused the head of MCCI of corruption.

Neither rising criminal violence nor democratic backsliding have elicited much criticism from the Biden administration. The López Obrador government has accepted the role of policing the border, preventing immigrants from crossing into the United States and receiving those who are deported. As long as this arrangement holds and the immigration debate remains at the center of U.S. politics, American presidents will likely give López Obrador and his successor free rein to govern in a way that endangers Mexican democracy and damages future prospects for bilateral collaboration.

THE DEATH OF DEMOCRACY

López Obrador has presented Mexicans with a series of false choices. They must sacrifice political rights to achieve socioeconomic rights for the poor. They must sacrifice democratic aspirations for rule by a single party that claims to govern in the name of the people. They must sacrifice checks and balances and endow the president with unconstrained power to produce “transformational” change. The majority of the Mexican people seem willing to shoulder these costs as long as they receive money from the government. But López Obrador’s delivery on his end of the supposed bargain will leave a trail of destroyed institutions and intractable authoritarian policies and practices in its wake. By concentrating power in the hands of the executive and undermining the future of true electoral competition, Morena is merely bringing back the old regime with new trappings.

It may be too late to pull Mexican politics back from the brink. As Adam Przeworski, a leading expert on democracy, declared at a recent conference in Mexico City, “the damage has already been done.” The government has openly questioned the integrity of the 2024 election and the autonomous electoral authorities organizing it. In the unlikely event of an opposition victory, López Obrador would probably reject the results, violence could ensue, and the military’s loyalty would be put to the test. Alternatively, if Morena were to win a large enough majority to reform the constitution, Mexico’s democracy would die at the hands of its elected leaders.

This election is not just a contest between left and right, but a choice between the survival of a young democracy and a regression to dominant-party rule. The first scenario—a doubtful one—is the emergence of a Mexico that prizes debate based on fact, maintains civilian rule, solves problems through legislation, embraces pluralism instead of polarization, confronts historic inequalities, and does all this within a framework of consensual rules. The second is a Mexico where the word of the leader becomes the law of the land, where the ruling party dismisses anything it disagrees with as fake news, and where democracy, already under siege, is destroyed by authoritarians dressed up as reformers. Mexicans should not have any illusions about the choice they are making when they go to the polls in June. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin’s admonition, voters were given an emerging republic after Mexico’s political transition 30 years ago. The question now is whether they can keep it.