AMLO's MORENA party kicks off legally dubious candidate selection campaign
MORENA insists it's not selecting a presidential candidate for 2024, rather a 'coordination of the defence of the transformation'
The race to pick the ruling MORENA party’s next presidential candidate “coordination of the defence of the transformation” officially kicked off Monday with the six aspirants holding rallies information sessions around the country.
The candidates – all having resigned or taken leave from their previously posts – largely organized vacuous campaign kickoffs, heavy on frivolity, short on policy and rife with passive aggressive pot shots. Mostly, though, they attempted to curry favour with AMLO and pledged fealty to the leader, speaking effusively of the president as they promised to continue his so-called “fourth transformation” (4T).
Former interior minister Adán Augusto López took the early prize for hagiography, calling AMLO “irreplaceable” – a line quickly parroted by pro-AMLO pundits. Former foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard followed with a proposal to create a 4T Secretariat headed by AMLO’s son, which would ensure the continuity AMLO’s legacy – namely an airport near Mexico City, a pair of railways, a refinery and his cash stipend programs for seniors and others (which replaced existing social programs.)
Illegal campaign?
MORENA will pick its candidate coordination via a series of polls with the winner announced Sept. 6. (AMLO has proposed the runners up be appointed Congress leaders for new president.) The leaning on euphemisms to describe its undertaking and chosen person stems from an uncomfortable fact for many analysts: the campaigns tours of the country with rallies information sessions likely violate Mexican election law.
Writing in the newspaper El Universal, former National Electoral Institute (INE) president Lorenzo Córdoba – a figure loathed by AMLO and his partisans – pointed to the General Law of Institutions and Electoral Procedures (LEGIPE):
“The LEGIPE signals with emphatic clarity that in presidential elections ‘the pre-campaigns will start in the third week of November the year before the election and can last no longer than sixty days.’ … The MORENA agreement established the period for registering aspirants from June 12 to 16, the ‘tours’ (that’s to say pre-campaign acts) from June 19 to August 27; the polls carried out from August 28 to September 3; and the naming of its ‘coordination’ (that’s the say presidential pre-candidate) on Sept. 6.”
All of the leading candidates have been flouting the law for months, according to analysts. Former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum has been campaigning for months around the country on weekends.
An expert in Mexican electoral matters with inside working of the INE and the electoral tribual (TRIFE, a sort of supreme court for electoral disputes) said of the candidates’ campaigning so far:
“Everyone knows they are breaking the law and that the TRIFE will rule them ineligible.”
The INE, which organizes elections and referees partisan political activities in Mexico, approved the MORENA candidate coordination selection process with the following conditions:
Aspirants’ messages “must not contain direct and explicit calls to vote for or against a person or some political force.”
“The actions which the people involved carry out must not have the objective of obtaining the backing to be nominated as a pre-candidate for popular election.”
The aspirants cannot present materials which allude to policies to be presented as candidates for public office, only in reference to “coordination of the defence of the transformation.”
Analysts blasted the INE’s flexibility on the MORENA selection process – with the newsweekly Proceso running the cover headline: “The INE lends itself to the simulation.” Writing in the newspaper Reforma, columnist and academic Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez said:
“The republic of simulations has found an exemplary manifesto in the recent resolution of the INE complaints commission. Faced with the flagrant violation of the electoral law, the referee supports the trick, swallowing MORENA’s absurd justification. The only ones saying they don’t see the start of the campaign in the ruling party to designate their presidential candidate are the referees. …
“The INE invites us to swallow the lie that this campaign is not a campaign; that in this process the presidential candidacy is not decided, that (the candidates) are not trying to influence the survey from which the name of the MORENA representative will come out.”
The corcholatas (candidates)
Six candidates known as “corcholatas” are contesting the MORENA nomination.
The term corcholata (bottle cap) came from AMLO himself – in one of the many examples of his changing Mexican political vocabulary. He said in July 2021: “Ya no hay destapados” – the old word for candidates revealed by the president – “y mi corcholata favorita va a ser la del pueblo.” In English: “I’m the bottle opener and my favourite bottle cap is going to be the one picked by the people.”
The campaign has produced bland pronouncements and boilerplate calls for unity, along with the usual level of Mexican campaign zaniness to be expected for a race without a policy underpinning and a prohibition on mudslinging. The candidates, as expected, all attempted to please the party’s most important person: AMLO, its founder and raison d’etre.
Claudia Sheinbaum
Former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, who stepped down from her post Thursday, enters the contest as the perceived favourite. She jumped the gun on her opponents, holding a mass rally information session at the Revolution Monument, which she described a state-of-the-city report – in which she boasted a remarkable 51% decrease in the homicide rate since taking office in 2018.
Sheinbaum, who identifies herself as “doctor” for her environmental engineering PhD, largely played the gender card in early campaigning, coining the slogan, “It’s time for women,” while surrogates launched the hashtag #PisoParejo (even playing field.) Others in her orbit have portrayed her as a feminist, even though López Obrador has spent much of his administration disparaging the country’s feminist collectives as “conservatives” – one of the few opposition forces to withstand his attacks.
Local politics columnist Adrián Rueda published the results of an internal MORENA poll – made public by Sheinbaum’s campaign – showing the former mayor leading on two questions: “Who do you consider closest to Andres Manuel López Obrador,” and “Who has is best qualified to continue the Fourth Transformation.” Rueda said of the poll in the newspaper Excélsior:
“The survey shows Sheinbaum as an aspirant absolutely dependent on the president. That is her principle merit, not her political abilities or as a leader, which prevents her from marking differences such the promise of putting her own stamp on the 4T.”
Marcelo Ebrard
Ebrard, also a former Mexico City mayor, who deferred to AMLO for the 2012 nomination for a coalition of left-wing parties, was the first candidate to resign his position and jump into the MORENA contest.
His move was interpreted by analysts as an attempt to pressure other candidates to do the same – especially as he is perceived as not being as close to AMLO as Sheinbaum and López, even though he succeed AMLO as mayor of Mexico City.
Ebrard made the biggest splash in the early stages of the MORENA campaign, promising to establish a “Secretariat of the 4T,” with AMLO’s son Andrés Manuel López Beltrán as secretary. López Beltrán almost immediately declined the offer.
Analysts saw Ebrard sending a message to the higher ups in López Obrador’s inner circle with columnist Diego Peterson Farah writing in the Guadalajara newspaper El Informador:
“It’s a message to the hard nucleus of MORENA, not even for the president, rather his palace circle which is controlled by the junior (López Beltrán). … Throwing himself to the ground (López Beltrán’s feet) won’t make him more popular in the poll, but less threatening for the interests created around the president, and the new and transformed mafia del poder.”
The attempt to name “Andy” to an Ebrard cabinet reflects the scuttlebutt that AMLO’s son is quietly influential in his administration with the ability to place his people in important positions.
Ebrard has attracted one member of the López Obrador clan to his campaign, however: the president’s brother Pío López Obrador. The brother became notorious in 2020, when a video surfaced of him receiving envelopes of cash from a Chiapas state government functionary ahead of the 2018 elections. (Any money received by candidates must be declared to the INE.)
Adán Augusto López
Former interior minister and former Tabasco governor Adán Augusto López rounds out the MORENA frontrunners. Though largely lacking in charisma and far from a master in giving stump speeches, López is seen as loyal to the president – and a man cut from the same cloth.
As journalist Javier Risco said in snarky tweet on his attempt to prove his 4T bonafides by bringing in AMLO’s son:
“What did you expect? Marcelo banishing obradorismo in a MORENA process? Claudia is running ahead of him because she is seen as unconditional (in support for AMLO) and Adán Augusto is seen as an (AMLO) clone.”
One of the early questions of the MORENA campaign centred on money: how would candidates campaign hold information sessions without funding? Party president Mario Delgado announced each candidate would receive five million pesos ($290,000).
But López rejected the money, promising the old MORENA trope of pledging the funds for party activities to the downtrodden – this time health projects in Guerrero and Veracruz states.
He promised to instead to finance his activities with savings, according to Reforma, which reported him saying, “I’ve spend a life of many years in public service. That’s allowed me to have savings and it’s time now to help the movement. We’ve always done that.”
He also reverted to the AMLO trope of citing scripture, telling reporters, “The love is the root of all evil.”
But questions of money surfaced almost immediately in Zacatecas state. At a rally information session there, a campaign operator was spotted by reporters from Reforma handing out 200 pesos cash to attendees.
ORGANIZED CRIME COVERS 81% of MEXICAN TERRITORY
AMLO often disputes claims that drug cartels control swaths of Mexican territory – even as he acknowledges they operate illegal checkpoints, which allow his social program promotors pass without let.
It turns out the reach of Mexico’s criminal organizations covers 81% of the national territory, according to a revision of the Guacamaya Leaks hack of Defence Secretariat (SEDENA) emails and open source data. The report by AC Consultores and published by the newspaper El Universal.
According to the report, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) operated in 28 of Mexico’s 32 states, while the Sinaloa Cartel had a presence in 24 states. The CJNG operated into 427 of the country’s 2,469 municipalities; Los Zetas 411; and the Sinaloa Cartel 293. “An immense constellations of groups dominate between 20 and 50 municipalities each,” El Universal wrote, including Los Chapitos, Los Salazar, and Guerreros Unidos, among others.
In total, AC Consultores counted 175 criminal organizations in the country.
SINALOA CARTEL EXPORTS FENTANYL KITCHENS TO COLOMBIA
“While the Biden administration has launched a widely publicized hunt against the sons of drug lord and former Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman Loera, collectively known as ‘Los Chapitos,’ for allegedly being behind a massive operation of illegal fentanyl production and trafficking from Mexico into the U.S., the Guzman brothers are said to be one step ahead, moving their drug production from Sinaloa – the eponymous Mexican state home of the Sinaloa Cartel – to Colombia, according to sources inside the Colombian government and cartel operators.”
MEXICAN PHARMACIES INCREASINGLY SELL TAINTED MEDS IN BORDER, TOURIST TOWNS
Two investigations by Vice News and The Los Angeles Times dropped last week on the widespread lacing of Mexican pain meds (and other meds) with fentanyl and meth, especially in tourist and border towns.
Vice News reported:
“An investigation by VICE News with the Bunk Police, a drug testing company, found that some of these so-called pharmacies are selling pills laced with deadly fentanyl and highly addictive meth. The adulterated nature of the pills as well as their form and fake English-language packing is a sign that they’re produced and distributed by Mexico’s powerful drug cartels and not legitimate pharmaceutical companies, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and experts consulted for this investigation.
“Mexico’s government has done almost nothing to tackle this problem, and is ill-equipped to do so.
“Each pharmacy and each group of small-time gangsters there is affiliated either with CJNG or the Sinaloa Cartel — all turf is clearly divided,” according to a United States government official who asked not to be named as they weren’t authorized to comment on the subject. Street level drug dealers are also allied with pharmacies in some of the resorts we visited.”
‘NARCO CAMPS’ DETECTED IN RECORD NUMBERS
An investigation by the newspaper El Universal found that the military has detected and dismantled more “narco camps” – used to train hitmen and surveil territory – in 2022 than the previous five years combined.
According to public records obtained by El Universal, SEDENA only detected a single narco camp in both 2020 and 2021. But it detected 41 camps in 2022 and 11 camps in the first three months of 2023. The largest nucleus of narco camps were found near the Pacific coast near the limits of Michoacán and Jalisco states – with the CJNG trying to take control of the Tierra Caliente region from a coalition of criminal groups known as Carteles Unidos.
US STOPS ASYLUM APPOINTMENTS IN LAREDO DUE TO EXTORTION IN NUEVO LAREDO
“Several asylum-seekers told The Associated Press that Mexican officials in Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas, had threatened to hold them and make them miss their scheduled asylum appointments unless they paid them. Humanitarian groups in Laredo say they had recently warned CBP of the problems and that certain groups were controlling access to the international crossing on the Mexican side.”
Mexican officials aren’t the only ones extorting migrants in Nuevo Laredo, opposite Laredo, Texas.
The city, home to the busiest commercial port of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border, is dominated by splinter group of Los Zetas known as the Northeast Cartel (CdN). The cartel’s domination of migration through Nuevo Laredo is such that Insight Crime reported:
“They’re monitoring all the shelters here,” he told InSight Crime, as we tried to escape the sun. “They’re extorting us and the migrants.”
“Nearly all the migrant shelter directors in the city are under similar pressure. The Northeast Cartel operates unimpeded by rival groups or local authorities who are at times complicit in their criminal activity. The group has even kidnapped, in broad daylight, some migrant advocates who they see as cutting into their own illicit operations.
“Their influence doesn’t stop at the migrant shelters. Along the banks of the Rio Grande, paid lookouts monitor all movement on both sides of the river. Other members survey parks and plazas where migrants are known to congregate. There are also those at bus stations looking to see who’s arrived from major cities like Monterrey.”
FIFTY PERCENT OF ARMY CONFRONTATIONS OCCUR IN TAMAULIPAS
Researchers at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City recently published the country’s first database of SEDENA confrontations between 2007 and 2022. The data reveal 5,491 confrontations involving the army over that 15-year period, which coincides with the government’s ongoing crackdown on drug cartels. A staggering 50% of the confrontations between 2013 and 2022 occurred in Tamaulipas, which borders Texas and has featured a rupture between the Gulf Cartel and its former armed wing, Los Zetas – and then the further splintering of those cartels.
The database was created with information from SEDENA, including leaked emails from the Guacamaya Leaks hack. Although it contained official information, Ibero researcher Samuel Storr said, “We don’t know how this information was produced, how it was revised or even the reason this information exists.”
SEDENA, using its own methodology, estimates 10% of its confrontations occurred in Tamaulipas between 2017 and 2020 – not the 50% counted by the Ibero database. The researchers also estimated one in five confrontations involving the army occurred in Nuevo Laredo.
Along with being the scene of half of SEDENA’s conflicts, the rate of lethality in Tamaulipas is off the charts, according to the Ibero researchers. SEDENA has a rate of lethality of 4.5 persons dead for every person injured – “much lower than 2012 at 14.7,” a statement from the school said. But in Tamaulipas, the lethality rate reaches 19 dead for every injury and in Nuevo Laredo it hits an astonishing 28.8 dead for every injury. Ernesto López-Portillo, head of the Ibero initiative, said of the high lethality rate:
“The important thing of the lethality index is that it indicates possible illegitimate uses of force, and it is at exorbitant levels in Nuevo Laredo.”
TIJUANA MAYOR MOVES INTO ARMY BASE FOR HER OWN PROTECTION
Tijuana Mayor Monserrat Caballero moved into an army base after receiving threats from criminal groups disputing the border city just south of San Diego. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported:
“The decision, first announced a day prior, comes about a month after one of her bodyguards survived a gun attack while alone in a vehicle. Montserrat Caballero said that she has also received threats through banners hung throughout the city and text messages. …
“Major drug cartels — the Sinaloa cartel, Jalisco New Generation Cartel and factions still loyal to the Arellano Felix Organization — have been waging an increasingly violent turf battle in the city. Killings in Tijuana have risen by about 9 percent in the last 12 months, according to the federal public safety department. Tijuana has more homicides than any other city in Mexico, with 1,818 killings in the 12-month period ending in May.”
MEXICO’S AMBIVALENT POLICY TOWARD CLIMATE CHANGE
Given the fossil fuel-centered policies and projects that have dominated the López Obrador administration, it would seem that the recent clean energy turn, including the Sonora Plan, are attempts to lower tensions with the United States — tensions unresolved during the July 2022 consultation processes called for by the United States Trade Representative (USTR) (which may still end up in state-to-state arbitration). If this turn to renewables is simply to avoid a trade dispute, by increasing clean energy in bordering states, then it is less than meets the eye. Moreover, northern states will likely move on to renewables while southern states will continue to rely on fossil fuel projects and policies, further widening the development gap between North and South — a gap López Obrador promised to reduce.