Welcome to The Mexpatriate.
Once upon a time, President López Obrador confidently declared corruption vanquished but alas, he never slayed the beast; leaving his successor not just a Herculean task, but often a thankless one.
Hernán Bermúdez, the ex-security chief of Tabasco who had been on the run since early this year, was arrested last weekend in Paraguay and promptly expelled back to Mexico to face charges including extortion and kidnapping. Bermúdez was allegedly the leader of a criminal gang called La Barredora; his former boss was Adán Augusto López, ex-governor of Tabasco, secretary of the interior during AMLO’s term and current leader of Morena in the federal Senate.
In the wake of the fuel smuggling scandal involving members of the navy last week, President Sheinbaum is facing the corruption-fighting conundrum: with every crime you expose, you risk your legitimacy, and if you don’t expose enough, you risk your credibility. Is she finally striking fatal blows to the organized crime-state nexus? Or is she just pruning some branches off the diseased tree to make it look better?
Meanwhile, the warmups for the 2026 North American showdown have begun (and I’m not talking about the World Cup). The public consultation process for the upcoming joint review of the USMCA began this week in all three countries, which means any “interested party” can voice opinions on the free trade agreement. Secretary of Economy Marcelo Ebrard said the government will listen to “all sectors” and that he expects the negotiations next year will be “a difficult process.”
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney paid a visit to Sheinbaum this week (the first state visit by a Canadian prime minister in eight years), and both leaders signaled their goal of keeping the USMCA alive. This has been a point of tension in the bilateral relationship since tariff pressure from Trump pushed some Canadian politicians and business leaders into trying to cut Mexico out of the deal. “We will move forward together,” said Carney.
In today’s letter, I cover Sheinbaum’s first “Grito de Independencia,” a water war between Guanajuato and Jalisco, the latest scandal—or nothingburger—about two of AMLO’s sons, and what I’m reading (and watching).
The king is dead, long live the queen
“¡Viva la religión! ¡Viva nuestra santíssima madre de Guadalupe! ¡Viva Fernando VII! ¡Viva la América! ¡Y muera el mal gobierno!”
The exact words of the battle cry of Father Miguel Hidalgo in the early hours of Sept. 16, 1810 are of course lost to the fog of history, but these are traditionally considered some of the priest’s original “arengas” or rallying cheers.