Sound and fury
Welcome to a news roundup edition of The Mexpatriate.
September brings a mercurial mood in Mexico. It is the month of patriotic celebrations, and the month the ground shakes.
A national drill is held every Sept. 19—the same date that three earthquakes have rocked the capital, in 1985, 2017 and 2022. While scientists are keen to emphasize that September is statistically no more likely to experience earthquakes than any other month in a country that registers around 20,000 to 30,000 tremors per year, the collective nervous system is on edge.
This September is also the last month of President López Obrador’s term, and unlike many (even most) presidents, this star of Mexican politics is not quietly fading away into self-exile—AMLO is a supernova.
Fueled by the landslide wins of his party in June, he is pushing through a series of constitutional reforms, starting with the most sweeping and most fraught: reforming the federal judiciary. Some of its most controversial changes include the direct election of all federal judges, as well as overhauling the federal judicial oversight body.
As protesters blocked entry to congressional buildings, court workers went on strike (including the Supreme Court), the U.S. ambassador admonished the government, the international press (and the Mexican Catholic church) prophesied doom for Mexico’s democracy and the peso slid, AMLO and his Morena party were undeterred.
The bill passed in the Chamber of Deputies on Sept. 4 in a legislative session held at a community sports center, and was approved in the Senate after a long, dramatic session last Tuesday, which was interrupted by protesters breaking into the Senate chambers and ended in the wee hours of Wednesday with PAN senator Miguel Ángel Yunes Márquez giving his crucial vote to Morena. What he and his family got in exchange has been the subject of much speculation, but they have a “long tail to step on,” as the Mexican saying goes. In the words of journalist Denise Maerker, to get the bill through Congress, Morena “bid farewell to the moral high road.”
Morena stalwart and Senate president Gerardo Fernández Noroña said prior to the Senate vote that “no power on earth” would prevent the legislation from passing, and it appears he was right. As of yesterday, the bill has been ratified by 25 state legislatures and AMLO signed it into law, with President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum by his side, hours before he delivered his final “Grito de Independencia” as president.
Sheinbaum had previously urged lawmakers to proceed carefully with the reform, but also expressed her full support and said “there’s no going back.”
Why has AMLO been so unrelenting in his pursuit of this contentious reform? Why force it through as fast as possible before Sheinbaum takes office on Oct. 1? Why leave his successor with a “poisoned chalice” and political migraine?
One answer is that he sees this as crucial to cementing his legacy, the crowning achievement of his agenda after being thwarted by the courts throughout his term, and he is left with mere weeks to achieve it. In this interpretation, Sheinbaum is a long-suffering loyalist whose mentor is more concerned about his date with history than with hers.
But what if AMLO is actually doing this for Claudia? The shrapnel is flying, but most of it is hitting the president. And if there’s one thing that even his enemies concede about AMLO, it is his resilient popularity. The latest approval rating poll by El Financiero puts him at 65%. In other words, while his reform is fired on from all sides, he knows his shield of popular support can take it. By the time he hands Sheinbaum the presidential sash, maybe the worst of the barrage will be over—attention spans are short, and the world will soon be distracted by the final episodes of Harris vs Trump.
I’ll be publishing a deep dive on the judicial reform and its implications soon, but meanwhile, in Sinaloa…
It appears the war between the House of El Chapo and the House of El Mayo has begun.
Close to two months after the apparent kidnapping of Sinaloa Cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada by Joaquín Guzmán López, gun battles erupted in various parts of the capital, Culiacán, and surrounding areas. There have been reports of at least 36 deaths in the past week, but the true tally could be far higher. On the Sinaloan border with Nayarit, 11 were killed in a shootout on Thursday. The governor of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha Moya, canceled Independence Day festivities and Culiacán schools were closed last week. Several state government websites were hacked yesterday and briefly displayed a threatening message directed at Governor Rocha.
A source quoted by journalist Ioan Grillo said El Mayo’s son “Mayito Flaco” and his contingent “want to fumigate the Chapitos.” A civil war between these factions of the Sinaloa Cartel could be a repeat of the bloody split between “El Chapo” and the Beltrán Leyva clan back in 2008.
“El Mayo” himself was arraigned in a New York City courthouse on Friday—the same one where his former partner in crime, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, was tried and convicted. He pleaded not guilty to 17 felony charges.
Something is rotten in the borough of Cuauhtémoc
While Morena and its allies cleaned up in elections across the country on June 2, including winning the mayor’s race in Mexico City with Clara Brugada, the maroon wave did also experience some setbacks in the capital.
One of them was in the coveted borough of Cuauhtémoc, one of the wealthiest and most iconic in the city, home to the posh neighborhoods of Roma and Condesa as well as the historic center. The borough, which includes 34 colonias (neighborhoods), is a significant contributor to the capital’s GDP. It is Mexico’s Manhattan.
Morena had already lost the borough to the opposition in the mid-term elections of 2021, when Sandra Cuevas (at the time, representing the PRD) became mayor. Cuevas—who looks like a Disney villainess come to life—gained notoriety for her crackdowns on urban menaces like traditional street cart signage and for touring her queendom in a Batmobile-style ATV. Cuevas resigned this year to run for a Senate position with Movimiento Ciudadano (MC), which she lost. She is now plotting a presidential run in 2030.
The two main contenders in the Cuauhtémoc race were Catalina Monreal (Morena) and Alessandra Rojo de la Vega (PAN-PRI-PRD). Rojo de la Vega—a former Green Party (PVEM) representative in Mexico City’s Congress and influencer who was on ex-president Enrique Peña Nieto’s social media team—won the close election with 47.1% of the vote, but was challenged soon after by Monreal’s campaign. After a partial recount, Rojo de la Vega’s win was ratified.
Until Aug. 31, when a city electoral tribunal annulled her victory because of “political gender violence” committed against her rival.
According to Monreal, and the tribunal, she suffered psychological violence during the campaign caused by Rojo de la Vega’s accusations that a powerful man was manipulating her. That man is her father, Ricardo Monreal, a former mayor of Cuauhtémoc (2015-2018), Morena aspirant to the presidency and today, Morena’s leader in the lower house of Congress. He has been an adept political operator, originally for the PRI, then the PRD and the PT, described as akin to “a dental procedure” for Morena by columnist Jorge Zepeda Patterson—“annoying but necessary.”
Catalina Monreal described the tribunal’s ruling as a “historic” precedent for feminists, in a recent interview with Proceso magazine. “This is a maxim of feminism … ‘I believe you, sister’… why, in this case, when I am a victim, am I not believed?”
When asked about taking responsibility for her own campaign statements against her “aggressor,” she said it wasn’t the same. “I didn’t say she was running because of her relationship with a man.”
Rojo de la Vega is of course fighting the ruling, and has said that the tribunal is “trampling on freedom and democracy.” She has also accused the court of bias, alleging that the judge who cast the tie-breaking vote, Armando Arbiz, is Catalina Monreal’s godfather (she denies this).
AMLO, who was on the receiving end of similar allegations of political gender violence from opposition presidential candidate Xóchitl Gálvez during the campaign, warned that it needs “to be looked at very carefully” when “insults, whether true or false” are used as a reason to nullify an election.
And this is not even the opening act of this drama; it is the cherry on top of a cake of campaign kerfuffles, which also included an apparent attempt on Rojo de la Vega’s life in May. The candidate reported the incident as an attempted femicide and claimed municipal law enforcement was slow to respond. She also implied Monreal’s team might have been behind it.
When footage of the attack was leaked to the press, Rojo de la Vega was incensed: the video showed a man wearing a motorcycle helmet, on foot, shoot five times at the trunk of a parked car across the street from him before running away. The suspect, who was either a rookie hitman (or perhaps hired to play one) was arrested on May 17, and a spokesman for the city prosecutor’s office said they have evidence that while he fired the shots, he had “no intention of harming” the candidate.
“Es tiempo de mujeres” and may Cuauhtémoc serve as a reminder that we are equal to men in every way—including when it comes to playing dirty politics.
Can Lake Texcoco be restored?
The inauguration of the Lake Texcoco Ecological Park (PELT) by AMLO and Claudia Sheinbaum on Aug. 30 was a symbolic moment, one of many in a sexenio that has been acutely self-conscious of its historical legacy.
The reserve and recreational park located 16 kilometers northwest of downtown Mexico City is 17 times larger than the sprawling Bosque de Chapultepec, covering 14,000 hectares.
The PELT originated with one of AMLO’s campaign promises—a public referendum on the New International Airport of Mexico City (NAICM), which he had long railed against as a “pharaonic” and corrupt project of his predecessor, President Enrique Peña Nieto. The construction of the NAICM was canceled in 2019, and the new Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA) was built instead on the Santa Lucía air force base. Work began on the 5.5-billion peso PELT in 2020, and in March 2022, the site of the abandoned airport project and its surroundings was officially decreed a Protected Natural Area (ANP).
The environmental restoration plan for the PELT has profound historical (even mythological) roots and ambitious long-term aspirations. “This isn’t just an act of social justice, this is an act of survival and a strategy for the future,” according to Iñaki Echeverría, the PELT director. Lake Texcoco—which according to Echeverría, was “never a deep lake…it was five lakes that in the rainy season would merge”—was first drained by the Mexica after they founded Tenochtitlán on an islet in the western part of the lake, site of the legendary vision of an eagle devouring a snake atop a cactus. Nine rivers from the surrounding mountains converge in this basin and were diverted when construction began on the NAICM.
After the Spanish conquest and for the ensuing centuries, drainage of the lake continued to mitigate flooding in the city. In the 20th century, there were efforts to try to restore parts of the desiccated ancient lake, many led by local communities that have been adversely affected by the degradation of the basin environment, which is also home to thousands of migratory birds and hundreds of resident species of flora and fauna. Eventually, the PELT plans to restore 900 hectares of water bodies through re-routing drainage canals and capturing rainwater in what has been described as an “immense ecological experiment.”
This experiment had its first setback days after the PELT was inaugurated. On Sept. 2, a retaining structure collapsed and 2 million cubic meters of water (or “two Pyramids of the Sun’s worth”) flooded the surrounding area, irreversibly damaging crops—and the reputation of the project’s builders. The construction director was fired and the government has said an investigation is underway to determine who and what was at fault. Members of the Peoples Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT), who have been consulted during work on the PELT, say that they had warned of problems with structural deficiencies.
Pending further details, it is difficult to know if this flood has broader implications for the ambitious project’s goals. After all, the fruits of environmental restoration can be slow to ripen. In the words of Ignacio del Valle Medina from the FPDT, in his speech at the park’s inaugural ceremony:
“Choosing the path of defending the earth and all that it has, its water, its flowers, its fauna, its trees, its rocks, its hills, its songs, its cries, its fossils and even its dead, from which the rest grows, is to choose a path of struggle, of resistance and of building for the long term; it is to take on and choose a path for all, and for a lifetime, because it will always need to be protected.”
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