The Dangerous Radical on Our Southern Border
The Dangerous Radical on Our Southern Border
Sheinbaum’s inaugural speech was a study in bad ideas.
Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in as Mexico’s president last Tuesday. Her ceremony was replete with the pomp and circumstance expected of the Gobierno de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos. Her Toma de Protesta (oath of office speech) was delivered with a mild-mannered, cool affect—starkly contrasting with the flair and bombast of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). On matters of substance, however, the event cemented AMLO’s legacy in Mexican history. Sheinbaum paid AMLO reverent homage, hailing his personal and political achievements:
You [AMLO] have asked us on several occasions not to unveil busts or put your name on streets, avenues, or neighborhoods; nor monuments or making great tributes. The truth is that you don’t need to because you will always be where only those who fight all their lives reside, those who do not give up, those who restore hope and joy; you will always be in the heart of the people of Mexico.
Sheinbaum’s speech itself was AMLO’s first great tribute. The Señora Presidenta postulated that “Mexican Humanism,” which she dubbed a “peaceful revolution” and the “Fourth Transformation of Mexico’s public life,” will be carried on in earnest. She waxed on, noting AMLO’s activism as a means of firing another diplomatic shot at Spain:
He retires from public life as a democrat and Maderista, to continue fighting from another trench, to write about what he has maintained since his first days when he worked with the Chontal Maya: that the origin of Mexico’s cultural greatness lies in the great civilizations that lived in this land centuries before the Spaniards invaded. It is no coincidence, but a harmony of history, that yesterday the reform of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States was published in the Official Gazette of the Federation, granting full rights to the indigenous and Afro-Mexican peoples of Mexico.
Sheinbaum’s potent oratory laid out a sweeping, visionary account of Mexican history. From the revolutionaries to the activists of 1968 to Pancho Villa, Sheinbaum deified a litany of progressive national heroes and symbols. Omitted, naturally, were the symbols and legacies of men who represented what Sheinbaum might call a less-progressed Mexico. King Felipe VI wasn’t invited, after all.
Mexico’s first female president continued the aspirational address with similar deifications of Mexican women. Capitalizing on her mandate, she made an unequivocally feminist speech, though not in the grievance-laden manner associated with American feminism. Her remarks contained only one passing condemnation of machismo. The message largely focused on addressing the material needs of Mexican women, a noble endeavor in a nation that still faces a 43 percent poverty rate.
Sheinbaum laid the cornerstone of AMLO’s monument throughout the policy-oriented section of her speech. Mirroring AMLO’s 2018 Toma De Protesta, she listed her commitments and priorities, one to one hundred. The beginning of Sheinbaum’s list recounted specific commitments to Mexican Humanism and emphasized broad, populist economic policies. Given her party’s economic successes, Sheinbaum was able to indict the pre-AMLO past with authority:
The answer is: It [AMLO’s sixenio] changed the country’s development model, from the failed neoliberal model and the regime of corruption and privileges to one that emerged from Mexico’s fertile history, love for the people and honesty. We call it Mexican Humanism.
AMLO did, indeed, change Mexico’s developmental model. Embracing LNG and other fossil fuels, AMLO enabled a post-COVID manufacturing boom. Having successfully negotiated the USMCA Agreement, AMLO masterfully positioned Mexico for the onset of nearshoring. Impressive infrastructure projects across the country are being completed at a rapid clip, including transnational railways and port construction. The country benefited from record foreign investment throughout 2024 and has amassed an impressive roster of relocations. Morena has capitalized on the windfall, funding generous social programs that have contributed to the party’s staggering popularity. Though Mexico continues to struggle with inflation, the AMLO years fostered a relatively stable peso, especially in the eyes of an electorate accustomed to volatility.
Anecdotally, a conventional bullishness percolates in Texas. I’ve heard Dallas energy retailers, Houston pipeline salesmen, and Austin tech engineers all say the same thing: “Watch out for Mexico.” I can’t say I share the optimism, but the integration of the Texas triangle into a wider Latin American market, especially in light of the creation of the TXSE in DFW, is viewed as inevitable.
I hate to break the news to my bullish Texas friends reading this, but Claudia Sheinbaum spent three years at the California Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory completing a PhD thesis in energy engineering. Her speech reflected an appreciation for market-oriented renewable investment, but contained a pledge to cap fossil fuel consumption at a daily 1.8 million barrels. She provided an assessment befitting a Berkeley education:
We are going to promote energy efficiency and the transition to renewable sources of energy to absorb, through these sources, the growth in energy demand. Remember that the energy reform proposed a production of three million barrels per day. That is environmentally impossible; it is better to promote efficiency and renewable sources.
I wrote last week that the United States might find Sheinbaum to be a less practical actor than her predecessor. Nearshoring, a critical priority for the United States as the global order frays, requires Mexican investment in fossil fuel production. The energy output required for manufacturing growth cannot be achieved by cobbling together an assortment of renewables. Taking Sheinbaum’s words, this task would be “environmentally impossible.” Her environmental proposals, coupled with judicial reform and broadly left-wing rhetoric, fueled a 14 percent drop in the peso’s value in the aftermath of her election. The delivery of her speech might communicate moderation to Americans accustomed to vitriolic rhetoric, but doubling down on ill-conceived ideological commitments amid a currency downturn is generally considered political malpractice. Ask Liz Truss.
Sheinbaum’s inflexible environmental views won’t just endanger further economic integration, it will endanger the sustainability of social subsidies that have proved the foundation of Morena’s popularity. Sheinbaum, armed with her PhD, will stake her presidency and popularity on reversing a key component of the AMLO developmental model she so ardently hails. Limiting fossil fuel extraction is a risky bet across multiple fronts.
Despite this, Sheinbaum’s speech was impressive. It was visionary in its ambition, sweeping in scope, and straightforward in purpose and policy. From an American conservative’s perspective, her remarks might smack of socialism or climate alarmism, but those are mundane grievances. The troubling aspect of Sheinbaum’s address, rather, was what was communicated by omission.
Sheinbaum made no reference to the ongoing crisis at the U.S .–Mexico border or human trafficking. This is remarkable, given that American politics are wholly subsumed to the crisis. Sheinbaum would speak briefly on the need to reduce record homicides, but only as a segue to attack Felipe Calderón’s mid-2000s war on drugs: “In terms of security, we will guarantee the reduction of high-impact crimes. Calderón’s irresponsible war on drugs, which continues to do so much damage to Mexico, will not return. Our conviction is that security and peace are the fruit of justice.”
In other words, Sheinbaum plans to continue AMLO’s failed “hugs not bullets” approach to narco-terrorism. Morena’s record on crime has been catastrophic for Mexico’s citizenry. Homicides have been roughly 30–40 percent higher during the AMLO years than they were during the much-demonized war on drugs. Large swaths of the country remain under paramilitary control while human and drug trafficking markets are booming. Unless serious reversals are achieved, Mexico will lose their 500,000th citizen to drug-related homicide sometime during Sheinbaum’s term. Soon, the death toll will surpass that of Mexico’s cataclysmic War of Independence from Spain. Are Mexican citizens sure Felipe VI is the head of state who owes them an apology?
Sheinbaum’s only substantive mention of migration was her reference to the “heroes and heroines” living in the United States, sending “help” back to communities in Mexico. The overt praise for the $60 billion remittance flow from the United States to Mexico was jaw-dropping. Capital outflow associated with remittances reduces domestic demand and contributes to American wage stagnation. This practice, accomplished mostly via criminally trafficked labor, is inherently at odds with the economic interests of U.S. citizens. Sheinbaum’s open and profuse praise for the practice (with FLOTUS in attendance) lends credence to the unsettling suspicion that the Mexican government is acting (or rather not acting) to let traffickers operate undeterred. The financial motive is there, after all. When remittances of the U.S. dollar account for four percent of your nation’s GDP, confronting traffickers could become costly. One could also speculate that the Biden administration has been using this flow of remittances as a form of back-door foreign aid.
Claudia Sheinbaum may not be the most important head of state in the minds of the next American administration’s diplomats. Heads of state in Eastern Europe and the Middle East are competing for the guest-of-honor invitation to the State Department happy hour. But for an American president concerned with solving key crises of national interest—supply-chain security, migration, fentanyl proliferation—engagement with Mexico will be crucial. Sheinbaum’s address shows that, like her predecessor, Mexico is prepared to assert a sharp interpretation of their national interests. It would be a mistake to underestimate her political appeal and, by extension, Mexico’s new concept of self-identity. For the next sexenio, Claudia Sheinbaum will be a crucial figure in the story of the United States. She follows a man whose approval ratings and public adoration defy a dreary global political climate. AMLO has fundamentally reoriented Mexican politics, with consequences likely to resonate for decades. Will a great woman follow the great man?
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