By RICARDO CASTILLO There are two ways of looking at Mexico’s 2021 midterm elections: On the one hand, there will be the anticipated participation of the country’s seven existing political parties. On the other, there are still-undetermined organizations seeking registration with the National Electoral Institute (INE), and it is not clear whether they will get in or not. According to
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By RICARDO CASTILLO AMLO Throws Himself a Party Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) attracted over 70,000 cheering fans at Mexico City’s main square, El Zócalo, on Sunday, Dec. 1. They all came to hear him review his first year in office, as well as see how he has managed to comply with 89 of his 100 electoral campaign
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By RICARDO CASTILLO The frictional mood at Mexico’s majority political party, the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), became evident on Monday, Aug. 19, as current Senate leader Martí Batres Guadarrama lost his bid for reelection to Mónica Fernández Balboa by 33 to 29 votes. Should all go well, Fernández Balboa will be confirmed next week and begin her position as Senate
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By RICARDO CASTILLO The rumblings of the upcoming Constitutional Wars are growing thunderous in Mexico’s cloudy political skies. Over the past two weeks, the group of 12 National Action Party (PAN) governors across the nation are threatening a rebellion against the “dictatorship” of President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and his majority in both houses of Congress through the National
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Unwittingly, Mexico has now returned to the exact same quagmire that it revolted against more than 70 years ago: the one-party political system. Today, the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) has both the presidency and a majority control in both houses of Congress, winning 53 percent of the vote in the July 1 elections. For at least the next three years, whatever
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By RICARDO CASTILLO What happened during the first week of the National Regeneration Movement’s (Morena) new majority in both Mexican houses of Congress (the Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber of Senators) only served to prove what I had suspected: The Mexican left, now represented by the Morena political party, has been down so long that its members don’t know what to do
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By RICARDO CASTILLO It’s been five full weeks since Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) won the Mexican presidential election. You’d think that he would be immediately recognized for his victory, at least with the moniker of “president-elect,” but in the national press, the moniker has instead been “virtual president-elect.” But as of Wednesday, Aug. 8, this situation will change. The Federal
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Slowly but surely, Mexico is preparing for the inevitable upcoming political transition. The surge of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) political party from scratch to the most powerful party in the country in a four-year period caught everyone by surprise. Suddenly, the political scene is confronted again with a one-party system, which has not been seen in Mexico since the 1970s,
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By RICARDO CASTILLO A small incident provoked by a well-known journalist highlighted a problem that is beleaguering the current Mexican electoral process. Over the past weekend, the news that political columnist Ricardo Alemán had been fired by two television stations was news. Curiously enough, Alemán was not fired for any content in his two political programs. He was fired for forwarding
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By RICARDO CASTILLO With the Mexican elections now fully underway in a race for a total of 3,416 different posts, it is worth taking the time to look back on history and see how the country got this far into democracy, as well as reviewing the odd shape of the political alliances of nine parties into three separate
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