Mexico has already put a stop to the extreme right before the elections. After the northern neighbors who voted for Trump, or the success of Bolsonaro in Brazil and the recent one of Milei in Argentina, an anti-abortion and pro-traditional family candidate, Eduardo Verástegui, has tried to present himself as a candidate Independent for the presidential election in June this year, but did not receive the sufficient number of signatures required by the country's convoluted electoral bureaucracy. In Mexico, the far right is encountering a powerful wall of ice for historical and current reasons: the political stability that the PRI's perfect dictatorship has built over years does not leave much room for adventure on the sidelines; Nowadays, the country is also experiencing economic solidity that is generating major social uprisings and generous fishing grounds for radical initiatives.
Social networks and their contagious proclamations bring the population closer to every crazy idea that comes their way, but in Mexico they do not reach the place that the extreme right is aiming for because there are several reasons against it. Today, the main limitation is the electoral system, which forces an independent candidate to collect signatures equal to 1% of eligible voters, that is, almost a million, which must also be distributed evenly among 17 states, a major challenge for a non-partisan candidate Infrastructure. Founding a party is even more complex and can only take place in the year after the election. Eduardo Verástegui, a handsome soap opera actor turned politician, barely achieved 14% of the expected support and has to wait for a better fate.
However, the question remains relevant: Why doesn't the extreme right prevail in Mexico, as it does in half the world? This North American country has always played against the grain of surrounding politics. When dictatorships born of coups or hopeful revolutions triumphed in Latin America, Mexicans swam numbly in the warm magma of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which allowed no other adventures. Everyone fit into the PRI: “Here the revolution was left and right, under an institutional monopoly. Those who wanted to impose a more radical version of one sign or another were isolated or eliminated,” says Mario Santiago, researcher at the Mora Institute. “The extreme right sectors, which were linked to militant Catholicism with the help of some businessmen, found their political expression in the PANism of the 1980s,” he says. And a large part of them are still there, in the National Action Party (PAN), the only one that resisted the PRI for decades without coming to power until the turn of the century, with Vicente Fox at the helm.
In September 2021, a political earthquake rocked Mexico when several PAN senators hosted the leader of the Spanish far-right, Santiago Abascal, and a handful of Vox MPs. Historically, Mexican independence is still very recent and the presence of a leader who likes to celebrate the conquest of New Spain and disguise himself as Hernán Cortés raised a cloud of dust from which the more moderate PAN senators soon distanced themselves. Nobody gave credit. Ultra-right in Mexico? But there were those who, like Verástegui, believed that the PAN was lukewarm in its ambitions, which were mainly characterized by outdated Catholic postulates.
Vox leader Santiago Abascal with PAN senators in September 2021.PAN SENATORS
A year later, Mexico hosted the global far right at a congress organized by Verástegui, which, among many others, included Steve Bannon, Eduardo Bolsonaro, Javier Milei and the Chilean José Antonio Kast, live or via video conference from the Atlantic Ocean. The far right felt emboldened and Verástegui announced his jump into politics with an assault rifle on his shoulder and a threat: “See what we will do to the terrorists of Agenda 2030, climate change and gender ideology.” In The matter caused a great stir in Waffenland, but it did not escalate and Mexico continued on its path.
In 2018, after decades of PRI and PAN, a new party, Morena, seized power, led by current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with an uncontestable majority that it still retains today and which, according to polls, achieved a new comfortable victory in the year predicts June for her successor Claudia Sheinbaum. The right is trying to exploit some of its unfulfilled promises, such as eliminating the insecurity that the country is experiencing, with an average of 100 violent deaths per day. But this is not the problem that worries the population most, no matter how tired they are of it. According to international organizations, the republic is experiencing rosy economic days with a strong currency, solid investments and exports, minimum wages that are above inflation for the first time and a promising future that lies in the relocation of companies. It is easy for the president to describe the Argentinian Milei's policies as “hypocritical”.
“The country is divided into two sides, on the one hand Morena and on the other the opposition bloc with the PAN as the main party, because its allies PRI and PRD are in complete decline.” If the extreme right wants to do something, they have to to ally with the PAN, where many are already present but who do not say it openly so as not to frighten the population,” says María Eugenia Valdés Vega, an expert in political processes from the Metropolitan Autonomous University. “Mexico remains a country with liberal traditions and anti-inequality aspirations that do not allow the far right to express itself as it wants or can in other countries,” he claims. Vega Valdés also believes that the electoral system for the formation of parties and the presentation of independent candidacies is so labyrinthine that it borders on the ridiculous, which is why “the extreme right doesn't have it easy either”.
In other areas, Mexico is still in the social conquest of rights already enshrined in older democracies, such as abortion, gay marriage or secularism, although the country successfully separated itself from the powerful church that the Spanish bequeathed to the viceroyalty. Therefore, the strongly Catholic banner raised by the residents of Verástegui does not find approval among the citizens, because feminism is at its best.
In 1953, the national organization Yunque was founded in Mexico, in which even today the most Catholic and right-wing extremist groups unite, some universities are under its patronage and PAN congressmen are associated with it. This group's ties to the Spanish far-right Vox are remarkable, even greater than the strength it shows in its own country. “The far right, disappointed by previous six-year PAN terms in which its agenda was not taken into account, has sought refuge in some states in the cradle in which it was born, namely pro-life, family or anti-abortion organizations .” Mexico. They experienced strong growth around 2012, but it has retreated into the old spaces,” says Mario Santiago, a good expert on this political faction. “The businessmen are bringing neoliberal economic ideology into El Yunque's Catholic agenda,” he adds, but due to the country's economic development, the businessmen are now very quiet. “The ideology of the Mexican far right is associated more than just with fascism, with a strong statist presence, with Spanish Falangism, which is why it sounds so anachronistic, so cold war, still against long hair in men, homosexuality and the preference of the Classic.” Family core,” says Santiago. “I don't want to be a futurist or a catastrophist, but I believe that the rest of the monsters, like Trump, Bolsonaro or Milei, are children of economic crises, which is not happening in Mexico today. But you have to be careful,” he suggests.
In any case, the far-right sandwich in which Mexico is immersed from north and south cannot penetrate its borders, even if Verástegui found hope in that congress in which he was encouraged by the loudest voices in the world to take the plunge into politics. Currently.
Eduardo Verástegui in a promotional video of his campaign in October 2023. EVerastegui
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