A woman in AMLO's chair

It will be the first time that Mexico will have a woman president after the elections of next June 2, which are already considered the biggest in the history of the country, and this because, in addition to who will occupy the highest office of the Republic, 500 deputies and 128 national senators will be elected; 31 local congresses and 1,500 city councils.

For the pinnacle of power, the fight will be between two women: Claudia Sheinbaum, the candidate of the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), and Xóchtil Gálvez, who is the candidate of the opposition front. A third party in discord, Jorge Álvarez Máynez, from Movimiento Ciudadano, is far behind both of them according to the latest electoral polls, in which Sheinbaum holds a 12% advantage of the hypothetical votes over the joint candidate of the historical Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the National Action Party (PAN) and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD).

In the opinion of the Mexican analysts themselves, who follow the day to day of the long electoral campaign, the country is more polarized than ever, a situation whose major responsibility they attribute to the President himself, whose speeches have been distinguished throughout his term of office for establishing a populist dialectic of good-bad, honest-thieves, democrats-fascists, truthful journalists-propagators of hoaxes, etc., whose most evident result in Mexico, as in many other countries, is the increasingly violent and visceral antagonism.

The facts and figures are chilling. For example, the 184,000 murders and 100,000 missing persons registered in Mexico so far during AMLO's term in office. Narcoterrorism is undoubtedly the main cause of such bloody statistics, so much so that the U.S. Northern Command puts at 30% the portion of Mexican territory over which the narcos have a little less than absolute control.

Those most critical of AMLO's administration double or even triple that percentage, to the point of placing the country very close to becoming a failed state. "Collecting taxes and having the monopoly of force are no longer exclusive attributes of the Mexican state," they categorically point out.

Thus, the intervention of drug trafficking in the electoral process is not denied by anyone. Its power is undeniable, and it is undeniable that many of the many candidates to the different posts will be drug traffickers, who will control even more the levers of local and regional power, especially the budgets, so that they can increase and extend their infiltration in all types of business, beyond drugs.

From so-called clean energy to transgenic crops, from transportation to waste management, organized crime is exponentially increasing its power, which it displays with ever greater ostentation and arrogance. In the first 67 days of the electoral campaign, 30 candidates were assassinated, a figure that clearly shows the unleashed violence of this powerful organized crime.

This climate favors an almost anodyne electoral campaign, in which there are no disruptive messages that could shake an electorate that contemplates the gigantic increase of the foreign debt (2 trillion pesos), so much so that there seems to be general agreement that the first decision to be taken by the new president will be to call the Minister of Finance and ask him if there is money or credit to pay the monthly payroll of the civil servants.

AMLO's six-year term will end with the disappearance of 109 State structures, trusts and funds, among them the Stabilization and Natural Disaster Funds. There are only cobwebs to face any contingency, and only the recourse to a more and more enormous debt could help in such a circumstance.

However, a large part of this gigantic debt has been for social spending, which the opposition qualifies as unsustainable in the medium and long term if important reforms are not carried out. It will certainly not be alleviated by the average GDP growth of these years, which has been 1.5%, clearly insufficient.

However, the 735 billion pesos allocated to social programs, which have resulted, among other things, in a decrease of 5 million poor people, and a 100% increase in the minimum wage, constitute a claim from which AMLO's successor will not be able to withdraw. Claudia Sheinbaum is therefore the favorite and the one who can ensure the continuity of AMLO's policies.

A victory of the opponent Gálvez would be synonymous of instability. Also, for the moment, Sheinbaum shows herself as a seamless continuation of her current leader, although few doubt that sooner rather than later she will have to shake off his tutelage, once installed in the National Palace.

As of today, the National Renewal Movement (MORENA), the formation founded by AMLO, maintains an alliance with the Green Ecologist Party, which many consider neither one nor the other, and the former Maoist Labor Party. It remains to be seen whether, after López Obrador's departure, this alliance will be maintained.

In any case, a woman president of Mexico means an obvious culture change, even though 12 of Mexico's 32 states are currently governed by women.

Everyone in Mexico looks to the powerful neighbor to the north, whose presidential elections directly affect the present and future of the country, and whose bilateral relations currently have their greatest point of cooperation or divergence in the huge wave of Latin American migration to the United States, after suffering a thousand and one hardships before crossing the Rio Grande.