MORENA: The Fight for Mexico’s Soul

My Dad grew up in Celaya, Guanajuato, a central Mexican city of half a million people in a region affectionately known as La Cuna de Independencia—the cradle of Mexican independence and the Mexican heartland. He lived near the city center, where street vendors sold tacos and tamales, and tortillerias and carnicerias sold daily fresh tortillas and meat. When we visited in Summer 2018, street vendors and tortillerias and carnicerias abounded in a true modern city, naturally paired with American superstores like Costco and Home Depot. 

But just one year later, Celaya’s streets run nearly empty in a city brought to its knees. My family, once ecstatic upon our arrival now implore us not to return; my cousins, once insistent we go out for 4am tacos, now hesitate upon leaving their homes at night. Six months before my family visited Celaya, the state of Guanajuato saw an already terrifyingly high 62 homicides in the first 10 days of 2018—just over 6 murders per day. Just one year later in January 2019, Guanajuato ended the month with 275 homicides, a rate of nearly 9 murders per day. Shockingly, though, violence in Mexico overall, while less than in Guanajuato, remains high at 27.7 murders per 100,000 residents.

As the party wages the battle for Mexico’s soul against the movement, Mexicans face an uncertain but realistic hope that MORENA will foster change for the better.

Danger in Mexico intensified amidst Andres Manuel López Obrador’s (sometimes referred to by his initials, AMLO) rise to the presidency in July 2018. López Obrador won by a landslide (52.9 percent of the vote). After already losing two elections, he created a new party, el movimiento de la regeneración nacional (National Regeneration Movement, or MORENA). MORENA more than won Mexico’s presidency—it won Mexico’s spirit over promises of eliminating corruption in a country that loses millions of pesos every year to misappropriation of funds, whose police forces largely work in the pockets of cartel bosses, and in which 130 political workers lost their lives leading up to the election. AMLO calls Mexico’s corrupt institutions the “mafia de poder,” the mafia of power, and painted himself as Mexico’s savior by vowing to eliminate it. 

Mexican voters, unhappy with presidencies of Enrique Peña Nieto (from the center-left PRI—the institutional revolutionary party) and Felipe Calderón (from the far right PAN—the national action party)—both of which oversaw Mexico’s failed war on drugs—overwhelmingly voted for AMLO and MORENA. Under all other alternatives, the government failed them.

In fact, MORENA dominated every single state in Mexico except Guanajuato, the only one that voted against AMLO. In Celaya, my family members viewed him as the Mexican Hugo Chavez—a communist dictator, whose socialist principles and radical leftism would spell economic doom. They scapegoat him for Celaya’s problems, which augmented significantly after his election. As the beginning of his 6-year term coincides with Celaya’s implosion, understanding how he deserves (and does not deserve) the blame for Celaya’s, Guanajuato’s, and all of Mexico’s instability can explain MORENA not only as a political movement, but as a broad appeal to change Mexico’s political, economic and communal culture.  

Immediately upon assuming the presidency, AMLO began holding daily press briefings, a dramatic turn given Mexico’s poor record on press freedom. He also sold the presidential plane and abandoned the glitzy motorcades of past presidencies, a sign of austerity with Mexico’s population, most of whom voted for him tired of pretentious politicians. Additionally, AMLO reaffirmed policies cutting politicians’ salaries—at one of his first conferences, he said “it is dishonest when an official received up to 600 thousand pesos a month [about $29,000]. That is corruption.” Populism, connecting the government to the people, and abandoning elitist traditions formed MORENA’s foundations and the basis of López Obrador’s policies. 

MORENA won Mexico’s spirit over promises of eliminating corruption in a country that loses millions of pesos every year to misappropriation of funds and whose police forces largely work in the pockets of cartel bosses.

But AMLO simultaneously represents MORENA the movement and MORENA the political party; so, while AMLO’s policies tried to improve government transparency, he also needed to fulfill political obligations Mexico’s elites and party members. In fact, despite his populist rhetoric on corruption his government has failed to truly prosecute any corrupt politicians. Of all major federal projects in AMLO’s first three months, he awarded 70 percent of them directly without competitive bids. His questionable decisions justify my family’s skepticism of MORENA. One of my cousins, Pedro, an aspiring musician in Celaya with a daughter and family, said that voting in Mexico means choosing the least corrupt party. Whether from PAN, PRI, MORENA, or anyone else, he thinks no politician cares about him, including Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Another cousin, Cristobal, working for Celaya’s PAN-dominated city government, entirely blames MORENA. In his eyes, it started with Huachicoleo.

Huachicoleo—gasoline robbery by local mafias—crippled Central Mexico in 2018 before AMLO captured the presidency. By the election, huachicoleros siphoned 150,000 barrels of fuel per day from Pemex, Mexico’s state oil company. Fuel theft occurred most at Pemex’s refinery in Guanajuato, concentrating most huachicolero violence in central states. While huachicoleo’s prevalence originated decades ago, crackdowns on drug cartels during previous administrations moved some Mexican cartels more often towards Mexico’s bountiful supply of fossil fuels. When neoliberal PRI reforms to Mexico’s oil industry rose oil and gas prices, cartels tapped into pipelines and bribed complicit gas stations to sell their cheaper stolen fuel.

Upon inheriting a complicated huachicoleo epidemic, López Obrador ordered six major pipelines closed in December 2019 and halted production at Gulf coast Pemex refineries, increasing Mexico’s dependence on alternative transportation across the country. Using 5,000 tanker trucks to supply gasoline to 11,000 gas stations across Mexico, AMLO’s strategy, while eliminating major huachicolero threats, forced gas station closures, leading to long lines while the increased expense of using trucks raised gas prices. Cristobal complained earlier this year that only two in all of Celaya remained open. While likely an exaggeration, his complaints capture frustrations of a 500,000-person city amidst the huachicoleo crisis and AMLO’s inability to curb it. 

Worse yet, while huachicoleo largely diminished, huachicoleros still exist but with no more gasoline to steal, they turned to other means: extortion. On the morning of August 5 of this year, gunmen invaded local tortilleria La Indita and massacred the store, including Virginia, the owner, and two employees. Moments later, at another tortilleria, Cementos Fortaleza, gunmen assassinated an employee. Why? Because a week earlier, business owners (including tortilleria owners) protested government inaction over extortion gangs trying to threaten them for money by closing their stores and organizing outside city hall. Extortionists decided to teach those owners a lesson that resulted in entire Celaya neighborhoods with no tortillerias or even carnicerias (vast majorities of people buy tortillas and meat) and owners afraid to speak to the press out of fear that their fates will mirror Virginia’s. My cousin Bárbara, mother of 10-year old Dani and owner of a local contracting firm, chose to return home early on her birthday due to danger on the streets. Entire neighborhoods in Celaya run devoid of people, not because nobody lives their but because leaving their homes could cost them their lives.

While representing MORENA the movement, López Obrador also represents MORENA the political party.

While Celaya represents a uniquely desperate case, the end of huachicoleo led to economic losses across the country as huachicoleros turn to increasingly exploitative measures. In August, a national drugstore association said criminal gangs announced that drugstores lost 750,000 dollars in sales the previous month and 1,000,000 in freight shipment robberies as stores began finding it impossible to ship or supply medicine, health and beauty care items. AMLO’s decision to attack huachicoleo therefore cost Mexico’s economy dearly by unintentionally forcing shop closures.

Without tortillas, Mexicans lose the cornerstone of their cuisine. Without security, street vendors, town squares and even local soccer games lose their flair, popularity and place in Mexican society. Workers cannot drive without gas and without business Mexican consumerism plummets. López Obrador’s single policy represents MORENA’s impact on Mexican society and culture at large, which begs two main questions. First, how much blame does MORENA deserve? And second, should Mexicans feel optimistic about MORENA and AMLO?

In response to the first question, my cousin Cristobal believes MORENA deserves all the blame. He and the conservative local PAN government take AMLO’s decisions at face value: López Obrador cut oil, thereby naturally incentivizing former huachicoleros to find other creative means of exploitation and causing gasoline shortages across Mexico. Yet MORENA inherited disastrous policies from former presidents Felipe Calderón, who began Mexico’s war on drugs, and Enrique Peña Nieto, whose neoliberal policies rose gas prices sufficiently high to incentivize criminal groups to increase fuel theft. AMLO therefore began his term with his back against the wall. PAN and PRI governments left him with no easy alternative; refuse to address huachicoleo and risk it worsening and suffering backlash—similarly, pursue a policy ending huachicoleo but not criminal violence and prompt further backlash. Also, extortionists began forcing businesses to close because the PAN-led government refused to acknowledge the owners’ protests. Though not innocent, AMLO does not deserve all guilt. 

So, should Mexicans find comfort in MORENA? MORENA the political party so far failed to curb corruption or violence and passed policies leading to more violence damaging cornerstones to Mexican culture and identity. MORENA the social movement, however, changed Mexico’s political climate—like all Mexican political movements it cannot escape dirty politics, but it represents a message from ordinary Mexicans that they will no longer tolerate incompetence from their government.

Tortillas, gasoline, street vendors and liveliness in Mexico’s cities can all return; governmental irresponsibility demands national action. Therefore, as the party wages the battle for Mexico’s soul against the movement, Mexicans face an uncertain, divisive but realistic hope that MORENA will foster change for the better. For now, though, the war wages on.