With more than 98 million Mexicans called to the polls, what happens next Sunday will determine the complicity or firmness of the Mexican Government in the face of dictatorships in the region
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 29 May 2024 — Several electoral processes of vital importance for the region will impact the short and medium term path of Latin America. But none of these elections will leave a greater mark on public relations and the consensus positions taken by the continent than the elections that will take place on June 2 in Mexico. The northern nation sets, to a large extent, the pace of diplomacy in this part of the world.
With more than 98 million Mexicans called to the polls, what happens next Sunday will determine the complicity or firmness of the Mexican Government in the face of the region’s dictatorships. Although the polls show the official candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum, 61, as the favorite, her mandate does not have to strictly follow what was laid down by her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, regarding the Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan regimes. The first woman to become president of Mexico can opt for position that is less benevolent and complicit with the authoritarianisms of this hemisphere.
The first woman to become president of Mexico can opt for position that is less benevolent and complicit with the authoritarianisms of this hemisphere
In the six-year term that López Obrador has been in power, blindness to the excesses committed by Havana, Caracas and Managua has been a hard blow for the millions of citizens of those nations. The politician has not only remained silent in the face of the repressive waves that, as in Cuba after the popular protests of 11 July 2021, left more than a thousand political prisoners, but he has supported in international forums, invited to official events and propped up with oil Mexican a ruler whom no one elected at the polls, as is the case of Miguel Díaz-Canel.
The leader of Mexico’s Morena Party has made clear his sympathy towards Castroism and the old ideological ties that unite him to a failed regime that has condemned its population to permanent economic crisis and lack of civic rights. In the mass exodus that Cuba is experiencing, with part of that scenario the Mexican territory through which the “ordinary rafters” cross to reach the southern border of the United States, López Obrador has failed to point out the responsibilities of Havana. The Island in flight is fundamentally determined by inefficient economic policies and the reduction of fundamental rights that have characterized the Cuban model for more than half a century.
Should she become president — and the polls indicate that she is the favorite — Sheinbaum can distance herself from that path of concomitance and myopia that her predecessor has followed in relation to Havana. It would be enough to lower the tone of camaraderie, reduce Díaz-Canel’s prominence in regional events and provide greater support to Cuban emigrants, recognizing them as refugees fleeing authoritarianism, to distance herself from the path of collusion that her predecessor has plowed.
It would be enough to lower the tone of camaraderie, reduce Díaz-Canel’s prominence in regional events and provide greater support to Cuban emigrants
The priority of the new president’s mandate, whatever name the polls show, will undoubtedly focus on the deep problems that afflict Mexico. Violence, caused largely by organized crime, is a priority that the president will probably have to face with different methods than those of López Obrador, given the little effect of these strategies in a reality where insecurity has not stopped growing in the last years.
However, a Mexico absorbed in its emergencies is also a problem for the region that needs its active leadership and without half measures. A first step is to assume that leading role would be to make clear an unrestricted attachment to democracy and a rejection of regimes such as those of Daniel Ortega, Nicolás Maduro and Miguel Díaz-Canel. These men of bad company only diminish the prestige, credibility and diplomatic strength of a country that is destined to assume leadership for freedom in this region.
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This text was originally published in Deutsche Welle for Latin America.
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