Continuity. For better or worse, that was the message from the largest election in Mexico’s history (by number of votes cast and contested seats).
AMLO protégé Claudia Sheinbaum rolled to a pretty epic landslide in Latin America’s second-largest economy, where the former climate scientist doubled the vote share of businesswoman Xóchitl Gálvez, more also-ran than runner-up.
The walkover for Sheinbaum was a ringing endorsement of AMLO’s tenure and spoke to the power of his personality cult (and personality cults more generally). His popularity stood at ~60% when he passed the torch to Sheinbaum, who ran Mexico City before stepping aside to become Morena’s presidential candidate.
Sheinbaum will be Mexico’s first female president, notable not just as a counterpoint to the country’s machista reputation but also for the juxtaposition with the nation’s murder rate for women. As El País notes, between 10 and 11 women are murdered every, single day in Mexico, where “the impunity rate exceeds 95%.” “Profound cultural changes don’t happen overnight,” Sheinbaum remarked, acknowledging the problem in a recent interview with the BBC.
Sheinbaum’s also Mexico’s first Jewish president. Her maternal grandparents fled the holocaust, arriving in Mexico from Bulgaria in the early 1940s.
An energy engineer by trade, Sheinbaum’s list of accomplishments in the field of climate science is long. She contributed to a panel which shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, for example. Now, her list of political accomplishments will include half a dozen years in the National Palace.
Without taking anything away from Sheinbaum, she owes a lot (which is to say almost all of it) to López Obrado. Her campaign was effectively just one giant promise to continue AMLO’s “Fourth Transformation,” the grandiose (and, some argue, preposterously bumptious) appellation López Obrador’s fan base prefers for Morena’s social project.
That platform includes a hodgepodge of wildly popular handouts which together hoisted millions out of poverty. Mexicans have seen the minimum wage double, labor laws reformed, pensions expanded and vacations lengthened. Nearly three-quarters of voters say their standard of living has improved, according to Gallup.
Sheinbaum also indicated a willingness to push through a series of constitutional “reforms” AMLO championed. Critics worry that particular bit of López Obrador’s unfinished business could manifest as democratic backsliding in the event Sheinbaum secures enough legislative clout to see it through. He might be a leftist, but AMLO’s nevertheless a politician in the tradition of Trump, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Modi and Viktor Orban. He’s a soft autocrat.
Markets and business leaders are anxious for evidence that Sheinbaum might be more amenable to fostering a cordial rapport with the private sector, and Mexico’s energy policies are obviously front and center in that discussion. She’ll also need to manage what can be a prickly relationship with the US at a time when anti-immigration sentiment is strong in America.
On the trade front, Mexico has an ostensible opportunity to capitalize on Washington’s efforts to de-risk supply chains and shift production away from China, but there again, a lot depends on the border crisis: “Made in Mexico” is unpalatable for many US voters in the context of the GOP’s southern “invasion” propaganda.
There are two elephants in this particular room. The first is the drug trade. Simply put: Mexico’s a narco state. Anyone who tells you different doesn’t know what they’re talking about. The cartels run the country. At least three-dozen people were killed this election cycle while seeking public office, according to The New York Times, all of them by the cartels. To be clear: Mexico’s not Colombia ca. the glory days of the Medellín Cartel, but it’s bad. And without making unfounded accusations, it’s unrealistic to suggest the AMLO government was completely free from cartel influence-buying.
Second, many political observers (myself among them) doubt AMLO is just going to ride off into the sunset. Again: Sheinbaum owes her election to AMLO’s personality cult. That’s certainly not to devalue or downplay Sheinbaum’s credentials. She’s a PhD who shared a Nobel Peace Prize, ran the fifth largest city in the world and ascended the highest office in Mexico. So, you know, who the hell am I, right? All I’m saying it that López Obrador’s a generational political figure. Sheinbaum will forever exist in his shadow and there’ll always be questions as to whether he’s still pulling the strings.
“There’s this idea that I don’t have a personality,” Sheinbaum once said. “That AMLO tells me what to do. And that when I get to the presidency, he’s going to be calling me on the phone every day.” The point was to dispense with that perception. Sheinbaum inadvertently underscored it.
If the drug cartels were behind at least 36 killings of political candidates in Mexico, it doesn’t seem a stretch that they would do the same across the border to political candidates that are “anti-cartel”.
Also, from what I have read, one of the significant contributors to the economic improvement for ordinary Mexicans is relatives who migrate to the US, take a job, and send money back home to relatives still in Mexico.
If Trump gets elected- he has said he will be tough on immigration and on drugs- which are both policies that are not going to be received well by various groups in Mexico.
Going to be interesting.
And, as much as Trump says about immigration, he and Biden spew much the same rhetoric and share much in their positions. The thing is, unemployment is at historical lows. There are job openings all over. Our birth rates are below replacement and to have growth we need immigrants to do the jobs other aren’t willing or available to do. Lots of noise but reality tells us otherwise.
Sorry, off-topic, but my ears were burning. Like many extremely skilled and experienced professionals right now, I’ve been out of work for fourteen months now, with dwindling prospects and hope of survival, and ballooning existential fear and depression. Where are these job openings? Because nobody I’ve spoken to in the last year or so can seem to find them, and that includes dozens of recruiters.
Here’s something to read, a single representative sample, one thread in one forum, picked because it happens to be the page I was reading right before I came here to catch up on HR. This one page is entirely typical of conversations I’ve seen every day for a long time across multiple employment-related sites. You can find these conversations every day now. This is a commonly seen norm, not an outlier. Does this sound like the kind of conversations you hear every day in a country with “job openings all over”? https://www.reddit.com/r/Layoffs/comments/1d5eqxb/laid_off_last_year/
“I got laid off last year. Now it’s been more than a year and still Nothing.”
“You’re not alone. 25 years experience, 3 degrees from top tier schools, 16 months unemployed”
“Similar stats as you. 24 months unemployed. ”
“Same stats here as well. Over 25 years of experience, in my 14th month of unemployment.”
“You’re my twin OP. 14 months here, still nothing. 9 yrs of exp ”
“You are not alone , 18+ years post technical graduate degree + mba in the same situation”
“164 working days unemployed here. ”
“Been 1+ year for me too. ”
“Going on 14 months . Solidarity ! ”
“been out of work since January”
Meanwhile, on the job boards that tell you the number, job openings sometimes get 250 applicants for a single position. One recruiter recently told me she got over 1000.
So, please. Where are there “job openings all over”? A lot of us could really use that information.
Sorry to be prickly, but if it’s not obvious, I, like a lot of people, am outright desperate! Where are these job openings?
The market for engineers designing and building hardware is very tight right now. Check defense contractors, they’re needing folks from all disciplines.
May you find work you enjoy, fellow human.
El Naranja hasn’t heard the opening bid from the cartels yet. He’s morally flexible. I’m sure they can come to an arrangement.
One can make the opposite point.
The mafia would love to have bribable politicians and administrators in the upper echelons of US power. A felon in the White House is the ultimate prize for Mexican cartels.
One could argue it’s in their interest to help him. I wouldn’t be surprised if cartels are behind the latest bump in fundraising for the felon.
This was not on my radar screen. Mexico index is -10% on this election. Investors surely were expecting the win?
Yes, but not the magnitude of the win. There is fear that she will take it as a mandate to expand benefits to the lower 80%.
Ah so.
Seems could be good for consumer goods and services names catering to that 80%.
Well, for starters they tore apart FMX today. Maybe that trade was already reflected during AMLO’s term?
I exited FMX some months ago. Interested in re-entering it now. ETF dynamics pulling down everything, likely some opportunities created.
FMX popped back, but Walmex also interesting.
Very long-term holder of that. Usually a steady as she goes stock.
Me too. WMT’s report suggested WMMVY’s quarter wouldn’t be a signif beat, so the latter was soft, but I don’t mind. If Presidenta sends money to the low/middle class, it should be good for WMMVY (and FMX, and MELI, and probably other names I don’t know). If she doesn’t, then EWW comes back and drags the names with it. WMMVY is usually a full sized position for me, today I started making it a 1.5X position. FMX is harder for me to figure out, expansion to Europe and in ?Columbia? (anyway some LatAm country I’m dubious about) confuse me, the stock was coming in well before the election, plus the election dip lasted a day, so need to think harder before re-entering FMX in size. I still have some stub positions in FMX (sort of “keeping it on the screen” size positions).
I screen the S&P 1500 and score the names as “momentum” and “inflection”. Inflection criteria are as you’d expect – big upside to highs, closer to lows, low RSI, positive RSI change, positive 1M or 3M revisions, positive price return in L1M or L3M. Right now I’m only shopping in the inflection category and there is plenty to shop – 14% of the S&P1500 passes my threshold score for infection, even if most of them look like frogs on a closer look. Most of the momentum category looks seriously overvalued.
Worth spending more time on Mexico. Now our largest trading partner surpassing China. And the 12th largest economy exceeding S Korea.
The margin of victory in Mexico was too large. The margin in India is too low. I guess investors demand perfection, unless AI is mentioned.