Will October be a new beginning for Mexican politics with Claudia Sheinbaum taking over as President or will it be more of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) pulling the strings from behind the scenes?
In the last month, AMLO with a larger majority in the Congress pulled off at least two major legislative victories, an amazing accomplishment for a lame duck and clear evidence of his enormous and continuing power. He won approval of the constitutional change to have judges elected despite warnings from the US and Canada and then made the transition of the National Guard to the military. We didn’t hear any protest from Sheinbaum during this process.
Have these victories satisfied him or will he continue to rule from behind the scenes? He leaves office with extraordinarily high approval ratings; why wouldn’t he continue using that deep well of popularity? Can Sheinbaum find areas where she has free rein to pursue her goals without interference from him?
Duncan Wood, President and CEO of the Pacific Council on International Policy is skeptical as evidenced by his comments in the September 24 Rio Grande Guardian as well as an excellent speech to Global Santa Fe in September which I was able to attend. As for AMLO, he says, “I don’t think this is a man who could retire. I don’t think this is a man who doesn’t want to be part of the national debate.” And he mentioned one of AMLO’s reforms, the ability of the Mexican people to revoke a President’s mandate at the halfway point of their presidency, and thus AMLO’s ability to turn against Sheinbaum at that point if he is dissatisfied with her goals.
However, I see areas where she can act without getting crossways with him.
Health Care
In my thirteen years of working in the area on the west side of Juárez, I have never seen any evidence of basic health care – traveling nurses, a mobile clinic, nothing. Visión en Acción, a mental asylum with roughly 120 patients founded thirty years ago by an ex-addict named José Antonio Galván, is the largest such facility in Juárez, a city of 1.6 million and yet it has never received government support. AMLO called this a priority and Sheinbaum could follow through with real implementation.
Women’s Rights
Hiring more female prosecutors while she was Mayor of Mexico City because she believed they would be more sensitive to crimes against women was a small gesture perhaps but evidence that she is aware of women’s issues, an area where AMLO was missing in action. She can continue this focus without interfering with his agenda.
Dealing with the Cartels
This is the major issue, given that about one third of the country is in cartel control. AMLO’s focus on using the military is not a new idea. It was tried by Felipe Calderón with disastrous results. And it has already been a tactic of AMLO’s. For example, for several years he had soldiers posted at the wall between Anapra and Sunland Park, New Mexico. They would claim that the border was secure, that no migrants were crossing in their area. The US Border Patrol, just a few yards away would agree that no one was crossing during the day but that there were fifty to one hundred attempts every night.
The military also maintained check points at the eastern entry to Anapra as well as west of Juárez on the highway to Casa Grandes. What impact could these checkpoints possibly have had on crime? What is really needed is effective policing, something for which soldiers are totally unequipped. Close to 95% of homicides go unsolved. Sheinbaum recognized this in her work as Mayor of Mexico City and worked to professionalize the police there.
Doing this on a national basis is much tougher. I wrote recently about the transformation of Anapra from a community of impoverished families to a cartel base for smuggling migrants across the border and the way young men are drawn into cartel life as lookouts. Is this happening all along the border? And how can she offer young men a different and more productive future?
I remain cautiously optimistic.
Editor’s Note: The above guest column was penned by Morgan Smith, a retired lawyer and government official from Colorado who now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Smith writes regularly on border issues. He has been going to the border – mostly Juarez and Palomas – at least monthly for the last 13 years to document conditions there and assist a variety of humanitarian programs and, more recently, migrant shelters. The column appears in the Rio Grande Guardian with the permission of the author. Smith can be reached by email via morgan-smith@comcast.net.
