Can Mexico Find a Path to True Prosperity?
Forget the promise of “nearshoring” and more exports. To become truly prosperous and inclusive, the country’s next president must draw up and deliver a new social contract.
The establishment’s two faces.
Photographers: Hector Vivas/Claudio Cruz/AFP/Getty Images
The upcoming presidential contest between Claudia Sheinbaum from the ruling Morena party and Xóchitl Gálvez of the opposition Frente Amplio is billed as an epic clash between diametrically opposed visions of Mexico: between a technocratic neoliberal dream and an old nationalist mirage; between elite ambitions and the aspirations of the poor; the clean against the corrupt; a democratic struggle against authoritarian rule!
Yet for all the heated rhetoric and existential battle imagery, the political forces behind both Gálvez and Sheinbaum share more interests than they would have us know. These two supposedly antagonistic forces both propose the same kind of Mexico. They have both had their shot at running it, and have steered it roughly down the same path.