Claudia Sheinbaum’s terrible, no good, very bad week
Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum at a press conference in Mexico City this week. Image credit: Presidency of Mexico.
by David Agren.
Claudia Sheinbaum has suffered perhaps the worst week of her administration – marked by the murders of two senior functionaries in the Mexico City government.
How bad was her week?
Over the weekend, the Cuauhtemoc, a Mexican Navy ship, crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge while on a global goodwill tour. The crash, which New York City officials say was caused by a mechanical failure, resulted in the deaths of Naval cadets, América Yamilet Sánchez, 20, and Adal Jair Maldonado, 23.
On Tuesday, Ximena Guzmán, personal secretary to mayor Clara Brugada, and José Muñoz, a government advisor, were killed in cold blood as they commuted on a busy thoroughfare. The suspect remains at large and no motive has been offered for the assassinations.
The day before in Guanajuato state, seven young people were killed when gunmen arriving in SUVs shot up a parish festival in the town of San Bartolo de los Berrios.
In western Colima state, meanwhile, a group of madres buscadoras (families searching for their missing kin) uncovered another extermination camp, along with the remains of 42 missing persons, according to reporting by the Financial Times.
The dissident wing of the national teachers’ union – known as the National Education Workers Coordinator (CNTE) – raised Cain in Mexico City by blocking access to the international airport and impeding access to the Palacio Nacional, keeping journalists and influencers out of Sheinbaum’s Wednesday press conference.
Further afield, the US House of Representatives approved US President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill,” which includes tax on remittances of 3.5 per cent. The tax potentially diminishes the remittances propping up households in downtrodden parts of Mexico which amount to more than 4 per cent of GDP.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday told the house foreign affairs committee, “There are parts of Mexico that are governed by cartels where there is – in fact, I think I heard last night – two more people were murdered in Mexico City associated with the mayor of Mexico City. The political violence there is real.”
Rubio’s comments followed news leaking in The Wall Street Journal that Trump urged Sheinbaum to allow US forces to confront Mexico drug cartels – a request she rebuffed. It also followed Baja California governor Marina del Pilar Ávila of the ruling MORENA party revealing that she and her husband has lost their US visas. ProPublica subsequently reported “several dozen” Mexican politicians faced the same visa scrutiny.
For her part, Sheinbaum responded to Rubio by urging no speculation on the Mexico City slayings.
But the attacks strike at the heart of Morena, whose leadership has dominated the capital’s politics for 30 years, albeit under different political monikers. It also hits a narrative of increasing public safety – with Brugada recently boasting “fewer crimes, more detainees.” Sheinbaum previously boasted of halving the homicide rate in Mexico City ahead of a successful run for president, though some analysts questioned the veracity of the numbers. The then-police chief, now public security secretary Omar García Harfuch also survived a spectacular 2021 hit blamed on the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
Sheinbaum returned to a standard practice for explaining Tuesday’s attack: blaming her predecessors. “Mexico City’s security system was broken,” when she took office in 2018, she said at a morning press conference.
The president still wields an approval rating north of 80 per cent. She controls the public agenda through the mañanera. Her ability to beguile Trump won her international press acclaim such as “Trump whisperer,” and “The most powerful woman in the world.”
But she’s governing amid chaos. The economy is slowing – with a senior finance ministry official bizarrely saying, “Mexican households have sufficient savings” to confront a recession. The judicial elections occur June 1 with the public showing a crushing disinterest in the process. Trump is applying trade and security pressure – even as he speaks well of Sheinbaum. She’s also leading a governing coalition full of people seemingly placed by her now-silent predecessor, former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
A longtime observer of Mexican politics, speaking anonymously, told this column that the situation was reminiscent of 1995 as then-president Ernesto Zedillo had to deal with a punishing peso devaluation and political violence early in his administration.
He also had to deal with a cabinet full of people that Salinas had forced on him, the observer said – not unlike the dynamic with Sheinbaum having to deal with lawmakers, functionaries and party officials with loyalties to AMLO.
Additionally, “She will have to throw AMLO under the bus to solve some of these issues. She can’t and won’t.”
Zedillo cut ties with his predecessor – an example Sheinbaum is unlikely to ever follow. His economic crisis was bleeker, but he at least had a friendlier US government willing to bailout the country and push ahead with free trade. Sheinbaum must deal with Trump’s threats to trade and sovereignty, instead.
The current chaos will test her mettle – and the unity of the 4T, too.