Fernández Noroña: the chaos agent in charge of Mexico’s Senate

President of Mexico’s Senate, Fernández Noroña, speaking to reporters. Image credit: Sipa US / Alamy.

by David Agren.

Senate President Gerardo Fernández Noroña pulled up to a party event last Sunday in a swank SUV. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) took notice.

“.@fernandeznorona talks like he was part of the people, acts like an authoritarian … but he loves living like a fifí.”

Fernández Noroña predictably exploded, unloading on the PRI with a hyperbolic tirade. He called them, “A bunch of thieves,” then defended himself saying, “Everything I have I’ve earned through my work and effort. Not like you.” He continued with the usual righteous line that politicians in the ruling coalition take with their opponents, accusing the PRI of having “plundered the country,” and branding them, “Repressors, plunderers, and frauds, as well as traitors to the nation. And that’s putting it mildly.”

Fernández Noroña is what the Canadians might call a “shit disturber” – a person who has long caused mischief in Mexican politics and whose reputation for picking fights and flouting norms precedes him.

But Fernández Noroña is also a heavyweight in the 4T – the “fourth transformation’ as the political movement founded by former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador is known. He ran as one of AMLO’s six “corcholatas” to lead the Morena-Green Party-Labour Party (PT) ticket in the 2024 election – placing third in several of the polls used to pick the candidate. He made news for his surprise finish, but also musing about fellow candidate Marcelo Ebrard becoming the candidate for Movimiento Ciudadano – effectively voicing what many had been idly speculating. 

“Noroña is the politician with the best-placed public image after López Obrador,” said Fernando Dworak, a political analyst who watches Congress closely.

“He’s been successful not because he presented initiatives, but also because he can be an attack dog,” Dworak added. “He is an uncomfortable person, and he has great appeal to a certain segment of the public because he was not afraid to speak his truth to those in power.”

Sheinbaum appointed Fernández Noroña a campaign spokesman – a natural position; he was spokesman for the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) in the late 2000s before AMLO bolted to found the Morena Party.

He subsequently became Senate president, where he’s made frequent headlines for outrageous statements – like insisting an extermination camp was not found recently in Jalisco state, calling it, “some half-ass campaign by the right.”

He often spars with opposition lawmakers. Or he simply turns off the microphone when they’re speaking – as occurred recently with PRI Senator Rubén Moreira, who branded Fernández Noroña “fascist” for cutting him off. 

Fernández Noroña rose from humble origins to the top of the Senate. He’s spoken of working as a construction worker in the US to help his family back home, before finishing his studies at the Metropolitan Autonomous University.

He led an assembly of bank debtors negatively affected by the mid-90s peso devolution and gravitated toward the PRD, which won power in the capital in 1997.

His politics tilt towards the radical left. He entered the lower house with the PT, which boasts relations with communist parties around the world, including North Korea’s. Fernández Noroña sat on the Mexico-Russia friendship group in Congress, which invited the Russian ambassador to Mexico in 2022 to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He later complained bitterly that Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenskyy addressed the lower house of Congress via video.

Fernández Noroña is also no stranger to Cuba and Venezuela, meeting often with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. 

The lawmaker’s trips draw attention – whether for confrontations with Luis Felipe Calderón, son of former president Felipe Calderón, after being on the same flight or being chewed out by passengers in the Mexico City airport during the pandemic for not wearing a mask in the baggage claim area.

His penchant for travelling first class draws criticism, too – such as a recent trip to France. He admitted not flying coach, but said he paid for it out of his own pocket. Such travels fail to conform with AMLO’s maxim: you can’t have a rich government with a poor population. But none of that seems to be negatively impacting Fernández Noroña.

For certain segments of the population, “He represents a social avenger and obviously he’s authentic in that sense,” Dworak says. “Obviously with this segment, they say, ‘He flies first class.’ It doesn't matter. ‘I would do the same.’”