Scuffle in Congress reflects Mexico’s entrenched culture of political trolling

President Claudia Sheinbaum speaking during a morning press conference in Mexico City. Image credit: Presidency of Mexico.

by David Agren, writer-at-large.

The permanent session of Mexico’s congress ended on Thursday with fireworks and fisticuffs with Institutional Revolutionary Party president Alejandro Moreno confronting Senate president Gerardo Fernández Noroña. Given it was also Fernández Noroña’s farewell, the session inevitably wasn’t going to close any other way. 

The heated discussions of the day didn’t help either with ruling Morena party and allied members calling opposition members “traitors” for appealing to the US for help with Mexico’s organized crime problems and insults of narcopoliticos hurled in response.

Moreno climbed the podium as the national anthem was bringing down the curtain on the session to confront Fernández Noroña, saying he wanted to speak in the session. The confrontation came to shoves and included blows toward a cameraman – identified as Fernández Noroña’s aid, by El País – who was later fitted for a neckbrace and had some of his equipment broken. Noroña said he would file charges against Alito for assault and property damage and quipped, “What confrontation? He hit me and said, ‘I’m going to kill you.’”

The episode brought down the curtain on a conflictive session in the Senate under Fernández Noroña – a politician whose shit-disturbing style and limousine lifestyle despite doggedly defending socialist regions like Cuba and Venezuela generate non-stop headlines. His reputation for picking fights precedes him. But it also attracts a following, making him the rare politician who doesn’t simply ride coattails or skate in with the party name or with the assistance of a party boss.

The fight capped a week of controversy for him. It was revealed that he had acquired a 12 million peso home – measuring 1,200 square metres – in the increasingly chic town of Tepozlán, Morelos, south of Mexico City. His first-class air travel always raised eyebrows and clashed with former president and Morena founder Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s professed austerity and calls for “Franciscan poverty.” 

“What I do with my money, well, that's my right, of course. … But if I travel however I want, party however I want, buy whatever I want, it’s my money, it’s the product of my labor. What does that have to do with public austerity policies? It has absolutely nothing to do with it,” he said when asked about the house, which he says that he bought with a mortgage. “Now it turns out you have to live in a rundown neighbourhood because you’re part of a transformative movement? I think there's a lot of misunderstanding in that.”

His luxury home surfaced a series of ruling party politicians – including AMLO’s son, Andy López Beltán – have been caught living the life of luxury, while claiming they’re just spending their hard-earned money. 

President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has not been exposed living lavishly, questioned Andy’s lavish ways – an admonishment that analysts attribute to him not being seen as one of her allies. But she defended Fernández Noroña with distraction, deflection and whataboutism learned from her predecessor, AMLO.

“What do you think is more important, Noroña's house in Tepoztlán, where he's lived for I don't know how many years, or the fact that the DEA director said that [Genaro] García Luna is on the same level as the other two bosses?” Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada y Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, she said at her morning press conference?

“But they're making a fuss about Noroña. Why? To avoid talking about the other person, because many media outlets were complicit in that, to be honest, by not saying anything about what was happening during [former President Felipe] Calderón’s term.”

Sheinbaum’s comments came as news broke of Zambada, co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, entering a plea agreement with U.S. authorities. 

Zambada says he was kidnapped by US officials in Sinaloa last year and bundled off to the United States. He had never been captured in Mexico, where he seemingly remained off-limits in the lair of the Sierra Madre Mountains. He admitted in U.S. court that he long bribed Mexican officials the length of the country. Sheinbaum responded with another familiar pose: answering accusations with a question? “Where did he get the money?” she asked accusingly.

Sheinbaum asked that the $15 billion that US officials expect to extract out of Zambada’s ill-gotten gains go to the poor – lifting another of AMLO’s populist tropes. She also returned to a familiar questioning of motives and calling out supposed hypocrisy. “How do they explain then that they don’t negotiate with terrorists?” she asked, returning to talking points earlier employed when Ovidio Guzmán, son of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, the imprisoned other founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, became a state’s witness.

The president bitterly opposed the US declaring drug cartels as terror organizations. And the Trump administration appears ready to intervene in Latin America by signing a directive to use military force against cartels designated as terror organizations.

Part of the brouhaha in Congress came from PAN senator and flamethrower Lilly Tellez telling Fox News that narcos had “infested” Mexico and its institutions (including government) and suggesting U.S. intervention was needed. The comments brought accusations of treason – shouted in the senate – along with responses of “narco politicians”

For his part Moreno, the PRI president – who has battled his own scandals and never proved able to rally his party – proved why the opposition can be so inept, unpopular and delusional. He told a small rally, “We call for the construction of a broad opposition front, united to confront Morena and remove them from the presidency in 2030.”

Some commentators – who are not known for professionalism, but not being overly critical of the government – lamented the poisonous political discourse in Congress, embodied by Fernández Noroña and the narco chants. “A language of political confrontation has been normalized that rewards the most aggressive and provocative. A language that ends up celebrating the worst,” Denise Maerker, former host of Televisa’s nightly news, said in an X post promoting her comments on the network’s flagship public affairs program, Tercer Grado. 

But it overlooked a key player in promoting the discord: AMLO and his chosen successor, Sheinbaum. 

The mañanera (the morning news conference) has dragged down the public discourse with an unedifying mix of trolling, shittalking, gaslighting, provoking, deflecting and accusing. Sheinbaum has shortened the marathon affair and often not provoked confrontation like AMLO. But she’s governing with the same communications template. Provocative politicians like Fernández Noroña and Tellez thrive in such a permission structure provided by the president. And many Morena partisans take their communications cues from the mañanera, copying the style, tone and content. The degradation of Mexico’s political discourse starts at the top. Sheinbaum is setting a poor example.