Mexico’s democratic transition turns 25 - or only 7, if you ask Morena…

Former President López Obrador with Claudia Sheinbaum the night of her election victory. Image credit: ZUMA Press / Alamy.

by David Agren, writer-at-large.

Morena supporters marked one of their movement’s many anniversaries on July 1: the seventh anniversary of the ruling party’s founder, former Andrés Manuel López Obrador, overwhelmingly winning the 2018 election. 

AMLO’s win brought the left to power, though critics accused the new president of governing like a conservative with his initial agenda of austerity. And supporters claimed AMLO’s win finally brought democracy to Mexico, despite multiparty elections being held at all levels of government throughout this century.

“This July 1st, we proudly celebrate the day of the revolution of consciences. Long live the Fourth Transformation!” President Claudia Sheinbaum posted on X.

The so-called Fourth Transformation (4T) – as AMLO christened his movement – diligently marks anniversaries, which offer pretexts for a populist movement to mobilise its base and herd social-benefits recipients to rallies.

Mexico also marked a major anniversary – unrelated to AMLO – which passed uncelebrated: Former president Vicente Fox ended one party rule on July 2, 2000, ousting the once-mighty Institutional Revolutionary from the presidency after 71 uninterrupted years in office.

Some former Fox administration functionaries marked the 25th anniversary of his victory. Morena cast shade on the anniversary, however, tweeting congratulations to – who else? – AMLO for winning the election as head of government in the Federal District on the same day.

AMLO would prove more popular as mayor of Mexico City, where he regularly clashed with Fox and survived the latter’s ham-fisted attempt to impeach him ahead of the 2006 election. He unsuccessfully ran to succeed Fox and narrowly lost that election. It’s a race he considers to have been rigged and regularly relitigated – a Mexican version of “stop the steal" – until he left office last September.

Fox’s victory culminated Mexico’s democratic transition. The transition occurred with oversight from the Federal Electoral Institute (INE) – a referee established a 1988 mysterious computer crash in the interior ministry wiped out results showing the left ahead in the early vote count. It followed the PRI losing its majority in the lower house of congress in 1997 and various gubernatorial races. The Supreme Court had been overhauled, too.

It also came with an economic opening and continental free trade under the NAFTA agreement.

But to listen to 4T supporters, Mexican democracy coincides with AMLO taking office. On the night of his 2018 victory, this columnist interviewed a jubilant AMLO supporter identifying himself as Oliver Izquierdo, who commented, “Finally democracy has made itself present in Mexico.”

Bárbara González, a political analyst who did graduate research on the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), which AMLO abandoned to found Morena, told The Mexico Brief, “One of the arguments repeated” by PRD leaders “was that there could be no talk of democracy in Mexico if a candidate from the left wasn’t allowed to win the presidency.”

Much ink has been spilled over what went wrong in during the democratic transition – a time that AMLO derides as the “neoliberal period,” even as he and his successor have fought to keep its crowning accomplishment: free trade with Canada and the United States.

Wages were stagnant, corruption remained rampant and violence surged – to name but three complaints. The rule by parties, known as the “partidocracy” – rebranded PRIAN by Morena for the PRI and PAN – took hold as party bosses (including AMLO) wielded enormous power and influence and claimed generous public subsidies. Alternancia took hold, too, with parties trading power, but seldom doing things differently.

AMLO channeled that discontent during his rise to power. He plied the popular classes with cash stipends – even as he rolled back health benefits – and raised the previously paltry minimum wage. He also benefited from a stable peso, an indicator many Mexicans used as a proxy for economic performance. 

“It’s all based on distribution,” Federico Estévez, political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, said of AMLO’s success.

But much of the democratic transition has been rolled back under the fourth transformation. The June 2 judicial elections mark the latest setback – with Sheinbaum musing of an INE reform after some of the elector counsellors found shortcomings in the vote.

Sheinbaum’s approval rating hovers around 80%. Morena and its allies hold constitution-proof majorities in both chambers of congress. Congress just approved a suite of changes handing increased surveillance powers to the National Guard and weakening civilian oversight.

Mexicans express increased record satisfaction with democracy – 50% – in the latest Latinobarómetro poll. Sheinbaum claimed more than 60% of the vote in 2024, reflecting support from all strata of society – not just the poor, which AMLO said he would put first.

Historian Elisa Servín described the attraction of Morena's pre-democratic transition appeal in a Nexos article titled, “A society seduced by authoritarian charm.”

Servín described the charm as “a change of direction that aims to leave neoliberalism and the democratic transition behind, but in reality brings back memories of the golden age of the classic PRI regime.” She added, “Deep within Mexican political culture there is a yearning for the figure who controls everything and decides for everyone.”

Morena isn’t an exact replica of the old PRI, she said. But there are similarities.

Servín said in a 2024 podcast, “The fact is that the party, the president, and the successor plan to govern with a majority logic, a logic of: ‘We are the majority, we have the majority, we are in control, and there’s no getting around it.” It’s a political culture like a steamroller, she added, “We have everything, we win everything, and we’re going for everything. And there’s no place for whatever dissidents or the opposition think.”