A year after Claudia Sheinbaum and the ruling Morena party’s landslide victories in Mexico, the immensely popular Mexican president has become a progressive icon north of the border. “Is Claudia Sheinbaum the anti-Trump?” asked Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times. The sentiment isn’t unfounded. In less than a decade, the party founded by former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador—known as AMLO—upended Mexican politics, securing resounding majorities across the country.
Mexicans’ material gains under the left-wing Morena have forced people across the political spectrum to reckon with the party’s spectacular record in office. Almost 10 million people left poverty during AMLO’s term, according to the World Bank. The gains were largely due to universal social programs and unprecedented hikes to a previously abysmal minimum wage. Days after Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection, California congressman Ro Khanna lauded Obrador’s wage hikes as a model for Democrats to follow.
"Progressive hostility towards Morena is less surprising than it might seem."
But the praise north of the Rio Grande has shocked Morenistas who were accustomed to hostile coverage towards the party from legacy and progressive media. Upon leaving office, The Guardian slammed a purported “democratic regression” under AMLO while Dissent nodded to “serious reservations [with] his performance and behavior in office.” In the broader context of leftist politics in the neoliberal era, progressive hostility towards Morena is less surprising than it might seem.
Most left of center parties in the West cater to college-educated professionals as opposed to the working class. Conversely, the populist Morena won 66 percent of voters without college degrees compared to Democrats’ 42 percent in 2024. The result is that Mexico’s ruling and opposition coalitions are ideologically diverse featuring self-described progressives on both sides of political debate.
Whether progressive, conservative or centrist in orientation, the defining characteristic of the Mexican opposition is its appeal to credentialed voters. North American admirers of Sheinbaum, such as Khanna and Zohran Mamdani, rightly contrast Morena’s economic populism with the incoherence of the Democratic Party. Yet they also misunderstand that Morena’s conception of elites includes the constituency that American leftists largely represent—a constituency whose priorities are often in conflict with those of workers.
López Obrador described progressives beholden to the causes of polite society as “progres buena ondita”—vibes progressives. “One of the things [neoliberals] created were the so-called new rights: feminism, environmentalism, animal rights … All of these causes are very noble, but their purpose was so that inequality in the economy would be left out of the center of the debate,” he mused in 2021. While less incendiary than her predecessor, Sheinbaum has similarly adhered to AMLO’s example of putting workers first—and often angered opposition progressives in the process.
During the pandemic, López Obrador blasted Covid fundamentalism on the grounds that draconian lockdowns and vaccine mandates were authoritarian and disproportionately impacted the poor and working class. As mayor of Mexico City, Sheinbaum distributed over 200,000 medical kits containing ivermectin to residents that tested positive for Covid-19. In the eyes of technocratic experts, both leaders committed unspeakable crimes against “Science,” never mind the fact that the kits contained harmless doses of the FDA-approved medication and that the country’s pandemic-related deaths were identical to those of Latin American peers.
International and opposition progressives were similarly irritated by Morena’s “Republican Austerity,” aimed at cutting waste and cultivating a frugal, civic-minded ethic. AMLO slashed government salaries—including his own by 60 percent—under the mantra that “there can be no rich government in a poor country.” Following his example, Sheinbaum has flown coach to international summits and said that the use of a private helicopter by a member of her party sets a bad example to Mexicans.
The party also made cuts to a climate change agency and National Electoral Institute (INE). In response, legacy media and opposition progressives slammed Morena and demonstrated in defense of the INE, despite the fact that top bureaucrats earned 13 times Mexico’s GDP per capita before 2018 and the $1.3 billion INE remains one of the most lavishly funded electoral agencies in the Americas.
Yet unlike the oxymoronic Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Morena’s Republican Austerity increased state capacity precisely to counteract the aims of anti-government oligarchs of further privatizing government. The current headcount of around three million US government workers has remained stagnant since the 1980s despite population growth. Another story is the increase of government contractors during the same period to over five million—mostly from NGOs, defense and consulting firms.
Similarly in Mexico, Morena’s opposition predecessors outsourced much of the Mexican state to the very same contractors north of the border. The number of federal workers was capped at a similar proportion to the United States in tandem with the privatization of countless state firms. In contrast, López Obrador reclassified all government contractors as employees, cutting middlemen such as NGOs from the distribution and regulatory oversight of universal anti-poverty programs and infrastructure projects.
“Sheinbaum lauded the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID.”
Given poor economic growth, there’s a strong case that much of Morena’s success boils down to making government both more efficient and less dependent on foreign “experts.” Accordingly, Sheinbaum lauded the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID. The corresponding influence of the NGO-industrial complex has been a perennial source of foreign meddling in Latin America. In Brazil, an alliance of NGOs and environmental bureaucrats have derailed many of President Lula Da Silva’s energy and infrastructure priorities—and convinced him to privatize 14 percent of the country’s territory under the pretext of “imminent climate apocalypse.”
In Mexico, conversely, AMLO’s sidelining of NGOs enabled increased oil production as well as the building of megaprojects such as the Maya Train. In both cases, progressive critics accused the administration of enabling climate change and “ecocide” in the Yucatan Rainforest, never mind Mexican workers’ low energy costs or the historic growth of the country’s poor southern states. For her part, Sheinbaum has maintained support for the beleaguered state oil firm Pemex, though she’s also increased investment in clean energy and unveiled a sophisticated industrial policy aimed at developing a Mexican electric vehicle.
Sheinabaum, moreover, has taken a tougher, if more strategic, approach towards the country’s infamous drug cartels than her predecessor. Her government has prioritized seizing drugs, targeting cartels’ operational capabilities, and deepening security cooperation with the Trump administration, extraditing a record 29 cartel kingpins to the United States in February. She also passed an amendment proposed by López Obrador allowing for suspects of crimes like extortion to be placed under preventive detention; while less hawkish in his approach towards the cartels, the former president was historically tough on common crime.
Predictably, opposition progressives criticized Morena for jeopardizing Mexicans’ civil rights. Considering the reality of Mexico’s security situation, however, it’s fair to describe the policy as a reasonable middle ground between criminal violence and Salvadoran autocracy. Further, Mexico’s homicide rate has dropped more than 25 percent since Sheinbaum assumed office, with drug seizures north of the border falling to record lows.
Still another area where AMLO and even Sheinbaum have defied progressive orthodoxies has been their respect for Mexican workers’ traditional values. López Obrador’s embrace of religious rhetoric—including readings of scripture—broke with decades of secular tradition (though he always maintained the importance of religious freedom).
Ironically, his secular Jewish successor has likewise stressed the importance of Catholic doctrine and read statements from the late Pope Francis during her morning press conferences. While Sheinbaum governed as a progressive on issues like trans and women’s rights as mayor of Mexico City, she wisely campaigned on a platform of federalism with regards to abortion during her run for president.
In the US, few progressives are comfortable expressing patriotism and often take to extolling foreign nationalist movements such as Morena. In contrast, Sheinbaum slammed the use of the Mexican flag by violent protestors in Los Angeles in addition to repression by security forces, describing the former as insulting to her country and the latter as an excessive use of force. Disastrous as much of Washington’s record in the Americas may be, nationalists like AMLO and Sheinbaum understand that workers will always take pride in their own country as opposed to a foreign nation.
While it's appropriate to condemn the Trump administration for its cruelty towards migrants, it’s worth noting that Mexican workers’ attitudes towards immigration—particularly with regards to non-Mexican migrants—are broadly similar to those of their American peers. Historically, the bar for soliciting asylum in Mexico has been stricter than in the US—a fact noted by members of Morena. Accordingly, AMLO and Sheinbaum have collaborated closely with the Biden and both Trump administrations on migration. To that end, they have also called on their northern neighbor to deter migration by promoting development and removing sanctions on migrants’ countries of origin.
Morena, of course, isn’t above reproach. Corruption remains endemic and the party’s overhauls of Mexico’s healthcare sector and the judiciary leave much to be desired. Higher taxes on the wealthy—which Morena has avoided so far—will become necessary to address budget shortfalls. Mexico also retains one of the longest work weeks in the hemisphere at 48 hours, though Sheinbaum has promised a gradual reduction beginning later this year.
From a progressive perspective, however, it’s worth noting that even López Obrador advanced causes he deemed less important such as electing a record number of women and LGBT officials to state and national office. His government also banned open-pit mining and fracking (though Sheinbaum is reportedly considering rescinding the latter to the benefit of Mexico’s energy sovereignty). AMLO even proposed an amendment codifying animal rights into the constitution which his successor passed into law.
The truth is that Morena is a big-tent political movement with populist, progressive, and, at times, “oddly conservative” tendencies in the words of critics. The crux of its politics, however, is a broad adherence to the material interests and sensibilities of Mexican workers. The tragedy of American politics is that its political parties operate on a paradigm of “vibes” and signaling as opposed to material results. Indeed, American progressives fawn over the Mexican president in large part because of her identity as both a climate scientist and the country’s first female leader. In contrast, working-class and college-educated Mexicans voted respectively for and against Sheinbaum precisely because of her unwavering loyalty to the “problematic” Obrador.
Progressives are right to commit to economic populism such as raising the minimum wage, unionization, and reigning in corporate abuse. Outside of cosmopolitan metropolises, however, they will continue to face apathy from workers in the long term if they remain puritanically opposed to their views on issues such as crime, gender, immigration and the energy transition. Considering that Mexico’s party of “hugs not bullets” adopted a tougher security policy under its first female president, progressives should be capable of disavowing boutique attitudes towards crime such as de facto legalized shoplifting. A playbook of Republican Austerity in the United States—of cracking down on government contractors and the NGO industrial complex—could likewise enable a more efficient rollout of progressive priorities like Medicare for all by a future Democratic administration.
"Traditionalists like Obrador and progressives like Sheinbaum can work together."
The lesson of Morena is that traditionalists like Obrador and progressives like Sheinbaum can work together to advance broad prosperity. So long as progressives are unwilling to compromise on the preferences of their professional constituents, however, they will remain progres buena ondita—vibes progressives whose efforts will continue to alienate the very people they claim to represent.