The MORENA party stormed back to power in Mexico with the results of its midterm elections being declared on June 6. The centre-left party won state and local elections across 31 states and Mexico City. Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (MORENA) led by its President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) returned to power and with a thumping majority. As per the official tallies of the National Electoral Institute (INE), MORENA led the parties with the largest number of national congressional votes. MORENA under AMLO wants to bring in a ‘Fourth Transformation’ (4T). It means a major historical renewal of modern Mexican politics equivalent in importance to independence from Spain in 1821, the reform led by Benito Juárez in the mid-19th century, and the 1910 Mexican Revolution.
MORENA and its coalition partners received a 279-seat majority in the 500-seat lower house Chamber of Deputies. MORENA, however, did lose some seats compared to 2018 but its coalition partners made up for the same. MORENA now governs seven of the nation’s ten most populous cities, including Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez along the US border, adding to their existing hold on the office of mayor of Mexico City. MORENA holds a comfortable majority in the congressional upper house Senate, whose seats were not elected for. It has 77 out of 128 seats which allows the MORENA coalition to amend the Mexican Constitution. In the character of the Brazilian Workers Party (PT) and social democrats in Argentina, now represented in the Alberto Fernández presidency, MORENA is a type of Latin American social democratic party shaped by the contours of Mexican political history and the government and presidential and congressional system created by the 1917 Constitution, which was itself a product of the Mexican Revolution. A fairly new party led by AMLO MORENA competed its first election at the national level in 2018. And after attaining power, it has shown a willingness to embrace a solid left identity in the region.
As a result of the leftward shift of the Mexican government, its enhanced international role, and its emergence among the leaders of social democratic and socialist governments and parties of Latin America and the Caribbean, Mexico’s relationship to the United States has undergone a significant evolution since the AMLO presidency began in December 2018. It was Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón and team who steered the country clear during the Trump administration. Additionally, Mexico reached an agreement with Canada and the US on a revised North American free trade deal in 2019. And now, with the Biden administration in power in Washington, Mexico has been defending its position of protecting its sovereignty and upholding the principle of non-intervention. And the US will be taking Mexico with utmost importance given that it is now the largest trading partner of the US.