MORENA’s Next Chapter Will Be Written by Leftist Women
In Mexico, AMLO’s protégé, Claudia Sheinbaum, holds an overwhelming lead in the polls for the presidency, while Clara Brugada is aiming to become mayor of Mexico City. They will help determine whether the party has a future beyond AMLO.
Claudia Sheinbaum, presidential pre-candidate for MORENA Party during a political rally at the Huamantla Plaza de Toros on December 10, 2023, Tlaxcala, Mexico. (Essene Hernandez / Eyepix Group via Getty Images)
On November 19, Dr Claudia Sheinbaum, the former mayor of Mexico City, registered as MORENA’s “pre-candidate” for the presidency, guaranteeing that she will be its standard-bearer in the presidential election to be held on June 2, 2024. Days before, Clara Brugada, the head of the city’s Iztapalapa district, registered as the party’s pre-candidate for Mexico City mayor in elections to be held the same day.
Joining Sheinbaum and Brugada will be female gubernatorial candidates in four other states including Veracruz, where former Energy Secretary Rocío Nahle, one of the most prominent members of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO)’s cabinet for her key role in promoting energy sovereignty, will be heading up the state ticket. Building on the gender parity achieved in the Mexican Congress in the elections of 2018, the next chapter of MORENA’s history is set to be shaped by women.
The Post-’68 Generation
Aside from running at the same time for the top two elected offices in the nation, Sheinbaum and Brugada have much in common. Just a year apart in age (Sheinbaum is sixty-one and Brugada is sixty), both grew up in the turbulent generation following the twin massacres of Tlaltelolco 1968 and Corpus Cristi 1971, the latter known in Mexico as the Halconazo. Both cut their teeth in left-wing militancy and activism, Sheinbaum as a student leader in the 1986–87 movement opposing one of the National Autonomous University’s periodic attempts to turn Mexico’s free public university model into a fee-paying one; Brugada defending the housing rights of the urban dwellers of Iztapalapa, a sprawling district of nearly two million made up of many internal immigrants from the countryside. Both worked their way up through the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) before becoming founding members of MORENA when it became a political party in 2014.
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