Mexico’s elite struggles to comprehend left’s landslide election win

The day after Mexico’s leftwing ruling party Morena won a landslide victory in presidential, congressional and state elections, one executive stayed in bed all afternoon eating ice cream to try to cope.

A wealthy woman in Mexico City told friends it was time to “move to the house in Houston”, while another business leader said his WhatsApp chats were marked by a mood of “collective suicide”.

President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum and Morena’s victory last Sunday was not a surprise, but the scale of their triumph was. Sheinbaum vaulted 31 points clear of her nearest challenger, centre-right entrepreneur Xóchitl Gálvez, and Morena is now poised to push through radical changes to the constitution after greatly increasing its majority in congress.

Exit polls show Sheinbaum won more votes than Gálvez across genders, age groups and in every state but one. But business owners and employers favoured Gálvez. In the wealthiest enclaves, support for the opposition coalition, and a loathing for outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is the norm.

After the result, some wealthy Mexicans struggled to understand how so many fellow citizens could vote for a political movement they view as responsible for scaring off investment, attacking pillars of democracy such as the supreme court and allowing organised crime to mushroom.

Memes circulating this week in opposition circles suggested that some were unable to accept the voters’ verdict. There were even claims of fraud, although evidence of significant violations has not emerged.

One meme posted in a 35,000-strong Facebook group supporting Gálvez vowed to stop tipping waiters, donating to victims of natural disasters or giving money to people who help park your car because “they voted for Morena, so Morena should support them now”.

A litigation lawyer called the country “Moronstan”, while another disappointed voter called for a national strike and a recount. One user shared on Facebook a meme with a picture of revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata saying: “Mexicans, you make me sad that for a handout, a water tank, or a sheet roof you buy slavery.”

Morena supporters and independent analysts say Mexico’s election result is not hard to explain: after decades of high poverty, glaring inequality and low wages, López Obrador — the founder of Morena — more than doubled the minimum wage, expanded social programmes and sent a consistent message that he was on the side of Mexico’s long-neglected have-nots.

“People understand that López Obrador’s government gave them much more than any previous government in terms of salaries, income and social programmes,” said Viri Ríos, a Mexican author of a book on inequality. Of the wealthy, she said: “They live in gated communities and have never known, beyond their employees, the feelings or way of thinking of average Mexicans.”

The anti-Morena backlash has become a political talking point. Miguel Treviño, the independent mayor of one of the wealthiest districts in Latin America, San Pedro Garza García in Monterrey, wrote on X: “Your WhatsApp chats: Do they talk about going to live in the US? Are there apocalyptic predictions? A conspiracy theory competition? It’s time to delete [them].”

Billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego, a prominent government critic, said the opposition had to accept the results, but also struck a more ominous note as he warned that the winners should not act vengefully. They did not have the right to “barbecue the bodies of the losing players”, he said.

“I had to go back to bed on Monday afternoon,” said one executive from a business lobby group. “I just realised: I don’t understand my country at all.”

Mexico has one of the highest levels of inequality in the OECD and a recent report by the Paris-based organisation found that almost 90 per cent of Mexicans favoured policies to narrow the income gap.

Yet some members of the elite still enjoy lives redolent of wealthy 19th-century Europeans, with full-time maids, drivers and nannies. While more than a third of Mexicans live below the poverty line, others are among the world’s richest. Telecoms magnate Carlos Slim, Mexico’s richest man, has amassed a fortune of almost $100bn and is one of the world’s top 20 billionaires.

The Mexican elite’s disconnect with workers has provided fertile ground for López Obrador, a charismatic populist whose party name Morena means “dark-skinned” and is also the nickname of the national religious icon Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe.

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López Obrador uses his daily morning press conferences to slate his enemies, who invariably include Mexico’s wealthy and privileged, as well as critics of his government. He says the people have been politicised in a “revolution of conscience” while railing against a “class-ridden, racist” conservative elite.

Gálvez, a self-made businesswoman with an indigenous father, was chosen as the opposition candidate in part to counter López Obrador’s narrative about out-of-touch elites. But she ran on the ticket of a coalition of three unpopular parties, all discredited by past failures in government.

After a crushing electoral defeat in 2018, one senior opposition politician told the Financial Times how he had spent the night in a “humble home” to learn what it was like, proudly showing pictures he had taken on his mobile phone.

“After I returned to Mexico City, it struck me that perhaps my maid lived in a similar sort of home, so I showed her the photos and sure enough it turned out that her home was very similar,” he beamed.

María Marván Laborde, a politics expert and professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said: “The opposition parties didn’t understand the level of animosity against them in 2018 and they did absolutely nothing to remake themselves or remake their offering.”

Just before Sunday’s vote, opposition leaders posted a photo of an all-male line up of their number in suits and white shirts making victory signs in the exclusive members-only Industrialists Club in Mexico City’s elite Polanco neighbourhood. Since the results, they have focused on “inconsistencies” and “defending the vote”. None has resigned.

In recent years, many Mexicans have said they try to avoid talking politics with friends, family, and colleagues for fear of pro- and anti-Morena advocates labelling the other side snobbish or resentful.

Gabriel Guerra, a communications executive who voted for Sheinbaum, said supporters of the government had been labelled ignorant or “regime collaborators” by upper-class friends.

“I think we’ve all been hiding behind the comfortable excuse of radicalisation and polarisation and blaming everybody else,” he said. “Just as Sheinbaum needs to pick up that particular challenge, so the opposition also needs to come to terms with its massive defeat.”

Mexico is not alone in Latin America in the isolation of its elites from the realities of everyday life. When Chile erupted in riots in 2019 over poor quality public services and citizens’ perceptions of a system rigged against them, Cecilia Morel, the wife of the billionaire president at the time, commented in a WhatsApp group that it was “like an invasion of aliens”. She later apologised.