US Election: Who Would Be Best for Mexico?

Electoral processes such as this one are a good example of the terrible difficulty humanity faces in achieving healthy and constructive discussion via modern communication technology.

Just a few hours before election day, the tossed coin is in the air. Among the opinion polls there is a bit of everything; however, in the aggregate, most of them show a sort of “technical tie” between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

In this scenario, the question that floats in the air on this side of the border is this: Who would be better for Mexico? This is a question that has been asked over the last few months, especially in digital discussion forums. The answers have been of different types and most of them tend to be a representation — emotional or rational — of profiles I could also identify earlier in Mexico’s election last June 2.

Among the chats in which I participate is one where the user profile tends toward the left; it identifies with the Morena Party, and for the most part, voted for Claudia Sheinbaum. Many of its participants are in favor of Trump. The idea that the Republican and Andrés Manuel López Obrador had a “good friendship” has been in place for years. This was true, too, for many opinion groups that, without further argument, transferred the affection they had for AMLO to Trump.

Among the prevailing opinions among these sectors are: “We already know how to deal with the former U.S. president”; “The good relationship that already existed will be repeated with Sheinbaum, since AMLO brought her closer than she had been before”; or even those who comment, “If Claudia complies with demands in terms of migration, she will have nothing to worry about.”

On the other hand, I am part of a chat group with people who at the time favored [former presidential candidate] Bertha Xóchitl Gálvez Ruizare when discussing the question. From their vantage point, greater emphasis was placed on detriments that Trump’s victory would bring to Mexico: They contend that the economy was much better under the Democratic administration; employment was higher (more than 16 million jobs have been added since January 2021); and the infrastructure program was solid, “while Trump could not even build the wall.” Several constituents view with particular concern the inflation that the New Yorker’s proposals could generate.

On several occasions they have cited the analysis conducted by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which argues that debt would also be mismanaged by the Republican. More than a simple, distilled animosity toward Trump himself, the central argument is that poor management of the U.S. economy would be bad news for Mexico.

These annotations offer a few brief reflections:

1. The answers I transcribe here are the few I managed to sift through in a very wide universe of adjectives, all in favor of or against Trump. The discussion always revolved around him, with arguments bordering more on the emotional than the rational: “He is a friend of Obradorism,” or, “He is a fascist.” Needless to say, Kamala was always in second place.

2. In both chats — the “leftist” and the “economic”— I asked this: What arguments would you use to say that Kamala is better for Mexico than Trump? In the first chat, I was almost scolded simply for not immediately embracing the “leftist” endorsement of the Republican. In the second one, I was also chastised; however, there my question was read as an implicit endorsement of Trump — an endorsement worthy of a caveman.

3. Electoral processes such as this one are a good example of the terrible difficulty humanity faces in reaching healthy and constructive discussion through modern communication technology. It offers good examples of how what is known as “echo chambers,” in which everyone in a chat room thinks similarly, are a major challenge — simply because it seems incomprehensible that anyone would think differently.

It is difficult to know who will win the presidential election tomorrow. However, I believe that in order to know who will be better for the bilateral relationship with Mexico, the truly relevant question is this: Who will best confront the fentanyl trade in the United States and the narco-dictatorship it has financed in Mexico? Unfortunately thus far, in no forum have I found sufficient attention given to this. Let’s hope that the #HorizontalSociety* delves more deeply into this issue; the viability of the #NewRepublic** depends on it.

*Editor’s Note: The #HorizontalSociety is defined by the author as a “utopian or democratic ideal, a duty rooted in the Constitution and the rule of law … a bid to overcome the narratives that place the future of the country in the hands of an individual or government.”

**Editor’s Note: The #NewRepublic would be the actualization of the utopian society described by the author as the #HorizontalSociety.