López Hernández is a political strategist trusted by his party, Morena. He served as the new negotiator, coordinator and strategist in the electoral campaign of the current ruler of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, in 2018.
It was sent by López Obrador himself, since since 2006 he has helped to electorally coordinate various states of the country. Mexico City had to be swept away in votes, which Sheinbaum’s successful campaign achieved.
The loyalty and fidelity that Adán Augusto has for his friend the president has catapulted him to the national political scene. Well, although he has held various positions, such as local and federal deputy, senator and governor of Tabasco, his figure was always discreet; he is a strategist without reflectors. The Secretary of the Interior is today one of the most acclaimed candidates for 2024, uncovered by the same Executive.
In Mexico, the figure of the vice president has disappeared since 1913, when José María Pino Suárez was assassinated. The Mexican Vice Presidency had the common denominator of betrayal, so it was decided to disappear it and leave all power in the hands of the President of the Republic.
However, the position of Secretary of the Interior has overtones that are similar to the work carried out by a vice president. One of them, political negotiation. For dozens of years, the “number two” of the National Palace has been the central character to resolve controversies and “align” opponents, so that the president can complete his mandate without a revolt or an armed revolution.
Mission: Division
Some opposition leaders and Morena agree that Adán Augusto is a man of character, but with a spirit of negotiation and reconciliation. And although he has had tense moments with some governors, currently he has managed to “calm down” those who “dared” to directly contradict the policies of a president who usually ignites the mood from his lectern at the morning press conference.
Those who have become a headache, during the four years of AMLO’s administration, are the leaders of the parties that have unbelievably allied themselves, regardless of their ideologies or causes: PAN, PRD and PRI.
The three parties have sought in every possible way to mitigate the president’s popularity, so as not to allow him to keep all the governorships and the local Congresses in the states.
Perhaps their work has not been the most effective, but they have achieved some small victories that have become pure oxygen as opposition. One of them, perhaps the most important, was to win more than half of the municipalities in Mexico City, a bastion of López Obrador.
This result set off the alarms in the hosts of Morena, causing the president to take a much more radical attitude against his opponents, which produced a political polarization, which is intensely experienced throughout the country.
Perhaps the president and his advisers have wondered: how to assertively attack opponents without having to spill blood over electoral issues? The strategy fell to Adam Augustus: destroy the opposition from within, allow them to annihilate themselves.
The PAN member Carlos Castillo Peraza once coined a phrase that would be repeated to this day: “We all carry a PRI member inside.” He was referring to that very peculiar way that this political party has had to sustain its institutionality, to make agreements with ingredients that only national politics can achieve, an inheritance from the tricolor party.
