Julio Hernández López: Shipyard

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to president of Mexico This year, it will be faced with the dilemma of becoming a measured power leader for the Latin American left or concentrating on avoiding the risks and threats constantly outlined by Donald Trump against the government of the so-called Fourth Transformation.

Circumstances place Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo in a difficult scenario for the aforementioned subcontinental left: of the relevant figures that such a movement has had in various countries, only the Brazilian Inácio Lula da Silva could try to remain in power in the general elections in October of the current year; In Colombia, Gustavo Petro’s period will end, with the uncertain possibility that Senator Iván Cepeda will continue progressivism in the presidential elections in May or in the second round in June.

In both cases, the so-called interventionism of Donald Trump will weigh heavily, as he has already shifted the electoral balance towards his favorites in the legislative elections of Argentina (to help the shipwrecked Milei), Chile and Honduras, and now, emboldened by his “success” in Venezuela, will try to prevent at all costs candidates with leftist tones from reaching or remaining in power in other countries.

Sheinbaum has managed to maintain a policy of concessions in practice combined with a rhetoric of sovereign aspirations. The degree of action that reality allows him is not much, but, what is possible, he has exercised it with decorum: he maintains the intention of supporting Cuba (in the face of a gringo extreme right that considers any solidarity with the island a betrayal of the White House), he has flatly refused to allow direct actions by the gringos against the Mexican cartels and, with the care that the case requires, he has expressed rejection of Trump’s invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro.

Just yesterday, by telephone, he spoke with Lula and, according to what he publicly declared, both repudiated “the attacks against Venezuelan sovereignty and (…) any vision that may imply the outdated division of the world into zones of influence.” This Brazilian version of the dialogue was accompanied by an invitation to the Mexican to visit the great South American country.

Petro, for his part, was invited to visit the White House after a peculiar call he had with Trump. Before the phone call, the billionaire’s position had been constantly offensive against the former guerrilla. Although there was apparently a détente, in Washington the objective of returning the right to power in Colombia remains firm.

It would be said that in the rest of the Latin American nations there are few expectations of growth or electoral consolidation and power of the left (what exists in Nicaragua is an aberration with a certain rhetoric without credibility, Cuba seems headed for a perhaps terminal crisis for the historical regime and the Rodríguezes struggle in Venezuela to comply with both the gringo power and the demands of congruence that Chavismo-Madurismo makes of them).

In that scenario and without her having sought it, Sheinbaum Pardo could have the opportunity to build a kind of symbolic and, to a certain extent, operational reference for that battered Latin American left or apply herself to the defense of her own territory, without giving reasons to the abusers in the north for more blows than those that have already been received and those that are constantly announced from the offices of Trumpism.

And, while The New York Times has asked Trump in an interview if there are limits to his global power and he has responded: “Yes, there is one thing: my own morality, my own mind. It is the only thing that can stop me (…) I do not need international law (…) I do not seek to harm anyone”, until next Monday, with this “morality” Epstein, Gaza, Caracas and whatever accumulates!

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