The electoral success of Mexico’s leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the MORENA coalition has given rise to both optimism and concern. While aspects of the agenda have proved transformative, Obrador is seen to have mishandled the pandemic and action on climate breakdown has been inadequate. Join Gabriela Méndez Cota and Benjamín Arditi for an assessment of recent political mobilizations in Mexico, drawing on conjunctural analysis and continental political thought.

Gabriela Méndez Cota is Lecturer in the Philosophy Department at Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México. She is the author of Disrupting Maize: Food, Biotechnology and Nationalism in Contemporary Mexico (2016). Gabriela’s article ‘Policing the environmental conjuncture: structural violence in Mexico and the National Assembly of the Environmentally Affected’ was published as a contribution to This Conjuncture.

Benjamín Arditi is Professor of Political Theory at the National University of Mexico. Amongst other works, he is the author of Politics on the Edges of Liberalism: Difference, Populism, Revolution, Agitation(2012).