Sheinbaum’s Road to Ruin

Mexico should be rich beyond measure. It has oil, minerals, industry, farmland, and direct access to the largest market in the world. Its people are industrious, proud, and endlessly creative. Yet under President Claudia Sheinbaum and her Morena government, the nation is being drained by ideology, incompetence, and corruption disguised as reform. The problem is not the people. It is the leadership.

The government preaches sovereignty and equality while managing the country like a cartel with bureaucracy. Officials wear the mask of reformers, but their policies suffocate competitiveness and drive away investors who once saw Mexico as the future of the hemisphere. The nearshoring boom that could have turned Mexico into the factory floor of the Americas has stalled under red tape, arbitrary enforcement, and a regime that rewards loyalty over talent.

Sheinbaum has already made judges and justices subject to popular vote, handing the courts to her party machine and erasing what remained of judicial independence. The reform was sold as democratization, but it has transformed the judiciary into a political prize. Economists and legal experts warned that it would destabilize markets and undermine investor confidence. Local outlets report low turnout, opaque selection processes, and an atmosphere of intimidation that favors party loyalists over jurists. What should have been an independent judiciary has become an instrument of power.

That same appetite for control now defines the rest of government. Independent regulators in telecommunications, competition, and transparency have been defunded or absorbed into ministries. Oversight is optional and dissent is punished. Mexico’s bureaucracy used to stumble forward despite politics. Under Sheinbaum, it no longer stumbles; it kneels.

Energy policy reflects the same decay. Instead of modernizing Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission, the government has expanded their monopolies and buried private investment beneath bureaucracy. Renewable projects have been delayed or cancelled while fossil fuel subsidies have ballooned. Investigative reporters have documented shell firms and insider contracts that allegedly divert funds under the guise of energy independence. What is presented as sovereignty looks more like institutional capture.

Security has collapsed. In Tamaulipas, soldiers opened fire on civilians, killing six people. In Guanajuato, gunmen attacked a religious festival and murdered twelve. These are not isolated events. They are part of a broader breakdown where organized crime governs by fear and the state looks away. Every day, ordinary Mexicans vanish—kidnapped, trafficked, or simply “disappeared.” Human rights groups estimate tens of thousands missing, many likely buried in unmarked graves across the country. Families search fields with shovels while officials issue press statements about progress.

More than sixty percent of Mexicans say they feel unsafe in their own neighborhoods, and they have every reason to. Extortion, kidnapping, and fuel theft have become routine. The government’s response is denial, spin, and staged arrests for television. Security is no longer a function of the state. It is a negotiation between fear and survival.

The consequences of that collapse are now spilling across borders. The United States recently revoked visas for more than fifty Mexican politicians and officials, many tied to the ruling party, amid concerns about corruption and cartel influence. Days later, Washington alleged that Mexican cartels had placed bounties on immigration officials. Sheinbaum’s government dismissed the claim, saying it had “no information.” That denial, like so many others, spoke volumes about a leadership that has grown comfortable pretending it sees nothing.

Corruption fills the void left by that denial. The Segalmex food agency lost billions of pesos through phantom contracts. The administration called it mismanagement. Mexican investigations have mapped shell companies tied to multiple public entities, showing how prosecutions advance or stall depending on political convenience. It is a system that thrives on selective enforcement, not the rule of law.

Institutions meant to prevent abuse are being hollowed out. Regulators are defunded, oversight absorbed, and the judiciary reengineered to serve political ends. In today’s Mexico, incompetence and corruption have merged into a single form of governance. The result is a state that commands everything and controls nothing.

The tragedy is not Mexico’s geography or its people. It is a leadership class that confuses control with stability and propaganda with patriotism. The Morena government wraps itself in the language of justice while governing through fear, favoritism, and force. It blames the past for every problem while quietly recreating its worst habits. A nation that should be the industrial and democratic anchor of Latin America is sinking into ideological decay.

The Mexican people deserve better than this theater of reform. They deserve honest governance, functioning institutions, and a future where merit, not allegiance, determines success. Until that happens, Mexico’s immense potential will remain what it has become under Sheinbaum: promise unrealized and hope deferred.