Claudia Sheinbaum is losing control

The Mexican president’s support is not as solid as it seems.

This publication wasn’t originally going to cover the horrors discovered in Teuchitlán, in the state of Jalisco. In a ranch supposedly seized by the local government, organised search parties looking for their missing loved ones took footage that was seared in Mexico’s collective consciousness. The piles of clothes, shoes, backpacks; the ash…

Yet, tragically none of this was new. Mexico is closing in on its second decade of a brutal drug war which has thrown up all sorts of barbarism; from the inhuman disposal methods of El Pozolero to the mass graves for kidnapped migrants in San Fernando. The horrors of Teuchitlán were likely to fizzle out in the wake of the next atrocity. That was, until the government opened its mouth.

The indifference of the government’s initial reaction, followed by its dismal handling of the fallout has provoked such rage from usually supportive quarters of society that virtually everyone in her staff has had to backtrack. While the international media continues to applaud president Claudia Sheinbaum for her handling of Trump, at home, something seems to have fractured.