Corrupt & Reactionary
This editorial by Álvaro Delgado Gómez originally appeared in the October 21, 2025 edition of Sin Embargo. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Mexico Solidarity Media, or the Mexico Solidarity Project.
On the same Saturday, albeit in different settings and for different reasons, the National Action Party (PAN) and magnate Ricardo Salinas Pliego united ideologically on the far right to combat their common enemies, President Claudia Sheinbaum and Morena, which suggests a latent electoral union in the future.
While the PAN and Salinas Pliego are currently separated—although united by the same conservative national project and with intellectuals and academics as their connecting vessels—there’s nothing to prevent them from formally joining forces in the 2030 election, because the magnate could be the presidential figure that the PAN and PRI lack.
There are no major surprises in the PAN: The right-wing party, which has never ceased to be right-wing—although that position is disputed by the PRI and the Citizen Movement party—is becoming more radical in an attempt to recapture the reactionary vote, which grew disgruntled with its leadership due to its alliance with the PRI and PRD.
In this context, the presence of the Bishop of Cuernavaca, Ramón Castro Castro, at the PAN’s “relaunch” is highly significant. He is the most conservative leader of the Episcopate, leading the country’s religious leaders who abhor Morena and who openly, from the pulpit and across the country, wage politics against the left.
The presence of Claudio X. González Guajardo, Enrique Krauze, and Lorenzo Córdova, key figures in the construction of the PRI-PAN, is so significant that it is not certain that it will cease to exist permanently. In 2027—we shall see—the PRI-PAN will be reactivated in Nuevo León, like the McPAN in Campeche.
Perhaps the only discordant among the PAN guests was José María Aznar, the former head of government of Spain and leader of the right-wing Popular Party. The most consistent factor in his ideological redefinition would have been Santiago Abascal, the leader of Vox, who draws influence from the fascist group El Yunque, as well as from the PAN itself.
Let no one be fooled: The decision on the PAN’s alliances will be made by the same group of bosses who dominate it, and they will also capture all the candidacies, despite their claims to be open to citizens and young people. The PAN earns so little that they won’t distribute it to anyone outside the leadership.
But the underlying problem, in my opinion, is not this ideological redefinition of fascist evocations, which also doesn’t guarantee success—it may attract reactionary votes, but it will scare away segments of society, especially young people—but the lack of a program and agenda of substantive issues for public debate, especially corruption and inequality.
The hallmark of the PAN’s top leaders is corruption: National President Jorge Romero Herrera is a politician associated with the worst practices of patronage and corruption as a party leader and public servant, as Mayor and Congressman, not only as head of the Real Estate Cartel, but also with the use of public funds for reconstruction after the 2017 earthquake.
If Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón did not attend the PAN’s “relaunch” it is because even they are disgusted by the practices of the current leaders, which is why in 2012 they both supported Enrique Peña Nieto and in 2018 they supported José Antonio Meade, both right-wing PRI members, not unlike Josefina Vázquez Mota and Ricardo Anaya, also corrupted by Peña Nieto’s party.
And the leading figure who appeared in Saturday’s march from the Monument to the Revolution to the Angel of Independence, Santiago Creel Miranda, is also linked to corrupt practices, as are future federal deputies Roberto Gil Zuarth, Maximiliano Cortázar, Santiago Taboada Cortina, and his own current leaders.
It’s not just corruption that has the PAN members in trouble, but also their conduct and behaviors that don’t bring them closer to the majority of Mexicans, because they are arrogant, classist, racist, and generally discriminatory. “We’re perceived as assholes,” Juan José Rodríguez Prats once told me, after being sidelined for identifying the PAN’s problems.
The PAN, then, is going after the electoral market that the Citizen Movement party has been stealing from it, precisely because of PAN corruption, and for the reactionary vote that abandoned it for its alliances and that could effectively give it its support again, even if it is corrupt.
Also on Saturday, on the eve of his 70th birthday, Salinas Pliego shared with his employees and sycophants his political plan for the coming years: “I think it’s time to enter a new phase, another challenge, and why not? Kick out the fucking leftists and tell them to go fuck themselves.”
A combination of fascists Javier Milei, Donald Trump, and Jair Bolsonaro, an imitator of Silvio Berlusconi—the corrupt Italian media magnate who, after becoming Prime Minister, was sentenced to prison for tax fraud—Salinas Pliego confirms that his belligerence will escalate in the face of the Supreme Court’s decision to force him to pay his debt of more than 74 billion pesos.
That is, first of all, his political project: Avoid paying what he owes, or wage war.
The threatening and scatological phrase against his enemies was followed by futuristic cries—“President, President!”—which the magnate exaggerated: “They are my friends and I appreciate them, but I still need to convince many more.”
And yes: With his employees, however flattering they may be, with his television channels that no one watches, and with his bot farms, it’s not enough to prevent him from finally fulfilling his tax obligations, but that’s precisely why he will seek the Presidency of the Republic, even though he’s 75 years old.
No one can rule out the possibility that his project will gain traction among conservative sectors and that, given the need of the PAN and other forces, Salinas Pliego will emerge as an opposition presidential candidate in 2030. This weekend, on the same day, although in different locations, they coincided in right-wing radicalism. Don’t forget: They’re one and the same.
Álvaro Delgado Gómez is a journalist who began his career as a reporter in 1986, and has worked in the newsrooms of El Financiero, El Nacional, and El Universal, as well as head of Political Information at the weekly Proceso. He is the author of many books, including El Yunque: The Far Right in Power; El Ejército de Dios; and El engaño: Prédica y práctica del PAN. El amasiato: El acuerdo secreto Peña-Calderón y otras traiciones PANistas is his most recent book.
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