Somos México: Old Salinas Supporters, Claudio X Supporters, TV Azteca Supporters, & PRIAN supporters

ByÁlvaro Delgado Gómez

This article by Álvaro Delgado Gómez originally appeared in the March 9, 2026 edition of Sin Embargo.

Mexico City. A hodgepodge of old politicians from the six-year term of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, former ministers of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN), former electoral officials and even journalists linked to the PRIAN and its governments, as well as employees of the magnates Claudio X. González Guajardo and Ricardo Salinas Pliego, are recycling themselves in Somos MX , the new political party that says it is neither “left nor right” and that is also united by its animosity towards Claudia Sheinbaum and Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The figures of Somos MX as militants, advisors and consultants range from the former PAN member Carlos Medina Plascencia, with whom Salinas de Gortari inaugurated in 1991 the “concerted concessions” with the National Action Party (PAN) —which has governed the state ever since—, and Gustavo Madero Muñoz, signatory of the Pact for Mexico with Enrique Peña Nieto, to María Amparo Casar Pérez, President of Mexicans against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI), the pressure group of González Guajardo that is financed by oligarchs, and the former deputy Jorge Díaz Cuervo, rector of the University of Liberty, owned by Salinas Pliego.

The lists include prominent figures from the governments of Salinas de Gortari, such as his former attorneys general Ignacio Morales Lechuga and Diego Valadés Ríos; from Vicente Fox, such as Jorge Castañeda Gutman and Rubén Aguilar Valenzuela; from Felipe Calderón, such as Consuelo Sáizar, Arturo Sarukhán, Heriberto Guerra, José Luis Luege and Guillermo Valdés Castellanos, the former director of Cisen who never knew that Genaro García Luna, his cabinet colleague, was a drug trafficker, and even from Enrique Peña Nieto, with Enrique de la Madrid.

Emilio Álvarez Icaza and Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo were members of the National Civic Front that supported the Pink Tide (a Mexican neoliberal protest ‘movement,’ not the reformist governments of Latin America.)

This political project, which gathers the remnants of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and offshoots of the PAN, PRI, and even Morena parties, is chaired by Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, while the general secretary is Cecilia Soto, a former deputy for the Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolution (PARM) in 1988 and presidential candidate for the Labor Party in 1994. The third in command is Edmundo Jacobo Molina, in charge of political education, who served for 15 years as executive secretary of the National Electoral Institute (INE). The representatives to the INE’s General Council will be Marco Antonio Baños, a former councilor identified with former PRI member Manlio Fabio Beltrones, and Emilio Álvarez Icaza, a former PAN senator.

Other members of the Secretariat, as the national leadership is called, include Roberto Heycher Cardiel, in charge of alliances and who was Executive Director of Electoral Training and Civic Education at the INE under Lorenzo Córdova; Juan Francisco Torres Landa, a member of México Unido Contra la Delincuencia (United Mexico Against Crime), responsible for the Internal Justice Commission; María José Gómez-Mont Herrera Prats, a youth leader; Díaz Cuervo, with the portfolio of Science, Technology, and Culture; as well as Patricia McCarthy, a former electoral councilor from Yucatán, and Rodrigo Morales Manzanares, also a former councilor and friend of Calderón.

What stands out about the Somos MX party is the list of figures who make up the Advisory Council, a body that does not require its members to formally join the party, but seeks to gather their points of view. Among them are former Supreme Court Justices Margarita Ríos Farjat, Valadés Ríos—Attorney General under Salinas de Gortari—, José Ramón Cossío, and Javier Láynez Potisek, co-author of Ernesto Zedillo’s 1994 Judicial Reform; Lorenzo Córdova Vianello, former president of the National Electoral Institute (INE); Federico Reyes Heroles, former advisor to Justice Norma Piña Hernández; Martha Bárcenas, Ambassador to Washington appointed by López Obrador; and Jacqueline L’hoist, director of the Gender Unit for Mexico and Latin America at Grupo Salinas, who has never spoken out against her boss’s misogynistic remarks.

Also noteworthy in this group are Roger Bartra and Francisco Valdés Ugalde, who unified the intellectual groups of Enrique Krauze and Héctor Aguilar Camin around the presidential candidate Xóchitl Gálvez and, since 2020, encouraged the PRIAN coalition that the magnate González Guajardo created in his residence in Lomas de Chapultepec, as this reporter has documented.

Also members of the Somos MX Advisory Council are former official Casar Pérez and PAN member Ana Lucía Medina, both operatives of Claudio X. González; María Elena Morera, García Luna’s defender and contractor; former PAN members Marcela Torres Peimbert, Manuel Clouthier, Ernesto Ruffo, Carlos Medina Plascencia, Gerardo Priego Tapia; former PRD members Carlos Navarrete, Antonio García Conejo, Carlos Heredia Zubieta, Ramón Sosamontes, Salvador Nava, René Arce and José Manuel Fócil; and former PRI members Agustín Basave, Demetrio Sodi, Leobardo Alcalá and José Ignacio Peralta, former governor of Colima accused of corruption.

Somos MX also has, in an advisory capacity, its journalistic side with Lázaro Ríos, former director of the Reforma newspaper, Francisco Calderón Lelo de Larrea, cartoonist of the same newspaper; Beatriz Pagés Rebollar, director of Siempre magazine; the writer Elena Chávez, the announcer Tere Vale, the host Adriana Pérez Cañedo, as well as the reporters Ivonne Melgar and Laura Brugés.

Edmundo Jacobo Molina, who served for more than 14 years as Executive Secretary of the National Electoral Institute (INE), promoted the creation of a political party along with politicians from the PAN and PRD parties. Photo: Somos MX.

Also members of the Advisory Council are María del Carmen Alanís, former president of the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Branch of the Federation (TEPJF) and her husband, Emilio Rabasa, an official in Zedillo’s administration; the searching mother Cecilia Flores; Reyna Rodríguez, former judge from Guanajuato; former electoral councilor Arturo Sánchez Gutiérrez, commentator José Antonio Crespo, Macario Schettino, Leopoldo Hernández, Rogelio Gómez Hermosillo, and Juan Pablo Castañón, former president of the Employers’ Confederation of the Mexican Republic (COPARMEX).

The cultural community is also represented by actress Claudia Ramírez, actor Joaquín Cossío, and tenor Fernando de la Mora. Even a member of the military is involved in the project: retired General Pedro Felipe Gurrola, who served as the General Coordinator of Security in Michoacán during the administration of fugitive former governor Silvano Aureoles.

Somos MX held its National Constituent Assembly on Saturday, February 21, whose delegates approved the Statutes, Declaration of Principles and Action Plan, which were presented to the INE on Friday the 27th, to request its registration as a national political party.

In his first speech as president of Somos MX, whose only experience as a leader was as interim president of the PRD for six months in 2008, Acosta Naranjo clarified that this party does not have a defined ideology.

“The central struggle is not between right and left, but between democrats and authoritarians. Authoritarians have no place in Somos MX under any circumstances,” said the former PRD member, who has reiterated that in the 2030 election he will ally with the PRI and the PAN—if it maintains its registration in 2027—to confront Morena and its allies: “The fight is for the defense of freedoms.”