Mexico: Democracy and Social Mobilization. Movimiento De Regeneración Nacional and the “Marea Rosa”

Since the 1980s, political discussion in Mexico has primarily focused on electoral democracy, which became the primary indicator of political organization and conflict. The presence of political parties reduced political struggle to the electoral arena. The 1988 social mobilization aimed to create a center-left political party that concentrated the main conflicts and social movements. The struggle for greater democratic channels was focused on opening electoral spaces, leading to electoral reforms and the institutionalization of political-electoral processes. The exhaustion of this model, resulting from disputed elections and party bureaucracies, led to the emergence of movements and parties that once again focused their struggle on achieving political power through the electoral road. This was the case with the Movement for National Regeneration (MORENA), born from a split within the PRD and from other social movements. It defined itself as a party-movement, although its tendency toward bureaucratization and electoral participation has shaped it into a party with an electoral vocation. Its victory in the 2018 election turned it into a government, and the priority of having a majority in the legislative branch distanced it further from its roots as a movement. In the 2024 election, the groups that maintained their vision as a movement sought to influence candidacies and the government project. During the federal government from 2018 to 2024, the right-wing opposition suffered electoral defeats and formed a social movement that confronted the government's initiatives: the "Marea Rosa" (Pink Tide). Thus, Mexico's political life and its democratic struggle center on the confrontation between two social movements, but with political parties behind them. This paper analyzes the actions and presence of these two movements and their confrontation over national democracy.