MEXICO CITY (AP) — It’s been a long, strange journey for Mexico’s Ecologist Green Party, which became the second-largest voting bloc in Congress thanks to its alliance with the ruling Morena party.
This Green Party is better known for picking presidential winners, as it did this time with incoming President Claudia Sheinbaum, and forging strategic alliances regardless of political ideology than for tackling environmental issues.
But it has always been a strange political group in Mexico. The Green Party, founded by the millionaire owner of a budget pharmacy chain, has repeatedly called for the reintroduction of the death penalty, compulsory English lessons for schoolchildren and life sentences for kidnappers.
What it’s good at is handing out free campaign swags – backpacks, T-shirts and water bottles with the ‘PVEM’ logo, for Partido Verde Ecologista de Mexico – and getting influencers and celebrities to post videos in support of it, supposedly in exchange for payments.
The party has made an alliance with whoever it thinks will win. It was an ally of the old ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, of the conservative National Action Party, and is now clinging to the ruling Morena party of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
That has worked to their advantage because Mexico’s arcane election laws allow coalition parties to split votes, seats in Congress and governorships among themselves.
That means the Greens, who have almost never functioned as a real opposition, are likely to supplant the National Action Party as the main opposition party in Congress in September. Although the Green Party won far fewer votes than National Action in the June 2 election, it will have more seats in Congress because of “proportional representation” rules designed to favor smaller parties.
But these alliances mean the Greens have backed López Obrador’s policies to revive Mexico’s state-owned oil industry and its production of heavy crude and highly polluting, poorly refined fuel oil. The government has subsidized airports, highways and gasoline prices while building the Mayan Train tourist line through jungles and over vulnerable caves on the Yucatan Peninsula.
“The Green Party is anything but green,” says Adrián Fernández Bremauntz, director of the Climate Initiative action group. “They voted against the environment, against public health and against the fight against climate change.”
The party is promoting its efforts to increase penalties for polluters, ban animal behavior in circuses and add the right to a healthy environment to the constitution.
But in 2009, the Green Party also proposed reintroducing the death penalty for kidnappers who kill their victims. The proposal was not adopted. Mexico formally abolished the death penalty in 2005, but no execution has taken place since 1961.
That led to the European Greens coalition publicly saying in 2009 that it did not consider the Mexican party to be a member of the green political family.
“It is not in line with the (environmental) causes,” but wins votes from young people or from well-meaning but ill-informed people, Fernández Bramauntz said.
In the late 1980s, the party’s founders, members of the González Torres family, saw an attractive marketing ploy in the “green” label that could probably sell politically.
“The environmentalist label was hijacked here in Mexico,” said Paula Sofía Vásquez, the co-author of the book “The Green Mafia,” who called it “a politically based business model” because under Mexican electoral law, government funds receive most election campaigns.
And from their business experience, they also realized the importance of marketing. The party has relied primarily on younger, physically attractive candidates, social media influencers and celebrities, and catchy one-line slogans based on whatever issue was on voters’ minds.
Green party leader Karen Castrejón said the group had supported some controversial proposals because they were “fundamental for our country.” Castrejón attributed the party’s success to “political engineering” and “solid proposals.”
“Unfortunately, as a party we have always been stigmatized,” Castrejón said. “They say we always go with whoever is in power.”
Things got so bad that in 2015, about 150,000 people signed petitions asking election authorities to revoke the party’s registration. The attempt failed.
María Marván, a legal expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, was a member of the country’s electoral council at the time.
“It was a very tough discussion,” said Marván. “They have been involved in a lot of underhand dealing.”
