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“The eyes of the world are on Mexico,” President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo declared in her second State of the Nation address. “Because here, a great people have decided to write their own history. We are consolidating a project that comes from the grassroots and places equality, justice, and well-being at the center.”
Before governors, members of her cabinet, and representatives of the legislative and judicial branches, the president presented an overview of the first two years of her administration and assessed the pending agenda in this constitutionally required report. She said that by the end of August 2026, tax revenue was 149 billion pesos higher than during the same period in 2025. “Public resources are being turned into social welfare programs, schools, hospitals, housing, highways, water infrastructure, trains, and security.”
Among the main achievements she listed were:
Security: Over 22 months, intentional homicides have fallen by 51 percent and high-impact crimes by 32 percent.
Labor: In 2018, the minimum wage was 2,800 pesos a month; today, eight years later, it is 9,584 pesos. As a result, “we have managed to bring working poverty to its lowest level since 2005.”
Well-being: 13,788,000 older adults receive a pension of 6,400 pesos every two months; 2,873,000 women ages 60 to 64 receive a Mujeres Bienestar pension; and 2 million people with disabilities receive permanent assistance of 3,300 pesos every two months.
More scholarships and educational opportunities: This year, 8 million elementary school students received assistance for school supplies and uniforms, and 156,000 new places were created in upper-secondary education.
Food sovereignty: Support is being provided to nearly 200,000 fishermen through the Bienpesca program; 1,889,000 farmers participate in Producción para el Bienestar; more than 2,157,000 producers receive free fertilizer; and 445,000 growers receive support through Sembrando Vida.
Fair housing: The six-year goal is to build 1.8 million homes for families earning less than 2.9 minimum wages.
The president emphasized: “Mexico’s wealth must translate into well-being for its people. That is why a pension for an older adult, a scholarship for a student, or support for someone who works the land are not concessions from those in power, but a way of recognizing the dignity and effort of millions of Mexican women and men. It is a new way of understanding the state.”
Alongside these achievements, the challenges inherited from four decades of neoliberalism remain, as do pending issues in a wide range of areas—from missing persons to the violence and insecurity faced by vulnerable communities in various states, as well as environmental problems and relations with Washington, among many others. As the president’s report approached, several indicators, reports, and analyses published in La Jornada highlighted the complexity of what the government and the ruling party still face.
For example, although wages and working conditions have improved in some sectors, a majority—34 million—of Mexico’s 60.8 million active workers are employed in the informal sector.
Regarding progress toward providing health care services to the entire population, there has been criticism over how quickly and effectively that promise can be fulfilled. Its definition has also been questioned. As Gustavo Leal puts it: “Without taking away from its merits, a triumphalist approach on curative care is merely the other side of the coin: there is still work to be done and outcomes to be measured regarding what should have been prevented in the first place.”
In the days leading up to the report, new leads were announced in the case of the disappearance of the 43 student teachers. Yet 12 years later, those ultimately responsible for the heinous crime have still not been identified. Moreover, although there has been progress in the administration of justice, experts continue to point out Mexico’s extremely high rate of impunity for violent crimes.
Regarding relations with Washington, the Mexican government has been praised by many around the world for achieving these advances despite a lack of cooperation and Washington’s frequently aggressive policies. As Sheinbaum acknowledged, this has been one of the biggest challenges of her administration, and she reiterated that the relationship is managed under the principle of “cooperation, yes; subordination, no.”
“Mexico is experiencing a paradigm shift,” La Jornada summarized in an editorial about the report. “The dogmas of the free market have given way to a social economy in which justice is not an abstraction, but a right guaranteed by the state.”
The Quote:
“Don’t think for a moment that we’re going to go home and cry. We’re going to look for our children under every rock and all over the world if necessary.”
—Metodia Carrillo, mother of Luis Angel Abarca Carrillo, a disappeared normalista
In Case You Missed It
◻️ The disappeared: “Much remains to be done.” Finding them “alive or dead” was the demand voiced by relatives of missing people in 31 states on the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. Mexico’s Interior Ministry emphasized that it shares the families’ pain and acknowledged that although thousands of missing people have been located, “we are fully aware that much remains to be done.” In Guerrero, a teacher and community leader who also searched for missing people with the Tlachinollan Mountain Human Rights Center—including his own son—was reported murdered. “Everyone knows who did it,” residents said, pointing to complicity among local authorities.
◻️ Femicide cases fell 36 percent. The country has seen a “substantial decline in femicides,” said Ingrid Gómez Saracibar, deputy secretary for the Right to a Life Free from Violence at the Ministry of Women. She emphasized that when comparing the daily average from January through July 2026 with the same period in 2021, the decline was approximately 36 percent. She said that the expected approval of a proposed general law to prevent, investigate, and punish the crime and provide reparations will guarantee zero impunity by standardizing investigation and prosecution mechanisms nationwide.
◻️ A young man’s autobiography: Carlos Monsiváis. The Public Intellectual: A Young Man’s Autobiography by Carlos Monsiváis was written when the author was 28 and originally published in 1966. La Jornada published an excerpt from the book depicting the young journalist observing an expanding Mexico City while recalling his childhood in the Portales neighborhood, as well as his reading and intellectual formation.
◻️ Nicaragua: Mexico and the political crisis. The Mexican government refused to support a U.S. proposal at the Organization of American States to classify Nicaragua’s political crisis as a threat to regional security. “It does not necessarily contribute to resolving the crisis,” Ambassador Alejandro Encinas explained, and could instead “deepen the country’s isolation.” Nevertheless, a voice from the Nicaraguan left urged Latin American left-wing movements “not to surrender our banners of freedom and democracy to the right.”
◻️ Palestine: The normalization of the abnormal. “Is it normal that more than 21,600 children have been killed before our eyes?” asks the ambassador of the State of Palestine to Mexico in an opinion article. “In the face of the annihilation of my people, speaking of a humanitarian crisis is an insult: what we are witnessing are war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the systematic destruction of a people,” she writes in an extensive account of Palestinian resistance.
◻️ Puerto Rico: Crisis and resistance through music. “Popular outrage over environmental dismantling intersects with the global phenomenon of Bad Bunny singing about resistance, all under the shadow of a government that privatizes at breakneck speed and a natural environment that relentlessly swings from drought to the threat of flooding,” reports Sandra Rodríguez from San Juan.
◻️ Taibo returns to the crime novel. Historian and fiction writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II, a three-time winner of the Dashiell Hammett Prize and director of the Fondo de Cultura Economica, brings back one of his crime-fiction characters to explore the issue of impunity in his new book, Te lo juro por la Virgen de Guadalupe y el osito B. In an interview with La Jornada, he says: “I alternate between the rigor of history and research and the freedom of a kind of crime fiction that I understand as very freewheeling. Besides, it was a fun challenge to bring Olga Lavanderos up to date, a character with whom I have a very affectionate relationship and whom I like very much.”
🎧 What We Are Listening To
Dolly Parton sings Deportee
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Edited by David Brooks and Jim Cason in the United States, Tania Molina Ramírez in Mexico City, of La Jornada, and Elizabeth Coll in Tokyo, under the direction of Carmen Lira Saade and Guillermina Álvarez. More information.