Vicente Fox won the 2000 general election and became the first president not from the PRI since 1929, and the first elected from an opposition party since Francisco I. Madero in 1911. After 71 years of rule, the incumbent PRI lost the 2000 presidential election to Vicente Fox of the opposing conservative National Action Party (PAN). In the 2006 presidential election, Felipe Calderón from the PAN was declared the winner, with a very narrow margin (0.58%) over leftist politician Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). After twelve years, in the 2012 presidential election, the PRI again won the presidency with the election of Enrique Peña Nieto. However, he won with a plurality of around 38% and did not have a legislative majority.
During the twenty-first century, Mexico has contended with high crime rates, bureaucratic corruption, narcotrafficking, and a stagnant economy. Many state-owned industrial enterprises were privatized starting in the 1990s with neoliberal reforms, but Pemex, the state-owned petroleum company is only slowly being privatized, with exploration licenses being issued. In a push against government corruption, the ex-CEO of Pemex, Emilio Lozoya Austin, was arrested in 2020.
After founding the new political party MORENA, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (commonly known as AMLO) won the 2018 presidential election with over 50% of the vote. His political coalition, led by his left-wing party, founded after the 2012 elections, included parties and politicians from across the political spectrum. His success is attributed to the country’s opposing political forces exhausting their chances as well as AMLO’s adoption of a moderate discourse with a focus on reconciliation. Claudia Sheinbaum, López Obrador’s political successor, won the 2024 presidential election in a landslide and upon taking office in October became the first woman to lead the country in Mexico’s history.
