This article by Alejandro Jiménez originally appeared in the January 23, 2026 edition of El Sol de México. The views expressed in this article are the authors’* own and do not necessarily reflect those ofMexico Solidarity Mediaor theMexico Solidarity Project.*
In the Mexican political map, the institutional left seems to have compacted into a single bloc: Morena and its constellation of allies.
On the right, however, the spectrum is broader, louder, and increasingly radicalized: traditional conservatives, recycled technocrats, occasional libertarians, and, more recently, openly far-right expressions that no longer hide.
In this context, it is striking that there is almost no visible presence of a left wing clearly positioned to the left of Morena, yet one that remains within the realm of legal, public, and peaceful politics. This space, now practically empty, is what the current Communist Party of Mexico, whose general secretary is Pavel Blanco, is attempting to fill.
In a country where the center is constantly shifting to the right on issues such as security, militarization, migration, and labour rights, the absence of a clearly anti-capitalist left leaves the field open for these agendas to become normalized without any counterweight.
This is not the historical PCM that was dissolved in 1981 and absorbed by the processes that led to the PSUM and, later, the PRD. It is an organization reconstituted in the 1990s, with a limited presence, no electoral registration, and activity that is more ideological than strictly political. Its reach is small, its visibility marginal, but its position on the political chessboard is interesting.
The current Communist Party of Mexico (PCM) is clearly further to the left than Morena, which it considers a reformist, national-popular project more concerned with managing capitalism than transforming it. However, at the same time, it does not subscribe to the logic of armed struggle, unlike the EPR, the EZLN, and other groups that have opted for insurrection. In other words, it occupies an intermediate space: radical in its discourse, but not militarized; anti-capitalist in its ideology, but not clandestine.
That combination— radicalism without guns —is precisely what is needed in the public debate today. Not because it will win elections in the short term, but because it broadens the scope of what is politically debatable. In a country where the center is constantly shifting to the right on issues such as security, militarization, migration, and labour rights, the absence of a clearly anti-capitalist left leaves the field open for these agendas to become normalized without any counterweight.
Morena, despite its rhetoric of transformation, governs with the rules of the market, with the armed forces and with a clientelistic pragmatism that, in fact, tends to resemble the PRI of the 1970s more as a state party, with all its latent authoritarianism.
In this context, a force that reminds us—even from the margins—that other possibilities for social organization exist, other ways of understanding work, property, and power, fulfills an indispensable political function: it broadens the debate. It doesn’t win elections, but it changes the language. It doesn’t govern, but it makes people uncomfortable.
The question is not whether the current Communist Party of Mexico (PCM) has a future as a majority party. The answer, today, seems clear: no. The question is whether its mere existence helps prevent the Mexican political landscape from being reduced to a false dilemma between a managed progressivism and an increasingly aggressive right wing.
Perhaps, in times of superficial polarization, what is most needed is not an armed left nor a domesticated left, but a left that discusses, makes uncomfortable, and reminds us that politics is not exhausted in the administration of the possible.
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Communism Without Rifles
January 23, 2026January 23, 2026
The Communist Party of Mexico’s mere existence helps prevent the political landscape from being reduced to a false dilemma between a managed progressivism & an increasingly aggressive right wing.
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Morena is not the PRI of the ’70s
January 23, 2026January 23, 2026
The opposition’s claim that Morena is the PRI of the 70s lacks foundation; the votes with which it won in 2018 and 2024 reflect genuine popular support.
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Mexico SA
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Canada has begun to make moves (such as rapprochement with the People’s Republic of China), but Mexico is clinging to the USMCA: all its eggs in one basket, something that, given the frenzied dynamic imposed by Trump, doesn’t seem to be the wisest course of action.
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