Hugo Eric Flores launches PAZ, his third evangelical party; a career opportunist who has passed through the PRI, the PAN, and Morena, always to hand the evangelical vote a party.

This article by Luis Hernández Navarro originally appeared in the July 14, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

Neo-Pentecostal fundamentalism has a new political party. The third in a row, after losing two previous registrations. It is headed—of course—by the promoter of the evangelical prosperity theology, squatter of secular spaces and Morena deputy, Hugo Eric Flores Cervantes.

Mexico City’s Secretary of Government, César Cravioto, congratulated its leader and wished him the best of luck with his new party. “He has always been close to the Transformation. He is someone who has been very consistent,” he said on social media. Deputy Flores acknowledged that they are very good friends and “there is much coincidence of ideas.”

The new political institute is called PAZ and, like its predecessors, mixes religion with politics and aspires to corporatively capture the vote of evangelical Christians. It takes over from the failed Encuentro Social (2014-2018), which arose from the Political Association of the same name, and from Encuentro Solidario (2020-2021), all with a clear confessional and far-right bent.

Hugo Eric’s leadership in the new political instrument is unquestionable. As he explained to Enlace Judío, “the one who founded the party was my mom, because she planted the chip in my head, and when I came back from the United States (where he spent four and a half years), I returned saying: I am going to make a political party. It was in the United States where I designed the party’s ideology. I said: instead of a class struggle, better a class encounter” (https://shorturl.at/VMPsM).

The fundamentalist Flores considers it a mistake to have “taken God out of political life” and aspires to break the “Jacobin State.” He defines himself as pro-Israel (where he has many friends), defends that country’s occupation of the Gaza Strip, and is fascinated by “Hebrew symbols.” He is an enemy of women’s right to decide about their own bodies, opposes the legalization of abortion, and is convinced that homosexual marriage “is a fad.” He considers that the soul of the Mexican nation lies in the family. He demands that religious associations have radio and television stations and a tax regime that benefits them. He managed to turn the Chamber of Deputies into a pulpit, summoning evangelical groups from there to a March for Jesus.

He suffers from what the Protestantism specialist Carlos Martínez García called, in the pages of La Jornada, “the Constantinian temptation.” That is, turning the Christian faith, fiercely persecuted, into a tolerated religion and, later, the official one of the Roman Empire. He maintains that his party’s values come from the Bible, and he seeks power to create a model of government so that the people turn to look toward God.

Linked to the Church of God and to Amistad Cristiana, he collaborated closely with the Pentecostal denomination Casa sobre la Roca. PAZ is made up, for the most part, of faithful from neo-Pentecostal denominations and charismatic groups.

Politically unscrupulous, Hugo Eric has passed through the ranks of countless parties. He advised President Ernesto Zedillo through Liébano Sáenz and was undersecretary of the PRI’s national committee. In 2000 he was coordinator of political and international advisers to President Fox. In 2003, his association Encuentro Social allied with Convergencia (today, Movimiento Ciudadano). In 2006, he moved closer to the PAN, to support Felipe Calderón’s candidacy. He was appointed chief administrative officer of Semarnat but, some time later, was thrown out for falsifying documents.

However, the story did not end there. Marcelo Ebrard took him in in Mexico City and made him director general of Government. He also collaborated with the administration of Miguel Ángel Mancera and took part in the capital’s Constituent Assembly. Prominent PRI politicians supported his party in states such as Hidalgo. Despite his openly reactionary platform, in 2018 he was part of the Juntos Haremos Historia coalition, which nominated Andrés Manuel López Obrador. He was named superdelegate in Morelos from December 1, 2018, to November 30, 2020. In 2024 Morena made him a deputy.

Hugo Eric Flores has defended the worst causes. He supported the release of the paramilitaries who, on December 21, 1997, savagely murdered 45 members of Las Abejas as they prayed peacefully in the chapel of Acteal. He took part, centrally, in the operation to rewrite the State crime and disguise it as an interreligious conflict, in order to exonerate its intellectual authors in public opinion. He offered the prisoners’ lawyers to intercede before President Ernesto Zedillo and his private secretary.

With the help of his friends in the federal government and in Mexico City’s, Flores was appointed by the Chamber of Representatives as a member of the Constituent Assembly of Mexico City, which was tasked with drafting and approving the country’s capital’s first Constitution. There he tried to put together a bloc to obstruct the recognition of LGBT+ rights, abortion, or a dignified death.

His time as superdelegate in the land of the Caudillo del Sur is associated with the murder, at the hands of gunmen, of the Indigenous leader from Amilcingo, Samir Flores, an opponent of the Proyecto Integral Morelos (PIM), which Hugo Eric defended. On February 20, 2020, just one day after the representative of the Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra y el Agua of Morelos, Puebla, and Tlaxcala verbally confronted Hugo Eric in Jonacatepec, during an informational assembly to promote the PIM, he was shot dead at his home.

Cuauhtémoc Blanco was then governor of the state (and before that municipal president of Cuernavaca), nominated by the PES. And when the former soccer player was accused of rape by his half-sister, Deputy Flores, president of the Instructional Section of the Chamber of Deputies, absolved him, despite their disagreements.

Although it may try to present itself as centrist, PAZ is a far-right party that aspires to corporatively express the evangelical vote, which the 4T shelters.

Author X: @ilhan55

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