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Pedro H. Tesch

MEXICO CITY — Around the world, the far right is having a moment.

In Austria, an anti-immigrant party just won national elections. In Argentina, the president campaigned with a chain saw. In Brazil and Chile, Hungary and the Czech Republic, ambitious politicians have climbed aboard the Trump train.

Eduardo Verástegui is feeling the MAGA love. The Mexican movie producer triumphed in the United States with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_of_Freedom_(film)" target="_blank">“Sound of Freedom,”</a> a hit with Christian audiences. Republicans raved about it. Donald <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/trump-sound-freedom-screening-bedminster-qanon-1814200" target="_blank">Trump screened it</a> at his New Jersey golf club. He cheered Verástegui’s decision to pivot to politics, competing in Mexico’s national elections this year.

“El presidente is a possibility,” Trump assured him.

But a year later, here is Verástegui, the candidate of traditional Catholic values, sitting not in the splendid 18th-century presidential palace, but on his suburban patio dressed in a T-shirt, sipping coffee. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/06/02/mexico-president-election-sheinbaum-galvez/" target=_blank>Leftists swept Mexico’s elections</a>. The new president is a Jewish woman.

“The country has been kidnapped,” he says.

As Trump enters the final stretch of his presidential campaign, with a global network of allies rooting for him, Verástegui’s loss raises a question. Why have right-wing populists succeeded in some countries but crashed in others?

Latin America has been fertile ground for Trumpismo. Jair Bolsonaro, who won Brazil’s presidency in 2018, was dubbed the “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-brazils-nationalist-leader-built-a-bond-with-trump-and-won-his-support-in-amazon-fires-dispute/2019/08/30/b2ef676c-cb32-11e9-a4f3-c081a126de70_story.html" target=_blank>Trump of the Tropics</a>.” Farther south, President Javier Milei’s supporters sport “Make Argentina Great Again” caps.

In Mexico, though, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/abortion/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">abortion</a> never became a campaign issue. Trans rights? “Not on the radar,” says political scientist Jorge Castañeda. Firing an assault rifle in a campaign commercial might have worked for <a href="https://www.facebook.com/MarjorieTaylorGreene/videos/357486375165667/" target=_blank>Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia)</a>. When <a href="https://x.com/EVerastegui/status/1711387943611289609" target=_blank>Verástegui tried it</a>, he was roundly denounced.

“If someone shows off a weapon here, we think they’re either a police officer or a narco,” Jaime García notes.

“The error of people like Eduardo Verástegui is, they want to adopt things that have nothing to do with the way Mexicans view politics,” the political consultant says. “It’s very disassociated from what’s happening in the United States.”

Leonardo Alvarez Hernandez

On a cool morning in August, the <a href="https://www.cpac.org/post/cpac-mexico-2024-championed-human-dignity-freedom-in-the-americas" target=_blank>Conservative Political Action Conference</a> opened in a hotel in Mexico City’s upscale Polanco neighborhood. CPAC has been a kingmaker for the Republicans since Ronald Reagan addressed the first meeting in 1974. It’s since gone global, with franchises in Australia, Japan, Hungary, Brazil and South Korea.

The Mexico event, hosted by Verástegui, featured much of the standard menu. Video speeches by Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Segments criticizing abortion and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/coronavirus/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">coronavirus</a> vaccines. Denunciations of socialismo, comunismo, woke-ismo.

But when a Fox News video on the “crisis happening on our southern border” was played, the Mexican audience stared in silence. (<a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-know-about-unauthorized-immigrants-living-in-the-us/#:~:text=What%20countries%20do%20unauthorized%20immigrants%20come%20from%3F&amp;text=The%204.0%20million%20unauthorized%20immigrants,the%20smallest%20share%20on%20record." target="_blank">Mexico is the No. 1 source of illegal migration</a> to the United States.)

It fell to Christian Camacho, a political consultant, to deliver what he called the “crude truth.” Striding across the stage, he reminded the audience that 70 million Mexicans — more than half of the population — earn less than $650 a month.

“And these 70 million voters don’t care about abortion, trans youth or democracy,” he said. “They have other priorities.”

The one thing everyone could agree on was that Mexico — Catholic, family-centered, conservative Mexico — had lost something.

Trump’s “Make America Great Again” harks back to the 1950s and ’60s. Verástegui harks back harder. The 1920s were good. He’s written that <a href="https://x.com/EVerastegui/status/1841275544069124463" target=_blank>Mexico was better off as a Spanish colony</a>. Such is the reverence for history that some of the CPAC speakers were, well, dead.

Mexico’s 19th-century emperor, Agustin de Iturbide, appeared in hologram form. So did Reagan. His hologram flashed a V-for-victory sign at Verástegui.

“Whatever happens, never give up,” advised the Gipper, in perfect Mexican Spanish.

Oscar Rivera

It’s no secret why outsiders have scored big in Latin America’s recent elections. Inflation, crime, corruption — people are fed up.

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/10/28/critics-are-afraid-jair-bolsonaro-heres-where-he-stands-issues/" target=_blank>Bolsonaro was a fringe right-wing parliamentarian</a> who caught fire on social media. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/08/14/javier-milei-argentina-presidential-election/" target=_blank>Milei was a TV pundit</a> with four cloned dogs who claimed he hadn’t brushed his hair in decades.

Verástegui comes from the entertainment world. Think Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Terminator, with a rosary. The Mexican won fame in the 1990s with the boy band Kairo, dancing shirtless. Handsome and muscular, he went on to star in telenovelas, then headed to Hollywood.

“On the one hand, I said to myself, I had everything,” Verástegui, 50, told The Washington Post. “On the other hand, I had nothing, I felt empty.”

He became a strict Catholic and publicly swore off sex until he married. In 2006, he produced the antiabortion drama “Bella.” Audiences loved it, even if the critics were mixed. (“A mediocre cup of mush,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/movies/26bell.html" target=_blank>sniffed the New York Times</a>.)

Its Mexican director, <a href="https://seanwolfington.com/2011/04/25/la-times-bella-is-a-rallying-point/" target="_blank">Alejandro Monteverde</a>, wound up in Laura Bush’s box at the 2007 State of the Union. The Republican Party wanted to woo Latinos, and within a few years, Verástegui was at the White House, in a blue suit and red tie, addressing a meeting of Trump’s Hispanic Prosperity Initiative.

Back in Mexico, people were stuck on other issues.

“How can someone live 10 years without sex?” a CNN en Español interviewer wondered.

“Thirteen years,” Verástegui corrected.

In 2023, his film “Sound of Freedom” became a sleeper hit. Christians packed U.S. movie theaters to take in the thriller, about a former federal agent who rescues children from South American sex traffickers. Made for $14 million, it grossed around $185 million domestically in 2023, surpassing the latest Indiana Jones and Mission Impossible sequels.

Sex trafficking had become an increasingly important issue for Republicans. It’s also at the center of the extremist ideology QAnon, which holds that Trump is battling a “deep state” that sells children. (The film’s distributor denies it is aimed at QAnon’s radicalized followers. However, its star, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2023/07/07/sound-of-freedom-qanon-theories-jim-caviezel/" target=_blank>Jim Caviezel, has embraced some of QAnon’s wilder claims</a>.)

Buoyed by the film’s success, Verástegui registered as an independent candidate for the Mexican presidency.

The populist space? Already taken, gracias.

It was never going to be easy to win in a country where <a href="https://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/encuestas-ef/2024/08/20/encuesta-ef-sube-en-mexico-percepcion-de-triunfo-democrata/" target=_blank>Trump’s approval ratings</a> hover around 12 percent.

“The media has bashed me for my relationship with him,” Verástegui laments. “They see him as an enemy of Mexico, because at some moment he said Mexicans were blah-blah-blah.” (<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/06/16/theyre-rapists-presidents-trump-campaign-launch-speech-two-years-later-annotated/#annotations:12172372" target=_blank>Trump: “They’re bringing drugs.</a> They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”)

But Mexico’s power brokers never gave him a chance, Verástegui says. There’s a high bar to getting on the presidential ballot: nearly 1 million valid signatures, from supporters in at least 17 of the 32 states. He gathered fewer than 140,000.

“It’s a moment for populists and it’s a moment for the right” in Latin America, says Steve Levitsky, a political scientist at Harvard University. “One of the biggest reasons you don’t see it in Mexico is Mexico already has a populist.”

That would be Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mexicans-head-to-polls-to-choose-a-new-president/2018/07/01/517e8670-7a2a-11e8-ac4e-421ef7165923_story.html" target=_blank>López Obrador</a> identifies as a leftist. But to win the presidency in 2018, he built a coalition of socialists and moderates, evangelical Christians and secularists. He has avoided issues such as abortion and gay rights; he is not wild about feminists. He has appealed to Mexicans with a folksy manner, and social programs that doled out fistfuls of cash.

“He had this strange combination of being a sort of left-wing populist and a bit of a right-wing populist,” Castañeda says.

López Obrador was succeeded this month by his protégée, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/27/claudia-sheinbaum/" target=_blank>Claudia Sheinbaum</a>. For now, their party, Morena, pretty much controls Mexican politics.

Still, down the road, the right could have a chance. Arturo Sarukhán, who served as Mexico’s ambassador in Washington in a conservative government, says a number of factors could coalesce: Trump could attract more Latino followers, with a crossover effect in Mexico. Morena could overplay its hand. Infighting in the conservative mainstream National Action party could weaken it further.

“All of that could lay the groundwork for someone like Verástegui.”

For now, though, the actor can only dream of making Mexico great again.

Valentina Muñoz Castillo and Gabriela Martinez contributed to this report.

Part of a Post team named as finalists for Pulitzer Prize for reporting on terrorism post-9/11

Overseas Press Club Robert Spiers Benjamin Award for Latin America coverage, 1998

Nieman Fellowship, Harvard University, 2012-13

Knight-Bagehot Fellowship, Columbia University, 1992-93

College of the Holy Cross, BA in English

Mary Beth Sheridan is a correspondent covering Mexico and Central America for The Washington Post. Her previous foreign postings include Rome; Bogota, Colombia; and a five-year stint in Mexico in the 1990s. She has also covered immigration, homeland security and diplomacy for The Post, and served as deputy foreign editor from 2016 to 2018.   

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