Building a Conservative Movement in Mexico

The American Conservative sat down with Humberto López and Alice Galván, founders of the Mexican conservative think tank Patria Unida, to talk about the challenges and opportunities facing the right in Mexico.

Let’s start by talking about Patria Unida. How was it founded and what is its purpose?

Humberto López: Well, first of all, we’re married. We celebrated six years of marriage last September. We met in law school. We both studied law, and at the time we met, I was fully committed to law. Alice, on the other hand, was fully committed to politics in Mexico. She’s part of the National Action Party (PAN). And for three years, when we were first married, she was the chief of staff for the vice president of the Senate in Mexico.

Alice Galván: I was very concerned about the future of Mexico, because in the Senate, I could see how [left-wing political party] Morena was destroying Mexico’s political and democratic institutions. But at the same time, I didn’t feel comfortable with PAN because they were mostly content with just managing decline, and sometimes they adopted woke ideology. So I was very disappointed with them. 

Many times I returned home crying, and one of those times Humberto told me, “I understand what you are feeling, but crying is not going to change the country. If you are not comfortable there, let’s do something different.” So I said, “Okay, but let’s do it together.” 

At that time, we didn’t have kids, but we thought, “What Mexico are we going to leave our kids when we have them?” We realized that on the left, they are training people, and indoctrinating people more than training them, in their ideas and worldview. But on the right, we had refused to do that. We were just training people to be the best lawyer or the best politician, but we had lost the whole human ideal. So we thought, “Okay, well, we found the problem… Let’s train the future leaders that Mexico will need.”