Everything fits inside the anti López Obrador tents

A protester at the National Front AntiAMLO (Frena) camp in Mexico City.Nayeli Cruz

The most radicalized opposition against the Mexican government has two main enemies: Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the rain.

At the National Anti-AMLO Front (Frena) sit-in in Mexico City you see more mats and wet clothes drying in the sun than banners and harangues against the president.

The slogan of the movement was to stand up from the weekend until López Obrador left power, but the waterspouts that have fallen in the last few days diluted the protest, leaving hundreds of empty tents, in a picture that has unhinged traffic in the busy streets of the center of the capital and that has unleashed mockery and criticism from the sectors most loyal to the presidential rostrum.

Rain wasn't the only thing that wasn't in Frena's plans.

The protesters had planned to settle in the Zócalo square, but the Mexico City Police blocked their way and they were parked and boxed in by hundreds of agents on Juárez Avenue.

"We are going to stay here as long as necessary, they are blocking us and we are not going anywhere," says Sara Martínez, 51, who made the trip from Monterrey, in the north of the country, to join the protest. .

Her tent is right in front of the Palacio de Bellas Artes, next to the metal fences that are still painted with slogans of the feminist movement and just inches from the police cordon.

Now that the time has dropped, the members of the movement justify that it was not only the water that dispersed them, but that several had to "go to work" or "cover basic needs."

“Many went to bathe or rest to regain strength,” explains Juan, a 64-year-old protester who requests anonymity for fear of reprisals and derision.

"Do I have to get wet so that my demands are more valid, to martyr myself like others do?" He asks annoyed, while trying to repair one of the rods in his store.

"Unfortunately, many colleagues do not know how to demonstrate or have experience in social movements," acknowledges Raúl Pérez, 38, who traveled from Ecatepec, on the outskirts of the metropolitan area.

"We have a populist, hypocritical and despotic president, who has recycled a corrupt political class and the same old promises," says Pérez, wearing a national team jersey.

On the surface, Frena's hook is to capitalize on discontent with the government as an anti-establishment, nonpartisan and peaceful movement.

López Obrador is presented as a criminal and a liar, who has a dark agenda to turn Mexico into Venezuela or Cuba.

But everything fits in antilopezobradorismo.

Fed up with presidential blunders is mixed with fear of communism, homophobia, anti-rights discourse, xenophobia and the defense of the traditional family.

"López Obrador is anti-Mexican, he serves foreign interests," says Rosa María Montes, 48, who came to the protest from Puebla, one of the historic bastions of conservatism.

A few meters from a papier-mâché sculpture of a López Obrador with horns, Montes first explains that Frena defends democracy, the rights of Mexican workers and fundamental freedoms, but ends up talking about “attacks on marriage between men and women” and from "the secret agenda" of the Sao Paulo Forum, a mechanism that brings together the Latin American left that came to power in the last two decades.

- Is it a movement that defends religion?

- No, we are a completely secular movement, answers Montes, while tucking the metal rosary that used to hang around her neck under her blouse.

"We are surrounded by Bolivarian guards, almost all of them are Venezuelans," says Bernardo Díaz, a 42-year-old protester who came from the state of Hidalgo, while pointing to the police cordon.

Díaz insists on the dangers of Chavismo and ends with a long speech about the caravans of Central American migrants that, he says, "are financed by George Soros."

"I am not against foreigners, but those caravans are full of gangs and criminals, all consented to by Soros employees in the López Obrador government," he adds.

The far-right conspiracy speeches have lost ground in the public discourse of Frena and its founder, Gilberto Lozano, as the group has gradually amassed media notoriety.

Beneath the peaceful facade and buried in his first posts on social networks, Lozano is not shy about his fears against "the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy" or the attacks provoked by "heterophobia" or in calling "fagots" those who refuse to debate with he.

"If Cuba or Venezuela had had a Gilberto Lozano, they would not be living in a dictatorship," says Díaz.

The ultra-right leanings of Lozano — an entrepreneur who worked at Femsa, the Coca Cola bottling emporium in Mexico, and ran the Monterrey Soccer Club — does not stop at words or exaggerations about the strength of his movement.

There are also nods to the far-right Spanish party Vox, to which Frena has copied the strategy of making large patriotic caravans in cars, without the need for the protesters to get out of their vehicles to repudiate the Government, and to demonize the Sao Paulo Forum.

The sit-in itself, which Lozano abandoned on Sunday afternoon due to health problems, is an unexpected and ironic replica of the protests that López Obrador orchestrated in 2006 after denouncing fraud in the first presidential election in which he competed.

At the other extreme, López Obrador sets the tone and rhythm of the media sainete and has not hesitated to follow the game of Frena, an opposition that continues to fight on the margins and with little political influence, to make a case about supposed maneuvers from the right to discredit his government.

In the eyes of the president, his detractors also fall into the same bag: the "organic intellectuals", the critical press, his political rivals and, of course, Frena.

"Let them vote for the parties opposed to us, those who do not want transformation, those who want the old regime of corruption, injustice and privilege to continue," said the president on Monday in his morning press conference.

"That they finish forming the reactionary conservative bloc," he added.

In the game of polarization, agents in the police operation explain that the instruction is to protect the protesters, avoid clashes between pro and anti-government groups, and prevent health risks in the midst of the pandemic.

And Frena members frown when asked what's next after López Obrador's departure.

The reality is that the protesters consulted are not clear about it and that they are the same doubts that assail Morena, the government party.

There are no plans to form his own party or agenda or proposals beyond the reaction, a reflection of the political scenario with a view to the midterm election next June, in which more than 2,000 public offices are at stake and which is shaping up to be a huge referendum around the presidential figure.