“To be a candidate for governor, why would you hold another country’s nationality? In other words, you are Mexican, period.”
Mexico’s federal government has sent a constitutional reform initiative to Congress that seeks to bar people with dual nationality from running for presidency of the Republic or state governorships. The measure would not affect dual nationality for ordinary Mexican citizens, including the millions of Mexican Americans entitled to citizenship in both countries.
“The issue is whether you want to be president or governor,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said during her morning news conference last week. “In that case, I believe it must be clear that you should have only one nationality, which is Mexican.”
The initiative sent by the federal executive seeks to modify articles 82, 116 and 122 of the Mexican Constitution. The goal is to ensure that holders of three senior positions in the executive branch have only Mexican nationality and put Mexico’s national interests first:
- Presidency of the Republic.
- State governorships.
- Head of government of Mexico City.
The proposed amendment to Article 82 says presidential candidates must be Mexican citizens by birth, have a Mexican father or mother, hold no other nationality and, if they do, renounce it before requesting registration as a candidate. It also requires presidential candidates to have lived in Mexico for at least 20 years.
The same nationality requirement would apply to candidates for state governor and head of the government of Mexico City.
“Why would you have dual nationality if you represent the people of Mexico?” asked Sheinbaum. “To be a candidate for governor, why would you hold another country’s nationality? In other words, you are Mexican, period.”
🇲🇽🪪 “Why would you hold dual nationality if you represent the people of Mexico? You’re Mexican, period.”
Sheinbaum to send a constitutional reform barring dual nationals from the presidency and governorships, highlighting the case of the US-born ex-governor who fled Mexico.… pic.twitter.com/MZwdOV2tUX
— Samuel 🇲🇽 (@resisres) August 25, 2026
To justify the move, Sheinbaum held up the case of ex-Tamaulipas governor Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca (PAN), a dual national who was born in the US and is wanted in Mexico on a raft of criminal charges, including organised crime, money laundering and tax evasion. Immediately after his gubernatorial term limit expired and his political immunity ended in late 2022, Cabeza de Vaca (which translates as “cow’s head” in English) fled to the US.
As Insight Crime reports, “Cabeza de Vaca [had] maintained good standing with US officials, meeting with powerful senators in the state of Texas and working on bi-national security initiatives with Customs and Border Protection (CBP).”
Immediately following Cabeza de Vaca’s flight to the US, Mexico solicited his extradition, which was duly rejected by US authorities, as tends to happen with almost all of Mexico’s extradition applications to the US. [1] Cabeza de Vaca, who is considered a fugitive from justice in Mexico, has even suggested he might run for Mexican president in 2030.
While Sheinbaum has used Cabeza de Vaca’s case as the underlying pretext for the proposed constitutional reform, the move should also be understood in the broader context of what is happening across Latin America. Whether through electoral meddling or vote rigging (Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Honduras…) or direct military intervention (Venezuela), the Trump administration is determined to install vassal states in all of the region’s resource-rich countries.
As we have been warning since early 2023, two years before Trump 2.0, this Monroe Doctrine “redux” is primarily about resource plunder. Same as it ever was. It is also about “boxing out” (in the words of former SOUTHCOM commander Laura Richardson) China and Russia from the region’s strategic resources.
For the moment, the US’s direct economic management of its new Venezuelan protectorate offers the most glaring example of this process in action…
Venezuela starts sending at-cost oil to replenish the US Strategic Reserve before it gets a dime from Trump’s oil deal.
Let that sit: the most impoverished country in Latin America is being made to subsidize the US in exchange for a vague promise of future investment. https://t.co/OLiipNKzzm— Francisco Rodríguez (@frrodriguezc) September 2, 2026
🚨 VENEZUELA IS BECOMING A MODERN RESOURCE COLONY 🚨
They told us that Maduro was the problem: drugs, dictatorship, human rights, national security, and every other talking point used to prepare public opinion for regime change. But according to this analysis, once Maduro was… pic.twitter.com/qnEQ1CJOU5
— Kevork Almassian (@KevorkAlmassian) September 2, 2026
Having heads of government with dual US citizenship is a handy way of guaranteeing their loyalty — though Latin America’s comprador class have generally proven to be more than reliable toadies over the years.
Dual nationality is already a common occurrence among the current crop of Latin American heads of state and government. As far as I’m aware, five have dual or even triple citizenship:
- Argentina’s Javier Milei (Argentine + Italian), though one suspects that the self-described “most Zionist president in the world” will became an Israeli citizen at some point in the future, after converting to Judaism.
- Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa (Ecuadorian + US), who could even run for US president, given he was born in Miami.
- Bolivia’s Rodrigo Paz (Bolivian + Spanish). He is not the first Bolivian president to hold Spanish citizenship.
- Guatemala’s César Bernardo Arévalo de León (Guatemalan + Ecuadorian)
- Colombia’s Abelardo de la Espriella, who has three nationalities (Colombian, Italian and US).
So, out of Latin America and the Caribbean’s 33 heads of state, over one seventh hold dual nationality while one-sixteenth hold dual US citizenship. This, as far as I’m aware, is the first time in modern history that two current heads of state in the region have US citizenship.
During Colombia’s recent presidential campaign presidential campaign serious doubts were raised about the legality and ethical implications of de la Espriella’s candidature given the potential conflicts of interest posed by his US nationality. In early June, a group of 36 academics and jurists signed a letter warning that…
“…[while] his dual Italian nationality does not raise any legal problems… [his] US citizenship poses legal, ethical and political obstacles for anyone who wants to be president of Colombia, [because to acquire it one takes] “an oath [of allegiance] that implies legal commitments and duties with that country that are incompatible with the obligations of the president of Colombia.”
It’s not hard to see how they reached that conclusion. The Naturalization Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America reads as follows (emphasis my own):
“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.”
Colombia’s Supreme Court did not see any cause for concern in De la Espriella’s US citizenship, however. After losing the second round of the election by the finest of margins, De la Espriella’s opponent, Ivan Cepeda, called on De la Espriella to renounce his US citizenship and clarify whether he is a collaborator or member of US security agencies, neither of which he has done.[2]
Since coming to power just over a month ago, De la Espriella has shown quite clearly where his loyalties ultimately lie…
VIDEO | President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella overhauls Colombian diplomacy, prioritizing Israel and the US
Colombia’s newly elected president, Abelardo de la Espriella, announced a drastic shift in foreign policy by suspending the mission in Palestine and opening an embassy… pic.twitter.com/vtOKDYNvX9
— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) July 27, 2026
In Mexico, by contrast, Sheinbaum wants to see off this threat before it becomes a real possibility. Amid the still-expanding fallout from the scandal surrounding “Maga’s Man in Latin America”, Fernando Cerimedo, who has been charged with trying to have his ex-girlfriend killed in Bolivia, it was revealed that the next target on the Latin American far-right’s list is Mexico [3].
As Kurt Hackbarth reports for Jacobin, Cerimedo’s Spanish business partner, Javier Negre, “a serial falsifier of information”, had told the 2025 CPAC that their disinformation outfit, La Derecha Diario (The Right-Wing Daily), had been invited to set up shop by far-right magnate Ricardo Salinas Pliego in order to “wage the cultural battle” in the country:
Interestingly, Salinas Pliego, Mexico’s fifth richest man who has repeatedly clashed with the Sheinbaum government over billions of dollars of unpaid taxes, not only wants to run for president in 2030 but has also admitted to holding US citizenship. If the proposal constitutional reform is approved, he would be barred from participating in the 2030 elections — unless, of course, he renounces his US citizenship.
In the US the proposal has raised hackles among certain Republican lawmakers. Carlos A Jimenez, a senior servant of Miami’s “Gusano Industrial Complex” (h/t Max Blumenthal), described the proposed reform as an attempt to suffocate Mexico’s opposition while warning that Sheinbaum risks bringing back the days of the “perfect dictatorship” — in reference to the 70 year uninterrupted rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
The Mexican government has responded by questioning why US congressmen are so concerned about a proposal that simply seeks to ensure that decisions affecting Mexico — and Mexicans — are made by exclusively Mexican citizens. Some have even highlighted the glaring paradox that Jimenez himself, as the only US member of congress born in Cuba (to Cuban parents), cannot be president — in the US, you have to be a natural-born citizen to run for president.
[1] This is part of a general pattern. As Sheinbaum complained in May, the US has rejected and mostly ignored 269 extradition requests made by the Mexican government. None of the individuals sought have been transferred to Mexico, and 36 requests have been formally denied by US authorities.
“There has been no extradition of any of these alleged criminals to Mexico. In other words, what Mexico has always asked for — at least under our administration — is reciprocity. Why have none of them been extradited if these are significant cases and reciprocity exists?” Sheinbaum said during her daily briefing.
[2] By contrast, the former mayor of Bogotá and former presidential candidate Enrique Peñalosa formally renounced his US citizenship in 2014. He made the decision on his own initiative before launching his failed presidential bid, arguing that out of respect for the electorate a president should not swear allegiance to another nation. Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, the former president of Peru, also renounced his US citizenship before taking office.
[3] In the latest twist of the Cerimedo scandal, which according to Hackbarth, could end up breaking Latin America’s far-right (if only!), Cerimedo “stands accused not only of colluding with narcos himself but of using one of them to try to off his own former partner and unborn child”:
[I]n the days leading up to the attempt on Beller’s life, Cerimedo was in contact via chat with Lieutenant Colonel Erik Correa González, director of intelligence for Bolivia’s Special Anti-Narcotics Force, to coordinate the assault. Correa is also under investigation for allegedly receiving bribes of $50,000 per plane to turn a blind eye to cocaine flights. For his part, and in addition to attempted homicide, Cerimedo is also being investigated for illicit enrichment via a drug connection, specifically the trafficking of controlled substances and the covering up of drug trafficking.
It is the irony of ironies. Cerimedo’s disinformation machine specialized in attaching the prefix narco to progressive leaders, movements, and governments up and down the region in order to discredit them… Every accusation is a confession.
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