Since 2024, MORENA has formalized an abroad strategy aimed at expanding its organizational reach, influence, and contacts among Mexicans living in the United States. Its 2024-2027 plan calls for committees throughout the United States, five regional coordinating structures, affiliation and political-education efforts, and sustained engagement with Mexican consulates and the government institutions responsible for Mexicans abroad (Movimiento Regeneración Nacional, 2024).
Mexico’s legal and diplomatic framework draws a clear line between the Mexican state and partisan political activity abroad. The Ley del Servicio Exterior Mexicano defines the Mexican Service as a permanent body of public servants representing the Mexican state, not the governing party. It expressly requires those participating in Mexican diplomatic activity to observe principles including “political neutrality,” and Article 41 requires “Members of the Foreign Service to refrain from engaging in conduct of a partisan or electoral nature incompatible with the performance of their public duties, and from making statements that compromise the country’s interests” (Cámara de Diputados del H. Congreso de la Unión, 2018, arts. 1, 41). This is similar to that of international law. Article 55 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations requires consular personnel to respect the laws of the receiving state; imposes a duty not to interfere in its internal affairs; and provides that consular premises may not be used in a manner incompatible with consular functions (United Nations, 1963, art. 55).
Mexico emphasizes sovereignty and non-intervention while maintaining increasingly robust legal restrictions on foreign political and security activity, while MORENA and Mexican institutions operate extensively among Mexican communities in the United States. Under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), Mexico enacted new restrictions and reporting requirements governing foreign security agents, including the DEA. Further, Mexican officials remained subject to reporting requirements for exchanges with foreign agents (Reuters, 2021). Mexico has recently adopted an electoral measure addressing foreign “intervention or interference” in elections, which former Mexican ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhán, argues reflects a broader expansion of sovereignty-based restrictions on foreign involvement in Mexican political affairs (Sarukhán, 2026). Against that backdrop, the extensive activity of MORENA and Mexican state institutions among Mexican communities in the United States raises a narrower question of institutional reciprocity.
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