Mexico’s small, oft-questioned Green Party to become the second-largest force in Congress

By MARIA VERZA
Associated Press

MEXICO CITY (AP) — It’s been a long strange trip for Mexico’s Ecologist Green Party, which rode on its alliance with the ruling Morena party to become the second-largest voting block in Congress. The Green Party has been better known for picking presidential winners like it did this time with incoming President Claudia Sheinbaum and making strategic alliances regardless of political ideology than for taking on environmental causes. But it has always been a strange political group in Mexico. Founded by the millionaire owner of a generic pharmacies chain, the Green party has at various times called for re-instating the death penalty, mandatory English classes for school kids and life prison sentences for kidnappers.