This week, two major countries across two distant continents held two historic elections, and their two ruling parties were re-elected. But that’s where the similarities between Mexico and India’s elections end.

Mexico saw a super-majority result for MORENA and its president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, securing nearly 36,000,000 votes and 30 percent margin over the opposition: a record result in the history of Mexican democracy. Sheinbaum will now become Mexico’s first woman president, taking the reins from her party’s founder, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), who has nearly finished his constitutionally mandated single six-year term.

A similar triumph for the BJP and its two-term prime minister Narendra Modi was expected in India. After years of electoral manipulation and judiciary capture, Modi’s third term in power was considered an inevitability. But rather than consolidate the majority the BJP won in 2019, Modi’s party lost 63 seats — and its majority in the Lok Sabha.

Together, these elections tell a story of the enduring pursuit of dignity: an electoral force that can be suppressed, but cannot be contained.

MORENA’s historic victory is the fruit of that struggle. For six years, AMLO’s government to introduce ‘Mexican Humanism’ into a political system that was once dominated by corruption. Por el bien de todos, primero los pobres, they said: “For the good of all, first the poor.”

Against predictions that of the country’s imminent collapse under AMLO’s left-wing leadership, the living standards of the country soared: millions were moved out of poverty, real wages were raised by 35 percent, minimum wages tripled, holiday time doubled, and exploitative subcontracting came under government crackdown. State pensions doubled, and became universal for all over-65s.

For the first time in decades, the people of Mexico saw themselves in their government. AMLO finished his term with a record approval rating of 80 percent. According to Gallup, public confidence in Mexico’s government doubled across AMLO’s six years in power: from just 29 percent to more than 60.

Modi’s ten years at the helm of the Indian Union have not yielded equivalent advances for his country’s poor and working class. Rather than base his campaign in the advances won for ordinary people, Modi mainlined divisive and Islamophobic rhetoric as part of a strategy of divide and rule.

Reports suggest that the BJP threatened candidates from opposition parties to withdraw from the race in at least three constituencies. Evidence of suppression votes, especially from Muslim communities, was reported in multiple constituencies across the country. BJP leaders barely concealed their dog-whistles, calling the Indian Muslims “infiltrators” engaging in “jihad” in public addresses to thousands of voters.

The path was set for a dictatorship in all but name. In a viral interview weeks before the election results, Modi declared that “he was not born biologically, but was sent by God.” His party would set a plan for the next “thousand years.”

Such rhetoric proved insufficient sustenance for millions of Indian voters facing double-digit inflation on basic foods - roti (cereals), dal (pulses), and sabzi (vegetables) - in the last year.

Now, Mexico’s Fourth Transformation — so named for its lineage in the three prior transformations, the War of Independence, the Reform War and the Revolution — advances. India’s slide into Hindu supremacist fascism, meanwhile, stalls. The success or failure of each project will be defined by the power of the progressive forces locked in step with the popular pursuit of dignity. We stand with them.

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