Mexico City, August 28, 2025 – The scuffle followed the customary singing of the Mexican national anthem, when PRI president Alejandro Moreno budged his way through and got into the face of Mexican senate president Gerardo Fernández Noroña of the ruling left-wing Morena party of Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum.
The altercation that has since been watched tens of millions of times on every mobile phone and TV screen across the country came in the wake of a heated Senate debate over the possibility of U.S. military intervention to carry out targeted strikes against criminal drug trafficking organizations on Mexican soil.
Global media outlets, including national U.S. station CBS, pounced on the fortunate headlines, painting a picture that both Mexican political figures had ultimately come to blows over the threat of a possible U.S. invasion of Mexico. But, according to news reports with a more intimate familiarity with the issues, this caricature of the incident is a slight exaggeration.
The real issue was over procedural matters after PRI (Partido Nacional Revolucionario) leader Alejandro Moreno had been seething for much of the afternoon because he had been denied the opportunity to speak on the Senate floor and participate in the debate regarding U.S. military actions against narc-terrorist organizations.
When the session had ended and the singing of the Mexican national anthem was complete, Moreno began to argue with the liberal Senate president, shoving his way into the personal space of Noroña, then slapping at his face, and then once more, before having Senate cameraman and Noroña aide, Emiliano González González, attempting to intervene in the fight, only to have himself thrown into oblivion, crashing into the ground beneath the Mexican banner before the world to see.
Profanities on the Senate’s podium could be heard on TV stations picked up by the looming nest of cameras there to capture the entire debacle, “Fuck your mother, Fucker!”, “I’ll break your hand! Motherfucker!”, “Fuck off, fucker!” were some of the insults hurled at the Senate president Noroña, before he scurried off the stage to avoid a further beating.
The cameraman who was catapulted across the Senate deck by the stocky Moreno was then stood over by the menacing boxer in a suit when “¿Qué pasa?, Chingado” (“What’s up? Fucker”) could be heard before the official senate camera moves away from the fierce Moreno and captures a frightened Noroña, make his escape out of the Senate backdoor.
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Tensions between the two parties, the liberal Morena party and the National Revolutionary Party (PRI), have intensified in recent years as the country has embraced almost a decade of predominant liberal political influence in Mexican politics.
Mexico was an absolute one-party state for much of the 20th century, in which the PRI held uninterrupted power by close collusion between the Mexican executive branch and the Mexican armed forces for 90 years, from its founding in 1929 to 2018.
The liberal Morena party, much more hostile to American influence, rejects the idea of potential cooperation with the United States military on Mexican territory to target the cartels, an issue that the Trump administration is hell-bent on tackling. President Trump has previously threatened military strikes on U.S. soil to deliver a blow to the drug lords, while President Sheinbaum condemns the idea as interventionist and contrary to the integrity of national Mexican sovereignty.
Mexican Senator Lilly Téllez, an outspoken conservative and cartel hawk, took to the floor before the melee to ratify a proposal that would call on the United States to provide “assistance” to Mexico in the fight against organized crime.
Téllez then proceeded to lambast members of the ruling Morena party as corrupt “narcopoliticians” and “narcosatanics”. Morena opposition members reciprocated by calling Téllez a “traitor” and a “sellout” to Mexico.
Noroña and his allies are now considering submitting impeachment proceedings against Moreno for his assault on Senate colleagues.
When asked for remarks shortly after the incident, the liberal Noroña defended himself by saying that Moreno is “much younger, and a fit man… and I’m an old man”, a helpless attempt to justify the physical humiliation still making the rounds throughout Mexican media.
