The Anglican Church of Mexico has elected the Rt. Rev. Alba Sally Sue Hernández García as its new primate at an extraordinary synod held in Mexico City in March 2026. International offices have presented this as a historic step for women’s leadership and provincial stability, but the election sits on top of a disputed legal and canonical foundation that the Rt Rev. Julio César Martín and his allies have spent years documenting in detail. Their case raises a more basic question: when the Anglican Communion “recognises” a primate or a province, is that supposed to describe what has been lawfully done, or to prescribe what must now be accepted regardless of unresolved defects?

Two primatial lines and a contested legal person

Hernández, the province’s first woman diocesan (elected Bishop of Mexico in 2021 and consecrated that November), has now been chosen at the March 2026 extraordinary General Synod in Mexico City to succeed the Most Rev. Enrique Treviño Cruz as primate. Official provincial channels and social‑media posts on Sunday 22 March describe a “historic day” and refer to a duly convened extraordinary synod with representation from all five dioceses.

Martín’s side does not start there. For them, the decisive moment was the June 2022 synod in Monterrey that elected a new Bishop of Northern Mexico and confirmed Treviño as primate. In their reading of the constitution and canons of the Iglesia Anglicana de México, that synod was marred by irregular delegate accreditation, manipulation of voting lists, and disregard of canonical procedures. If Monterrey was defective, then any later act that presupposes its validity—including the composition of the civil board and the calling of the 2026 extraordinary synod—rests on what they call a “foundational injustice.”

Alongside the Hernández line, therefore, stands the Iglesia Anglicana de México A.R. centred on Bishops Ricardo Gómez (West) and Julio César Martín (Southeast), with former primate Francisco Moreno as a senior figure. Its provincial website, active by March 2026, names Gómez as primate and Martín as part of the “Administración Provincial de México” and presents this structure as the lawful continuation of the original religious association registered under Mexican law.

A 26 October 2024 statement on the Southeast diocesan Facebook page explicitly states that “actualmente la Iglesia Anglicana de México A.R. … tiene un Consejo Administrativo conformado por sus apoderados legales Obispo Julio [César Martín] …,” asserting that the corporate person recognised by the state is, in their view, under reformist control. The Treviño–Hernández camp replies in a 29 November 2024 communiqué that *their* board is the valid legal representative, and accuses Martín and Gómez of attempting to usurp “property and money” for personal or factional gain.

At this point the conflict is not merely rhetorical. It is a clash over who is, under Mexican religious‑association law and under the church’s own constitution, the lawful board and primatial line of “Iglesia Anglicana de México A.R.”

Martín’s legal‑canonical case

Martin’s side has not relied only on public statements. They point to a body of documentation:

– The published Constitución y Cánones de la Iglesia Anglicana de México, which they read as requiring transparent delegate accreditation, proper synodical notice, and specified majorities for primatial and episcopal elections.

– A narrative of the 2022 Monterrey synod in which, they argue, delegates were excluded or replaced without due process, and voting procedures were manipulated to secure predetermined outcomes.

– Civil filings in which, they claim, the corporate board associated with Treviño and later Hernández was registered contrary to the church’s own rules and without the consent of properly constituted diocesan synods.

On that basis, they argue that:

1. The Monterrey synod’s acts were canonically illicit and arguably invalid.  

2. The subsequent registration of the Treviño–Pulido–Hernández board as “Iglesia Anglicana de México A.R.” misrepresented the will of the church’s legitimate organs.  

3. A reform of the corporation, with Gómez recognised as primate and Martín as legal representative, is necessary to restore continuity with the original association and its constitution.

The Treviño–Hernández camp counters with its own narrative: audits and inquiries that, they say, uncovered financial irregularities; a contested TEC grant; and actions by Martín and Gómez which, in their view, show personal ambition and unilateral behaviour. Their 2024 communiqué presents itself as a defence of institutional integrity against bishops who, they claim, have attempted to seize assets outside proper channels.

The two sides thus present rival legal‑canonical dossiers. The question is not simply who has more complaints, but whether anyone outside Mexico has actually tested these claims against the canons and civil law, rather than assuming that whoever currently appears in Communion directories must be in the right.

Recognition: descriptive or prescriptive?

Here the role of the Anglican Communion Office and of figures around Canterbury comes into focus. Provincial lists maintained by the Communion Office, updated as recently as February 2026, continue to show a single Anglican Church of Mexico with one primate: first Treviño, now Hernández. In practice, this has functioned prescriptively: external partners, funding bodies, and ecumenical counterparts treat the listed primate and board as *the* Anglican Church of Mexico.

Martín’s camp insists that this gets the order backwards. In their view, recognition ought to be descriptive—recording what has in fact been lawfully done under a province’s own constitution and civil law. If there is a serious dispute about whether that has occurred, Communion recognition should pause or be marked “under review” while the evidence is examined.]

Instead, from 2022 onward, external actors effectively used recognition to settle the matter in favour of the Treviño line, long before the legal‑canonical complaints had been resolved. Archbishop Justin Welby’s broader preference for preserving institutional cohesion, his statements at and after the 2022 Lambeth Conference, and the pastoral mediation offered by Archbishop Linda Nicholls and Bishop Jo Bailey‑Wells in 2023–24 all took place against the assumption that there was one province whose continuity needed to be protected.

From Hernández’s supporters’ point of view, that is simply how Anglican structures must operate: they are not courts of appeal, and they must work with the leadership recognised by local law and by the majority of bishops and synods. From Martín’s perspective, the effect has been to turn Communion recognition into a quasi‑constitutive act: once one line is recognised, its internal opponents are relegated to a permanent status of “dissidents,” no matter how strong their documentary case.

What an alternative approach could have looked like

Given the seriousness of the claims, an alternative path was available between 2023 and 2025:

– Commission a neutral legal‑canonical review of the Monterey 2022 synod and subsequent filings, drawing on Mexican church lawyers and civil experts, with both sides submitting evidence and agreeing in advance to accept the findings.  

– Require that minutes, delegate lists, and voting records from Monterrey and later synods be published or at least made available to this review, in light of the requirements in the constitution and canons.

– Reflect the contested status transparently in Communion materials—for example, listing Mexico as under formal internal review, or noting the existence of a recognised dispute over governance.

Such steps would have treated recognition as provisional and descriptive, subject to the outcome of a rigorous test. Instead, continuity of listing was treated as a good in itself, with mediation focused on persuading the reformist bishops to accept an outcome whose legitimacy they were precisely contesting.

Hernández’s election within this unresolved framework

Hernández’s personal record—as a pioneering woman bishop, a visible participant in Communion‑wide Spanish‑language and ecumenical initiatives, and a figure welcomed by international partners—is not in question. For many clergy and laity, especially in the Diocese of Mexico, her election at the March 2026 extraordinary synod may appear as a stabilising move after years of turmoil, and international responses have emphasised that aspect.

For Martín’s side, however, the sequence remains inverted. They argue that you cannot stabilise what has not yet been lawfully constituted, and that the Communion has now doubled down on a primatial line whose canonical and corporate foundations have still not been subjected to impartial scrutiny. In that reading, Hernández is both a historic primate and the beneficiary of a prior choice: the decision to treat recognition as prescriptive and to treat those who challenged Monterrey 2022 as, at best, a regrettable complication.

Whether the Anglican Communion is willing to revisit that decision—and to allow recognition to follow law and canon rather than the other way round—remains the deeper question beneath Mexico’s new primacy.