Year One of AMLO's Mexico

Abstract

Year One of AMLO's Mexico Humberto Beck (bio), Carlos Bravo Regidor (bio), and Patrick Iber (bio) On a sunny morning last May on the grounds of Los Pinos, the old presidential residence now open to the public, Mexican citizens strolled past a line of cars, trucks, and armored vehicles. They gazed in the windows of a 1951 Volkswagen bug and posed for pictures in front of a Lamborghini Murciélago. The cars, which all belonged to the Mexican government (some were for official use, some had been seized from criminal organizations), were waiting for auction. "There can be no rich government and a poor people," Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) had repeated on the campaign trail. Now he was president, and this sale symbolized the new order. Proceeds were destined for some of the country's poorest municipalities. Even the government agency responsible for the auction would have a new name: the Instituto para Devolverle al Pueblo lo Robado (the Institute for Returning to the People What Was Stolen). As they waited to be sold, the vehicles picked up the dust and grime of Mexico City, which sits in a pollution-trapping valley at nearly 7,500 feet of elevation. Just the week prior, the city had virtually shut down for several days because of a pollution emergency, in which high temperatures, low rainfall, and ongoing fires added to the usual stew of exhaust and industrial effluent. In the grime on the window of a Corvette Stingray, someone scrawled a homophobic insult directed at the last president, Enrique Peña Nieto. A few days later, the vehicles were gone. The auction raised more than a million dollars in revenue. The sale was designed to demonstrate some of the new president's political ambitions. Few doubt AMLO's determination to transform his country. Even before taking office he had already envisioned his term in historic dimensions, labeling it the "Fourth Transformation" of Mexico, following independence from Spain, the liberal Reforma, and the Mexican Revolution. Though AMLO has never provided a precise definition of the Fourth Transformation, he invokes it to describe a revindication of national pride, a political project of aligning the presidency with the popular will, and the creation of a social movement that could to do away with the old party system, social inequality, and the economic status quo. [End Page 109] Click for larger view View full resolution AMLO boards a commerical flight in February 2019. (Alfredo Estrella/AFP via Getty Images) AMLO has moved quickly to make changes. Old offices and programs have been dismantled and new social policies put in place. Spending considered profligate has been scrapped and budgets redirected. New priorities have taken over the everyday work of government agencies. Elected with an absolute majority, his party, MORENA, is in firm control of Congress. And his popularity has remained reasonably high, even as criticism mounts: his approval rating has fallen from a post-election peak in the mid-eighties to somewhere in the high-sixties. AMLO is the fourth president—and the first from the left—elected since the end, in 2000, of seven decades of single-party control of the presidency by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). Approximately one year into his term in office, his approval rating does not differ significantly from those of his more conservative predecessors at the same point. All of those presidencies—of Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderón, and Enrique Peña Nieto—are considered failures. Indeed, their legacy of accumulated fiascos propelled AMLO to the presidency. Expectations have been high. But for his administration to succeed, AMLO will need to make life better for the majority of Mexicans. To do this, he'll need to reduce corruption, improve economic fairness, and provide safety and security. In each of these areas, however, there are reasons to be concerned about AMLO's ability to make significant progress. [End Page 110] ________ In his campaign for the presidency, AMLO took aim at the most emblematic infrastructure project of the previous administration, Mexico City's New International Airport. At the time, about 20 percent of the construction was already complete and 60 percent of the investment under contract. AMLO...