Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or “Amlo” held rallies in El Zocalo (Cristopher Rogel Blanquet/Getty Images)
Surrounded by both Aztec pyramids and a monumental baroque cathedral, Mexico City’s vast central square, known as the Zocalo, is a vibrant symbol of the country’s nationhood and democracy. Formally called “La Plaza de la Constitución”, it was here that Mexico’s insurgent army arrived in 1821 to consolidate independence from Spain; it was here that the peasant forces of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa assembled in 1914 during the Revolution; and it was here that students gathered in 1968 to protest authoritarian one-party rule.
More recently, the silver-haired populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or “Amlo”, chose the Zocalo as the site of dozens of rallies during his 12-year quest for power. When he finally won the top job in 2018 with his Morena party — short for “Movement for National Regeneration”, while also meaning “brown skinned woman” — he moved the seat of the presidency back to the square’s National Palace.
It was also in the Zocalo that the current opposition, centred around presidential contender Xóchitl Gálvez, filled the square with activists dressed in pink on Sunday 19 May, promising a “pink tide” to sweep to power and replace what they claim is an authoritarian government by Morena. (The pink signals Gálvez’s coalition of parties rather an ideological bent.) Come Sunday, however, it will almost certainly be Morena supporters who will be celebrating.
A 61-year-old environmental engineer, Claudia Sheinbaum — Amlo’s anointed successor — was mayor of Mexico City from 2018 to last year. With opinion polls showing her leading the polls by a whopping 20 to 30 points over Gálvez, the campaign has been no nail-biter. Either way, Sheinbaum or Gálvez will give Mexico its first female president, ahead of its super-power neighbour the United States.
Despite misgivings among commentators in the UK and US, this weekend’s election — the biggest in the nation’s history by number of eligible voters and positions being contested — is a testament to the tenacity of Mexico’s democracy. Undeniably, its political system is heavily flawed, besieged by drug cartels who finance and murder candidates as well as journalists. But, for the most part, especially when compared with the rest of Latin America, it still functions. Mexico, remember, is nothing like the nearby authoritarian regimes of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua; nor is it suffering the political meltdown of Peru nor the complete ungovernability of Haiti.
And yet, read the British and American press and you could be forgiven for thinking that Mexico is sliding into a dictatorship. Two years ago, for example, the London-based Index On Censorship named Amlo “Tyrant of the Year”, above Vladimir Putin or Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, while The Economist Intelligence Unit downgraded Mexico from a “flawed democracy” to a “hybrid regime”. Elsewhere, the Financial Times has warned that “the country’s democracy is now in real danger”, while a headline in The Atlantic referred to Amlo as “The Autocrat Next Door”.
At its heart, this is not necessarily an issue of Right vs Left. Amlo, after all, identifies as Left-wing and promotes a range of different social programmes, some of which have reduced poverty and which Sheinbaum promises to carry on. But, perhaps confusingly for many in the West, he does not talk about “socialism” and is socially conservative on some issues, being strongly nationalist and in favour of the family. “The Mexican family is the principal institution of social security,” he has said.
At the same time, however, Amlo is clearly populist, employing a rhetoric that pits the Mexican people against what he calls “a mafia of power”. This style has garnered comparisons with Donald Trump, with whom Amlo was friendly when he was US President. In a similar vein, since his election in 2018, critics have focused on how Morena has expanded its power across various state institutions, including the judicial system, a process they fear will carry on under Sheinbaum. They also point to Amlo’s combative approach with the media. In February, he published the telephone number of a New York Times reporter who had investigated narco-corruption, and revealed the supposed income of a Mexican journalist who wrote a report on the president’s son.
Both amounted to acts of gross intimidation that deserve to be condemned. They are, however, not necessarily symptoms of how an authoritarian regime might function. Under Amlo, for instance, there have not been any major violent crackdowns on protests or round ups of political prisoners, such as those in Nicaragua and Venezuela, let alone in Syria or China. Indeed, as Amlo goes through his last months of power, he remains genuinely popular with an approval of around 60%, according to newspaper El Financiero.
Moreover, focusing solely on Amlo risks ignoring the fact that Mexico was already a very flawed democracy before he took office. The nation’s democratic transition since was long and twisted, and it was only in 2000, after 72 years in power, that the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) lost the presidency and a real multiparty system took root. Nor did its trials end there. Under the new president Vicente Fox, there was a dubious criminal charge against Amlo in 2004 that would stop him running for president that was only dropped after huge protests (in the Zocalo again). Under Fox’s successor Felipe Calderón, the public security secretary Genaro García Luna was later found to be in the pocket of Mexico’s drug cartels. And under the next president, Enrique Peña Nieto, a scandal blew up over his wife buying a $7-million mansion from a company that received government contracts. In other words, Mexico’s democracy was hardly in fine shape before Amlo came along.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe