Andrés Manuel López Obrador, AMLO, came to power on December 1, 2018 with an ambitious left-wing project called the Fourth Transformation, which – like Independence, the Reform, and the 1910 Revolution – promised to renew the foundations of Mexican society. .
Four months before the end of his six-year term, his government has made important achievements, but has not managed to materialize many of its flagship projects, such as equalizing the Mexican health system to that of Denmark, taking the army off the streets or reducing violence rates.
The disappearance of 43 students in 2014 in the emblematic Ayotzinapa case was also not clarified.
Despite this, the visceral rejection that he provokes in those who accuse him of being populist, authoritarian and a liar, and his constant confrontations with the press, AMLO is approaching the end of his mandate with an approval close to 60%, according to an average of different surveys. , a percentage that many world leaders would like to have.
It is a level of popularity that, if the forecasts are confirmed, in the presidential elections on Sunday, June 2, will benefit the official candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum, who enters the elections as a favorite over her rivals Xóchitl Gálvez and Jorge Álvarez Máynez, with margins as extensive as those achieved by López Obrador six years ago.
But what are the factors that explain the high support for the current president. BBC Mundo spoke with experts who explain it.
1. The economy and social programs
Among the promises with which AMLO became president was to end social injustices and create a welfare state in Mexico, an ambitious goal in a huge country with high rates of poverty and inequality.
Six years later, although there have been no structural changes in this sense, experts agree that many Mexicans have seen their income improve and have more access to money.
One of the reasons behind this improvement is the gigantic increase in the minimum wage promoted by the government, which increased it almost 120% above inflation.
That is, after 35 years of stagnation, during AMLO’s six-year term, real purchasing power more than doubled, according to data from the National Minimum Wages Commission (CONASAMI).
It is an achievement that is recognized by supporters, opponents, businessmen and, without a doubt, those who have benefited.
“AMLO is popular because he has given results to his bases,” Viri Ríos, analyst and instructor at the Harvard University Summer School, tells BBC Mundo.
In addition to the increase in the minimum wage, he explains, the benefits given to people in the so-called “monetary transfers” increased on average by 55%, and the average labor income grew 24%, above inflation.
“It is an extraordinary change in the pockets of Mexicans,” says the expert. And she highlights that more than 5 million people escaped poverty during the six-year term, the most significant reduction in the last 16 years, according to the comparison of data between 2018 and 2022, when the last measurement was made.
These and other labor and social reforms that have bolstered the president’s approval levels – such as the right of workers to rest for 12 continuous days or the “Silla Law” that seeks to prevent employees from standing all the time – have been implemented. given in a favorable economic context for the country.
At the beginning of his mandate, many feared that AMLO would increase fiscal spending uncontrollably and wage a battle against businessmen, scaring away foreign investment and risking the country’s economic stability.
But it was not like that.
“AMLO is conservative economically and left-wing populist socially,” analyst Jorge Zepeda Patterson tells BBC Mundo to explain the paradoxical combination that, according to him, defines the Mexican president.
Certainly, sticking to his slogan of republican austerity, during his government he has maintained macroeconomic balance, a relative health of fiscal accounts and foreign investment reached record levels.
He has not raised taxes on the richest nor has he interfered in the business plans of large private sector companies. He also did not eliminate oil contracts that were in progress before he came to power.
The currency has strengthened, banks and markets have given it a vote of confidence, and although the majority of Mexicans work in the informal sector, unemployment at 2.7% is one of the lowest in Latin America.
Critics of the president claim that his measures are temporary solutions that do not fix the underlying problems, and that during his period not only did extreme poverty persist, but access to health services decreased and there was a significant gap in coverage. educational.
Luis Antonio Espino, an expert in political communication, maintains that the distribution of public funds among the poor was done at the cost of the closure of a series of important social programs such as full-time schools, daycare centers, or Popular Insurance.
“He dismantled the public budget and distributed the pieces among the people as if it were loot,” he comments in an interview with BBC Mundo.
“It’s like he takes the brick from the school and gives it to you to sell, but then you go to school and there is no school,” he says.
But others insist that even if they are not permanent solutions, the greater monetary flow and increased consumption that many Mexicans have accessed are one of the pillars that explain AMLO’s popularity.
“You can hardly disagree with the immediate attention to those who are dying of hunger,” says Zepeda Patterson. “For many people it is the difference between being poor and being miserable.”
2. His speech
Both those in favor and those against believe that AMLO’s communication strategy is another key to understanding his approval levels.
He has not only been skilled with words, they admit, but also with the public image he projects when he tours the country and reaches out to citizens, something he has done throughout his career and continues to do as president.
For some, his cunning is such that he could be said to be the most brilliant Mexican politician in recent decades.
The main element in this area has been the “Mañaneras” ritual, the daily conferences that begin at 7 in the morning and last two or up to three hours.
Broadcast live on YouTube and amplified by social networks and the media, López Obrador created with them an unprecedented and enormous platform from which he sets the agenda and ensures that the debate revolves around him.
During the “Mañaneras”, he usually makes announcements, attacks his adversaries, and when faced with criticism of his management, he denounces all types of campaigns against him.
He accuses those on the right of being hypocritical, corrupt and petty, and when the media contrasts his statements, he responds with one of his most famous slogans: “I have other information.”
His narrative revolves around the people, whom he integrates and makes feel like they are participants in an exploit.
In their book, “Andrés Manuel: the invention of a politician,” historians Saray Curiel and Alfonso Argote assure that throughout his career AMLO has cultivated a central idea: Mexico needs a savior to rescue it. And he somehow embodies it.
“It has become a myth,” they point out.
In that narrative, the president preaches and gives hope to the people, as the nation’s patriotic heroes did.
“I have Benito Juárez as a reference and guide,” he himself has said about the man who led Mexico between 1858 and 1872, and is considered by many the most respected leader in the country’s history.
It is no coincidence, several specialists believe, that his political project bears the name of the Fourth Transformation (4T), the next step after Independence, the Reform and the Revolution of 1910, three fundamental moments in the history of Mexico.
“The people give and the people take away, and they are the only sovereign to whom I owe submission and obedience,” he said at the inauguration.
It is a concept that, with greater or lesser adaptations, never stops repeating.
“He combines the factious personality of a moral preacher with the pragmatic personality of a political animal,” explains analyst Jorge Zepeda Patterson.
In that combination, AMLO uses the past and the future in his speeches so that they are always in his favor. What happens now is the fault of what he inherited; What he has not achieved in his six-year term is still in process: the 4T is a long-term project.
It is a formula that explains, for example, the failure to fulfill his promise to take the army off the streets during the first six months of his government.
“Yes, I did change my mind seeing the problem they inherited from me,” he said to justify it, a turn that does not seem to have substantially affected his popularity.
Nor did the official figures indicate that during his government there have been more than 178,000 homicides (with data up to March), a higher number than that recorded in the previous administration.
Or the controversial statements he gave dismissing the seriousness of the covid-19 pandemic, which cost the lives of more than 300,000 Mexicans.
In his book “López Obrador: the power of populist discourse”, Luis Antonio Espino asks how it is possible that a president can say and do things that would have ruined his career for any other politician.
One of their answers is that AMLO has managed to build a powerful and effective discourse, with a “demagogic narrative” that is credible for the majority of society.
“He manages to create a parallel reality in which, in addition to having his own data, he replaces evidence with emotions,” says Espino.
According to the expert, the president handles fear, scandal, drama, indignation very well, and uses his communication power both to intimidate critics and to point out scapegoats, something that many of his followers identify with.
3. His long political career
A third point that experts highlight to explain the support for AMLO is the political capital that he has accumulated in his career of more than 4 decades.
And that, like his speech, is full of epic.
One of the moments that best reflects this path occurred on January 11, 1992, when after walking more than 700 kilometers for 51 days, López Obrador arrived at the emblematic Zócalo in Mexico City.
He had blisters on his feet and had lost several kilos, according to stories from the time.
“Let’s not lose the opportunity to save the nation,” the leftist leader told a crowd that cheered him vigorously for having completed a mission. It was that that took him from Villahermosa to the country’s capital to denounce electoral fraud in Tabasco, the state where he was born in 1953.
Baptized as the “Exodus for Democracy”, that caravan, which was joined by protesters along the way, had an almost biblical symbolism of a crusade, with the figure of a man who opened the way for a poor, historically oppressed people. by the power elites and fed up with corruption.
“AMLO has shown results, he is an excellent communicator and has a lot of legitimacy among the people,” Carlos Pérez Ricart, from the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE), tells BBC Mundo.
“They believe him because of his political career, because he comes from where he comes from,” adds the expert.
López Obrador began his career as an interior politician who challenged the powerful and represented the forgotten, and when he arrived at the Zócalo he had already been building his profile and gaining followers for many years.
At the end of the 70s, he had been director of the Indigenous Coordinating Center, a position that gave him the opportunity to work in historically neglected municipalities and to forge an intimate relationship with the indigenous peoples and the poorest communities, who have accompanied and supported him throughout. over time,
They were the first steps of a long journey, in which he has led numerous protest movements alongside peasants, indigenous people, workers and activists, who have made his figure grow and projected it at the national level.
In 2000, AMLO won the head of government of the Federal District (mayor), representing the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which he presided between 1996 and 1999 (in 2011 he founded Morena, a political and social movement that became a political party in 2014).
From that platform he promoted his image as the main opponent of the two major parties that had alternated power in the last decade and a half: the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the National Action Party (PAN).
During his mandate in the capital he began holding daily press conferences – the precursors of the “Mañaneras” – and achieved outstanding results on security and economic issues.
In 2004, the City Mayors Foundation named him the second best mayor in the world, surpassed only by Edi Rama, his counterpart in Tirana, and current Prime Minister of Albania.
But just a year later, in 2005, AMLO was ousted after the Attorney General’s Office accused him of invading private land to build a street.
His followers reacted by creating a “peaceful civil resistance” movement that denounced the lawlessness as an attack on democracy. More than a setback, his departure ended up being a springboard for his popularity.
AMLO then aimed his ambitions at the presidency.
Arriving cost him two failures. In 2006 he lost to Felipe Calderón, and in 2012 to Enrique Peña Nieto.
His luck changed in 2018, when in his third attempt, he won the election with 53% support, more than 30 points above the second candidate.
Many of its adherents experienced it as the triumph that the people had been waiting for for decades, like the rise of a hero.
“More than followers, he has parishioners,” analyst Isabel Turrent said at the time.
They are the hard core that highlights AMLO’s achievements and adheres to the idea that what the president does not achieve during his six-year term is not his responsibility, but rather the responsibility of the stones that his opponents have placed in his path.
4. The failure of the opposition
The omnipresence of AMLO and the dominance of the communication agenda that he imposes in the “Mañaneras” also partially explain a fourth pillar of AMLO’s high popularity: the absence of an opposition capable of counterweighting him and developing an alternative political project.
This “failure of the opposition” in the task of building a viable option opened the way for López Obrador to run practically alone in the race to govern, indicate the experts consulted by BBC Mundo.
The current leaders of the two major parties that governed Mexico in recent decades have not managed to consolidate their leadership.
And although for the June 2 elections they did agree to support Xóchitl Gálvez, they could not achieve total unity and the third candidate, Jorge Álvarez Máynez, dispersed the opposition vote against the ruling party that Sheinbaum embodies.
These leaders “are the most discredited version” of their leaders, says Zepeda Patterson. “They took a leap backwards,” in circumstances where the majority of Mexicans do not want to know anything about the past.
“For the majority of the population, the opposition represents the interests of the business community and the economic elites,” says Viri Ríos.
“It is a weight that they have not been able to get rid of,” he adds.
AMLO’s predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto, of the PRI, left the presidency in 2012 with an approval rating of just 20%. And that, comments Zepeda Patterson, directly favored the popularity of the current president.
Luis Antonio Espino points out that the influence of the “Mañaneras” practically nullified the criticism, as if there were no other political references or dissident voices that could confront the president.
With López Obrador in the center of the stage and with all the lights for him, “there was a withdrawal of the other voices,” he says.
Many actors simply walked out of the debate, leaving the president to dominate the public discussion as if he were the only player on the court with a “big megaphone.”
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