Violence, corruption and poverty explain why leftwing populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador is the frontrunner in election

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

It’s a searing afternoon in Ecatepec, one of Mexico’s most violent and deprived cities, and thousands of followers have gathered under a vast white tarpaulin to hear their pathfinder rage against the machine.

For the next hour Andrés Manuel López Obrador – or Amlo to his fans – will deliver a unyielding assault on the scoundrels, mafiosos and influence peddlers he claims have plundered Latin America’s second largest economy and plunged it into a cauldron of thievery, bloodshed and want.

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“This official banditry is going to end!” the 64-year-old leftist will rail. “Zero corruption and zero impunity!”

First, though, he must brush his hair.

After pushing through a crush of adorers, López Obrador pauses at the foot of a scaffolding stage, plucks a chesnut-coloured comb from his pocket and calmly runs it through his silver mane.



Then the Amlo show begins.



“Viva México! Viva México! Viva México!” he shouts from the rostrum, thrusting both arms into the air.

“It feels like a dream – but we are just a few days away from achieving the transformation of Mexico!”

That transformation is almost certain to begin on Sunday when 88 million Mexicans head to the polls to pick their new president.



Amlo, who is making his third run for the presidency, has towered above his rivals in the polls for months. “We’re 30 points ahead!” he boasted to the sea of supporters before him in Ecatepec, who responded with cries of: “Presidente! Presidente!”

Experts say three interlinked crises – security, corruption and poverty – explain why López Obrador now stands on the cusp of the Mexican presidency, and nowhere are they more visible than in Ecatepec, a gritty, neglected conurbation that is just 30km (18 miles) from Mexico City’s chic central districts but feels like another world.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Azucena Cisneros, a local politician from Amlo’s party, Morena, asks for votes during a day of campaigning in some of Ecatepec’s poorest communities. Photograph: Tom Phillips/The Guardian

Ecatepec is Mexico’s most populous municipality and one of its most impoverised, with nearly 790,000 of its 1.8 million inhabitants living in poverty. It is also one of the most dangerous regions in an increasingly dangerous country where at least 200,000 people have been killed since a catastrophic “war on drugs” was launched just over a decade ago.

“Environmental degradation, femicide, insecurity, car theft, extortion, kidnapping, the disappearance of women … Ecatepec is a microcosm that illustrates all of the country’s most serious problems,” said Azucena Cisneros, a local politician from Amlo’s party, Morena. “It’s an urban tragedy.”

Amlo has built his campaign around pledges to eradicate corruption and rule for the poor. Among the devotees at his Ecatepec rally, many described him as the only man capable of saving them from a crime wave they blamed on venal politicians.



A cry for help had been painted on to one banner next to the stage: “We are the most violent municipality! We have been robbed and ignored by these corrupt politicians! We deserve to live better lives! We are good people! That’s why Ecatepec is with you, Andrés Manuel!”

“It’s so terribly insecure,” complained Gaby Mejía, a 46-year-old primary school teacher. “My students are always coming up to me and saying: ‘Miss, did you hear about the shootout near my house? That they killed you-know-who?’”



Mejía’s mother, Josefina, 74, nodded in agreement, recalling how she had recently been held up by group of armed car thieves. “We’re already in the abyss,” she said, describing Amlo as Mexico’s salvation: “He’s one of those men who is only born every 100 years.”



Many describe Amlo’s rise as the result of a furious popular revolt against the two parties that have ruled Mexico since the end of one-party rule in 2000 – the Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI) and the National Action party (Pan) – and which are widely blamed for the current crises. “It’s a social-civic insurrection. It’s a collective awakening,” said Germán Rufino Contreras, a former federal deputy and Amlo supporter in Ecatepec.



But Viridiana Ríos, an Ecatepec-born member of Democracia Deliberada, a collective of young leftist Mexican thinkers, said she believed despair better explained why voters were embracing Amlo and change. “I think it is just that a lot of people haven’t noticed we have created a country where a lot of people have nothing to lose.”

Fifty-three million Mexicans live in poverty, Ríos pointed out: “It’s a humanitarian crisis.” “[Voting Amlo is] a gamble, and when you have nothing to lose you can gamble more riskily.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Azucena Cisneros: ‘Environmental degradation, femicide, insecurity, car-theft, extortion, kidnapping … Ecatepec is a microcosm that illustrates all of the country’s most serious problems.’ Photograph: Tom Phillips

Two days after Amlo’s triumphant rally, Cisneros and a group of Morena activists embarked on a pre-election march through some of Ecatepec’s most marginalized corners, places where many have shockingly little to lose.



In Vivienda del Taxista, a rickety shanty built on a rubbish-strewn wasteland, she visited the home of Marisol Gutiérrez, a Morena campaigner and seamstress who supports her daughter and two grandchildren on an income of about 600 pesos (£22) a week.



“It’s not enough. But … the truth is, there’s no work,” Gutiérrez said, showing off her family’s battered stone-and-asbestos abode which had a bullet hole in its roof and had been built directly under a transmission line.

Quick guide Mexico's war on drugs Show Hide Why did Mexico launch its war on drugs? On 10 December 2006, Felipe Calderón launched Mexico’s war on drugs by sending 6,500 troops into his home state of Michoacán, where rival cartels were engaged in tit-for-tat massacres. Calderón declared war eight days after taking power – a move widely seen as an attempt to boost his own legitimacy after a bitterly contested election victory. Within two months, around 20,000 troops were involved in operations. What has the war cost so far? The US has donated at least $1.5bn through the Merida Initiative since 2008, while Mexico spent at least $54bn on security and defence between 2007 and 2016. Critics say that this influx of cash has helped create an opaque security industry open to corruption.



But the biggest costs have been human: since 2007, over 250,000 people have been murdered, more than 40,000 reported as disappeared and 26,000 unidentified bodies in morgues across the country. Human rights groups have also detailed a vast rise in human rights abuses including torture, extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances by state security forces.



Peña Nieto claimed to have killed or detained 110 of 122 of his government's most wanted narcos. But his biggest victory – and most embarrassing blunder – was the recapture, escape, another recapture and extradition of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, leader of the Sinaloa cartel.

Mexico’s decade-long war on drugs would never have been possible without the injection of American cash and military cooperation under the Merida Initiative. The funds have continued to flow despite indisputable evidence of human rights violations.



Under new president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, murder rates are up and a new security force, the Civil Guard, is being deployed onto the streets despite campaign promises to end the drug war. What has been achieved? Improved collaboration between the US and Mexico has resulted in numerous high-profile arrests and drug busts. Officials say 25 of the 37 drug traffickers on Calderón’s most-wanted list have been jailed, extradited to the US or killed, although not all of these actions have been independently corroborated. The biggest victory – and most embarrassing blunder – under Peña Nieto’s leadership was the recapture, escape and another recapture of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, leader of the Sinaloa cartel. While the crackdown and capture of kingpins has won praise from the media and US, it has done little to reduce the violence. Photograph: Pedro Pardo/AFP

On one moldy wall hung a photograph of Gutiérrez’s son, Geovanni, who killed himself in 2016 aged 20. On another, a portrait of Jesus carried the phrase: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

In the hovel nextdoor Enrique Hernández, a semi-retired rickshaw driver from Oaxaca state, said he also planned to vote Amlo: “More than anything because we all have the right to an opportunity in life.”



Cisneros’s next stop was La Cuesta, a tumbledown slum cobbled together from cardboard, wooden crates and repurposed advertising hoardings above a natural gas pipeline. “It’s a timebomb,” said Arnulfo Reyes Lara, a social worker who fights to keep the community’s kids off drugs and off the streets.

At every turn, Cisneros was bombarded with tales of deprivation and crime.

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Odilia Allende, 55, told of how her son had been murdered just a few streets away. “They shot him in the head … These are people with a future, with a reason to live and it’s not fair that the druggies just take their lives when they are on their way to work.”



Juan Juárez, a 51-year-old mecanic, described how criminals had beaten his brother to within an inch of his life: “They had to put a titanium plate in his face,” he said, adding: “These days when we go out we feel fear. We need change.”



Finally, a sobbing mother approached Cisneros to recount how her daughter had been abducted and raped before she somehow managed to escape alive. “How long ago?” Cisneros asked. “Five days,” the woman replied, breaking down into tears. “It hurts. It still hurts. I try to be strong. I know we have to go on.” “You will get through it,” Cisneros replied, and hugged her.



After each heartbreaking petition, Cisneros grabbed her loud-hailer and marched on through the community, imploring locals to vote for change. “Es urgente un cambio en este país!” she shouted. “This country urgently needs change!”



Additional reporting by Hernán Sarquis