Mexico’s ‘tropical messiah’ is more Lula than Trump

Critics deride Andrés Manuel López Obrador – or Amlo as most call him – as Mexico’s “tropical messiah”. Others have painted him as a Donald Trump-style Latin American populist with a big ego and a distinctly dictatorial bent. Even some supporters admit they fret about Amlo’s authoritarian tendencies and whether he is truly a man of the left.

But most analysts believe Amlo has more in common with Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a pragmatic one-time union firebrand who led his country from 2002 until 2011. Like Amlo, Lula spent years trying to become president before succeeding at his fourth attempt.

He plans to rethink Mexico’s war on drugs

During his victory speech on Sunday night Amlo shed some light on how he plans to tackle perhaps the most urgent problem facing Mexico: the growing drug-related violence that this year has claimed an average of 88 lives per day.



Amlo vowed to change the “failed strategy” his predecessors have used to tackle insecurity – a heavily militarized 11-year “war on drugs” which has claimed 200,000 lives.



Quick Guide Mexico's war on drugs Show 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

“More than the use of force, we will deal with the causes from which insecurity and violence originate,” Amlo said. “I am convinced that the most effective and humane way of fighting these ills involves combating inequality and poverty. Peace and tranquility are fruits of the justice.”

He’s a writer as well as a politician

Amlo isn’t just Mexico’s new president – he’s also a bookworm and author with no fewer than 14 titles to his name. His tomes include Don’t Say Goodbye to Hope, The Mafia That Took Possession of Mexico and The Mafia That Robbed Us of the Presidency about his first failed presidential bid, in 2006.

One of Amlo’s latest works examines what he calls Trump’s “hate campaign” against migrants and Mexico and is called Oye, Trump! (‘Listen up, Trump!’). “[We must] make [the US] see that … the most important thing is to build, here on earth, a kingdom of justice and universal fraternity where we can live without walls, poverty, fear, discrimination and racism,” Amlo writes.



The book was recently published in English with the title: A New Hope for Mexico: Saying No to Corruption, Violence, and Trump’s Wall.

He’s amigos with Jeremy Corbyn

Amlo’s friends include an influential British leftist: the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, with whom he reportedly spent part of his 2016 Christmas holiday.

“Today brings a new beginning for México,” Corbyn tweeted after Amlo’s landslide win. “[His victory] offers the poor and marginalised a genuine voice for the first time in Mexico’s modern history. I’m sure #AMLO will be a president for all Mexicans.”

The pair are said to have met through Corbyn’s Mexican wife, Laura Álvarez, a former human rights layer who now runs a fair-trade coffee business in the UK. Corbyn, who has longstanding ties to Latin America, has spoken out against human rights abuses in Mexico and last week denounced the killing of more than 130 Mexican politicians during the election campaign.

Amlo reportedly once gifted Corbyn a selection of jipi hats. “Jeremy loved them,” one member of Amlo’s campaign told the Times.

He began his political career living in a shack

Amlo’s political awakening is said to have come during the late 1970s when he worked as a representative of Mexico’s National Indigenous Institute in his native state of Tabasco.

“He went to live in a shack just like the ones the indigenous families lived in,” José Agustín Ortiz Pinchetti recalls in a flattering new biography of his friend. During the six years he spent living with the Chontal Maya people, Amlo and his family slept in hammocks and endured “African temperatures of over 40C” with nothing but a single fan to keep them cool.

“López Obrador took on that role as if it was his destiny, with a missionary’s spirit,” Pinchetti writes.

