The Economist February 20th 2021 27
The AmericasMexico’s presidentThe transformer
“W
e are living a stellar moment,”
declared Mexico’s president, An-
drés Manuel López Obrador, this month, a
little over two years after he took office. It is
hard to find evidence of that. Even by the
standards of a covid-ravaged world, the
country is doing poorly. Mexico has the
fourth-highest number of excess deaths as
a share of population since the pandemic’s
onset. Its economy was in recession before
the pandemic arrived (see chart on next
page). The poverty rate probably rose more
than in Latin America’s other big econo-
mies. Almost half of Mexico’s 126m people
could not afford to eat properly at the end
of 2020, according to official figures.
Whereas murder rates have dropped
sharply in some violent Latin American
countries during the pandemic, in Mexico
the decline has been tiny.
If the moment is not stellar, most ordi-
nary Mexicans trust Mr López Obrador, of-
ten simply called amlo, soon to make it so.
According to a recent poll, his approval rat-
ing is 62%. Another survey found thatnearly 40% of Mexicans plan to vote for his
party, Morena, in legislative and regional
elections due in June. The two most pop-
ular opposition parties have a quarter of
that level of support each (and a third of
voters are undecided). amlo’s popularity is
evident in places like Ecatepec, a munici-
pality near Mexico City that is as poor, vio-
lent and covid-blighted as anywhere. Some
neighbourhoods lack water; walls are plas-
tered with posters for missing people and
help applying for visas to the United States.
“We have not yet seen results” from amlo,
admits Efrain Salguero, a local driver. “I
think we should give him more time.”
Mr Salguero is among the millions of
Mexicans who still have high hopes for
amlo’s “fourth transformation”, which is
to make the country work better by endingcorruption and rampant crime and distri-
buting gains from economic growth more
fairly. He envisions it as the successor to
the war of independence of 1810-21, the war
for liberal reform of 1858-61 and the revolu-
tion of 1910-17. But in two years of transfor-
mation amlohas changed Mexico much
less than did these momentous events,
and mostly for the worse.
In practice, the fourth transformation
seems to have three main elements: the
undoing of recent reforms; new initiatives
that fail to solve the problems they purport
to; and concentration of power in the pres-
ident’s hands.
Reforms enacted by amlo’s “neoliberal”
predecessors, however sensible, were
quick to go. Early in 2019 he scrapped an
education reform introduced by Enrique
Peña Nieto, his immediate predecessor,
that linked teachers’ pay and promotions
to the performance of their pupils. amlo
abolished Prospera, a much lauded condi-
tional cash-transfer programme for the
poor. Handouts, for example to farmers,
are now presented as presidential gifts.
amlotried to reverse the opening of en-
ergy markets, once dominated by state mo-
nopolies, to private and foreign enterpris-
es. Mexico’s Congress is debating a bill un-
der which electricity generated by state-
owned cfewould get priority access to the
grid, in preference to cheaper alternatives.
This would not only raise prices for con-
sumers but could breach the us-Mexico-MEXICO CITY
Andrés Manuel López Obrador has yet to improve Mexicans’ lives. They are
willing to give him more time→Also in this section
28 A tampon tempest
29 Bello: The failures of Carlos Menem