With an overwhelming fifty-three percent of the vote among half a dozen candidates, Andres Manuel López Obrador declared victory in Mexico’s Presidential Election Sunday night.
During an election season marred by the murder of over 130 political candidates and campaign workers, the now three-time presidential candidate won in an landslide many experts have deemed a referendum on Mexico’s political establishment.
López Obrador ran under the banner of the “Juntos Haremos Historia,” which translates to “Together We Will Make History,” a coalition of various smaller Mexican political parties running under a platform of leftist populism.
Some Mexican political experts have accused López Obrador of creating this coalition in order to create a way for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which has ruled Mexico for over 70 years but has lost the support of the Mexican electorate, to continue its rule under a new banner.
AMLO, as his supporters refer to him, focused his campaign on eradicating corruption, re-nationalizing the state oil company PEMEX, socialized healthcare, increased welfare, free college at Mexico’s state universities, amnesty for drug lords, opposition to President Trump’s border wall, and allowing unfettered migration of Unites States-bound migrants from South America.
Detractors of AMLO have referred to him as a Hugo Chavez lookalike, referring to the socialist leader of Venezuela who set up its eventual economic demise and consequent humanitarian crisis. He’s also been called a “tropical messiah” for his cult-like following that seems unrelated to policy and more to do with personality.
Mexican politics are of constant relevance to Texans, who acutely feel the effects of bad policy enacted in the areas bordering the United States, as well as the country at large.
If López Obrador is simply a copycat Chavez, it only puts greater urgency on the need for the Trump Administration and Congress to act in order to ensure the fallout of far-left policy does not bring ruin to the United States’ border states.
