Matthew Hornak
March 9, 2021
Introduction
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in 2018 with one of the largest victories in Mexican politics since the nation’s transition away from single-party rule in 2000 with a campaign best represented as a washing away of the old and ushering in of a new age.[i] Behind López Obrador’s historic majority is the fresh-faced leftist political party National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), which he founded in 2013 after a string of losses in his political home, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). MORENA was his alternative and his bet on a Mexico disengaged with the status quo. Five years later, López Obrador and MORENA ended the established rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which held power from 1929 to 2000 and again from 2012 to 2018, and the conservative Party of National Action (PAN) that held power from 2000 to 2012. Despite the ascendency of the first left-wing leader in Mexico in a century, though, Mexico remains no stranger to the haunting of idealistic social revolution and authoritarianism in its journey toward progress. Thus far, López Obrador’s presidency has both overcome and succumbed to these challenges.
To illustrate how López Obrador’s policies gained favor in the Mexican imagination and where he may next take the Presidency, this article focuses on the Mexicans who paved the way for his brand of political revolution in Mexico during the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1940. It compares Obrador’s political life, from elections to legislative policy, to that of six major figures of the Mexican Revolution, some of whom he closely mirrors and others he greatly distances from politically: long-time oligarchic dictator Porfirio Díaz; upper-middle-class reformer Francisco Madero; general and Federalist Venustiano Carranza; peasant revolutionary Emiliano Zapata; career revolutionary-politician Plutarco Elías Calles; and popular socialist president Lázaro Cárdenas. However different these figures may be, they all dealt with the same tensions between reformist spirits and authoritarian tendencies that López Obrador’s Mexico faces now and can provide a proverbial glimpse into the crystal ball of Mexico’s future.
The Plan of the Fourth Transformation
López Obrador’s campaign promise was an ushering in of a new Mexico via the Cuarta Transformacion (CT), or Fourth Transformation. While López Obrador’s plan calls upon three previous revolutionary moments in Mexican history—the 1821 War for Independence, 1858-1861 Reform War, and the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1940—MORENA legislative advisor Beatriz Mingüer notes “The Fourth Transformation is an attempt to solve the problems that the Mexican Revolution —the Third Transformation—left unresolved.”[ii] Most notably, López Obrador’s political revolution calls upon the strengths and weaknesses, primarily to the extent of their radical nature and how much power they confer to the national government, of three plans of this revolution: The Plan de San Luis Potosi (PSLP), Plan de Ayala (PA), and Plan de Guadalupe (PG).
In illustrating the similarities and differences between the plans, it is important to define their contents and historical context. The PSLP was the first plan of the revolution. It called for the overthrow of the oligarchic dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz by wealthy reform-minded politician Francisco Madero on November 20th, 1910, after which he would release all of Diaz’s political prisoners and return lands stolen by haciendas, or large estates, to villagers.[iii] While Madero’s revolutionary moment succeeded in overthrowing Diaz’s dictatorial regime in 1911, his government was paralyzed by a divided cabinet formed of both Maderista and ex-Porfirian politicians in the name of “ideal reconciliation.”[iv] In 1913 Madero was assassinated in a coup by ex-Porfirian army general Victoriano Huerta, whom Madero had once considered an ally. The PA of 1911 was the peasant revolutionary Emiliano Zapata’s response to the shortcomings of the PSLP. Zapata laid the PSLP’s failure squarely on Madero’s “betrayal” of his own ideal of land redistribution.[v] While Zapata’s PA advocated for a similar return of land stolen by haciendas, it also radicalized the PLSP by calling for a further nationalization of a third of all hacienda lands, which were to be given to villages, and the full nationalization of property of any hacendados who resisted the implementation of the plan.[vi] Zapata did not maintain sufficient national power to implement his plan wholesale. Yet his strong presence in his home state of Morelos, just south of Mexico City, allowed him to decentralize power and return political autonomy back to local-level politicians.[vii] Finally, established general Venustiano Carranza’s PG opposed to recognize the government created by Huerta’s coup and called for Carranza to lead the creation of a constitutional state, after which elections would be called.[viii] Due to Carranza’s focus on a strong and stable national government, historian Enrique Krauze calls Carranza’s plan a desire “to be another [Benito] Juarez, to command like Don Porfirio, and to avoid the errors of Madero.”[ix] López Obrador’s CT, while never formally laid out, revolves around four[x] basic tenets: corruption, infrastructure, social security, and national security. He has called for the end of “privileged abuses” by those in government by sending to Congress an initiative that would elevate the criminality of abuses of power.[xi] Additionally, he has laid out a plan to expand internet access,[xii] to rebuild roads,[xiii] and to modernize and expand upon existing oil refineries and other petroleum-based infrastructure.[xiv] The CT also calls for the doubling of retiree pensions and to provide financial support to university students.[xv] Finally, the CT would unify domestic army and police forces into a single national guard, with further oversight by a committee of cabinet secretaries.[xvi]
At first glance, the three plans of the Mexican Revolution and that of López Obrador seem too distinct to properly compare, most notably in that López Obrador’s plan deals with a broader range of issues in a much more policy-focused perspective, whereas the revolutionary plans were generally focused on niche and foundational problems. Despite these differences, all four plans are comparable in that each is an appropriate response to the political situations of their eras. For the revolutionary plans, they were all composed within a four-year period by three different leaders; these plans were primarily interested in establishing a coherent national vision. To Madero, Zapata, and Carranza, the details of implementation and execution were not yet important; the bureaucratic elements were not in place and the time to develop such details simply had not passed. Madero’s plan was meant as a dictum against the entrenched Porfirian government, a final straw for the Mexican people as professed through him. Zapata’s was an extension and specification of what he believed Madero sought. And Carranza’s sought to stabilize these proposed reforms into a coherent political system. In the 1910’s era of extreme upheaval, leadership was defined by vision, not comprehensiveness.
The specifics of López Obrador’s plan have been fermenting in decades-long journey towards political control. Obrador was, from 2000 to 2006, the equivalent of the mayor of Mexico City, in which he was able to test out his more popular policies, such as providing pension increases, rebuilding major highways, and enlisting former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to help in consolidating police forces.[xvii] More importantly, López Obrador has refined the policies within his platform: in 1994 he stood against the government-run oil company PEMEX in defense of indigenous rights, whereas during his 2018 campaign he promised to review private oil contracts to consider rolling back toward PEMEX dominance,[xviii] and has further sought to use PEMEX as the primary tool for economic development.[xix] Additionally, Obrador has twice attempted to gain the presidency and has been an administrative leader in both the PRD and MORENA parties, providing him ample room to quality control his message and speak to what voters explicitly desire.[xx] López Obrador’s message is perfectly fit to challenge the status quo “which for the last quarter century has been defined by a centrist vision and an embrace of globalization that many Mexicans feel has not served them.”[xxi] The modern Mexican vision is more comprehensive than the views espoused during the Mexican Revolution, but López Obrador’s mission follows the lead of Madero, Zapata, and Carranza in whipping support for radical government changes.
Ultimately, the two most impactful comparisons between Obrador and the Revolutionary plans are in their “revolutionary” aspects and the powers they gave the national state to implement change. The nature of the Fourth Transformation indicates López Obrador’s hope to be the heir-apparent to the spirit of the Mexican Revolution, as evidenced by his belief in being successor to Francisco Madero’s vision[xxii] and his admiration[xxiii] of the leader at the Revolution’s end, Lázaro Cárdenas. For example, López Obrador recognizes the three aspect of Madero’s downfall that limited the effect of the PSLP: enemies within his government, a lack of trust among diverse sectors of the Mexican people—namely peasants—and, as a result of the previous two, a lack of a coherent and strong national government. As such, López Obrador’s two primary focuses on corruption and poverty[xxiv] seek to bolster his administration’s legitimacy, especially in a modern era where accusations abound of former presidents complicit in corruption[xxv] and of consistent rates of poverty and wage inequality.[xxvi] Beyond simply defending against instability, though, Obrador’s plan seeks to implement the radical nature of both Zapata’s rural focus and Carranza’s centralization of power. López Obrador’s infrastructure expansion and resource access extend amenities to rural segments of Mexico such as his home state of Tabasco, and his “unified-command” national security policy consolidates the federal government’s power. Thus, López Obrador’s plan is a synthetic patchwork of the previous plans to implement change in Mexico; comparing and contrasting small-scale political reform, broad-based agrarian revolution, and strongarmed governing to arrive at his plan of nationally guided political and economic reform.
The Fourth Transformation does not draw upon the specifics nor the conventions of the previous plans for good reason: they all failed. Madero was overthrown and killed, while Zapata was ambushed and murdered, and Carranza was the only revolutionary president to be assassinated in office. For López Obrador to directly cite these plans would conjure a similar albeit likely less violent end to his political power. Instead, he evokes the spirit of these plans, in how radically they addressed change and what powers were necessary to do so. In this way, López Obrador can tap into the same legitimacy conferred onto the mythical legacies of revolutionaries like Zapata, who “fought for the common man.”[xxvii] While the Cuarta Transformacion was clearly a tool for López Obrador to explain his campaign issues, it surely enhanced his legitimacy and popularity.
López Obrador’s perspective on the shortcomings of the spirit of the Mexican Revolution provides a glimpse into what he hopes to create for Mexico. The reality of that hope will be articulated in the next section with a similar sentiment to that of Enrique Krauze, who notes “new ‘winds of authoritarianism’ are sweeping across Latin America, characterized by all‐mighty caudillos who ascend to political power via democratic means, but who then seek to concentrate control over a tightly knit polity of order and moral virtue.”[xxviii]
El Obradoriato
The Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1940 is characterized by overwhelming concentrations of power in the hands of one or few men. The catalyst of the revolution was against the ironclad grip of Porfirio Díaz’s bureaucratically giant Porfiriato. Yet the triumphant revolution ushered in not greater democracy but rather authoritarian rule in the form of first the Maximato of Plutarco Elías Calles’ government that operated through puppet presidents and extensive political patronage and then the consolidation of PRI’s 71-year single-party rule during Lázaro Cárdenas’ presidency (1934-1940). As a result, the tradition of singular power concentration has a home in Mexican politics to this day. But in the case of López Obrador, his Obradoriato is bent toward elevating presidential power to realize the ideals of the Fourth Transformation by paradoxically calling upon both the policies of the Porfiriato and the political maneuvering of the Maximato and early PRI.
First, López Obrador’s policy stances echo the same nationalistic approach as that of Porfirio Diaz, and ultimately suffer from relying on systems of a bygone era. Diaz’s economic regime focused on using foreign investment from the US and oil revenues to bankroll the expansion of railroads.[xxix] While Díaz’s economic machine was plagued by debt peonage and disenfranchisement that ultimately aided in ending the Porfiriato,[xxx] it made Diaz one of the most successful presidents in modernizing the country.[xxxi] López Obrador, on the other hand, has taken a much more ham-handed approach to achieve the same ends as Don Porfirio. Despite Obrador’s predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto’s reduced reliance on PEMEX in hopes of spurring foreign investment, López Obrador has threatened to once again shutter the oil market to foreign companies and has actively favored contracts to PEMEX for drilling rights.[xxxii] One may argue that he is taking cues from one of the nails in the coffin of the Porfiriato, chiefly that foreign investment went toward extractive industries that were not sustainable.[xxxiii] However, López Obrador has pushed PEMEX toward further offshore drilling and production, which requires a specialized infrastructure that the state does not have, thus threatening to leave Mexico behind other Latin American countries like Brazil that are gaining from encouraging foreign investment.[xxxiv] So as much as López Obrador seeks to expand the reach and abilities of the oil industry, his nationalistic path toward meeting that goal is hemorrhaging the Mexican energy sector of billions in development of specialized skills that are already available through foreign investment. More likely than attempting to build a substantively self-reliant and modernized Mexico as Díaz and Cardenas attempted, López Obrador is hyper fixated on the perception of doing so; he wins as long as he appears to be providing for a “Mexico First” future.
Second, López Obrador has attempted to build his political party, MORENA, over the past seven years into a popular collective similar to the era of the Maximato and early PRI. However, López Obrador again fails to play to the strengths of such a strong, national political organization. As mentioned previously, López Obrador admires Cárdenas, primarily because Cárdenas developed an “institutionality that does not oppress and a State that has the welfare of the population as its ultimate goal.”[xxxv] The “institutionality” that López Obrador valorizes is the way Cárdenas succeeded in incorporating labor unions, teachers’ unions, and other private organizations into the PRI structure.[xxxvi]As a result, PRI gained legitimacy among wide swaths of the population, allowing the party to rule almost unencumbered for seven decades. As such, López Obrador has sought to implement the very same mechanism of popular, broad-based incorporation of private organizations into the party structure in his MORENA.[xxxvii] If such a strong apparatus allowed Obrador’s role model Lázaro Cárdenas to implement staggeringly successful social reforms,[xxxviii] then one may assume the same will work for Obrador in his quest toward the Fourth Transformation.
However, López Obrador has seemingly forgotten two basic precepts that allow a strong national system to function: empowering popular belief and institutional power-sharing. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic over 400 scientists pleaded him to shift funding from his infrastructure megaprojects to vaccine production as recently as February 2021 to little avail.[xxxix] Although López Obrador claims to represent for all Mexicans,[xl] he has shown a deference for the voices that support his personal vision for a successful Mexico. The effect of this is not simply on how he interacts with his base and party, but how MORENA functions as a whole. López Obrador’s policies thus appear suspiciously Porfirian in their authoritarian bent. Considering how Porfirian bureaucracy remained in power by keeping Diaz as the pinnacle of power over a large system of political appointees,[xli] and recalling López Obrador’s national security strategy of a unified command, two takeaways become evident: that López Obrador wants a long-lasting structure for the office of the Presidency to affect change, and that he is missing the key component of this structure of having a diverse and widespread political patronage and bureaucracy to maintain his power.
One of the main effects of López Obrador’s personality-consolidating politics is the fierce opposition he garners both within MORENA and the Mexican Left as a whole. Among his greatest critics is Lázaro Cárdenas’ own son, Cuauhtémoc Cardenas. A senator and governor from Michoacán, Cárdenas has rebutted López Obrador’s claim to bear the torch of the revolution’s spirit,[xlii] and just prior to the 2018 election, he correctly predicted that a López Obrador presidency would be mired in opposition due to his consolidation PRD during the Calderón presidency and the subsequent creation of MORENA’s political machine.[xliii] This opposition recently materialized in December 2020 as a coalition formed by PRD, PAN, and PRI that is gearing up for the June 6th, 2021 midterm elections and egging to regain control of 180 of the 300 seats in the Mexican Congress’ lower chamber.[xliv] According to Carles Boix and Milan Svolik of the Southern Political Science Press, a strong central figure and national party only retains political stability insomuch as the institutions within that state structure can effectively share power.[xlv] If López Obrador cannot mediate institutional power-sharing nor empower the voices of those bolstering MORENA’s power, he will likely have to worry not just about opposition parties but discontent within his party.
To be sure, the similarities between López Obrador’s personalistic rule with the repressive leadership of Diaz and Calles’ Maximato does not account for the widespread violence that plagued Mexico during these eras. Contemporary Mexico does deal with extensive domestic violence caused mainly by the drug war,[xlvi] but not politically motivated fighting. Still, López Obrador’s authoritarian bent—his quasi-Obradoriato—has galvanized the opposition and pushed his allies to become enemies, just as the Porfiriato did with the outbreak of the 1910 Revolution and Lázaro Cárdenas’ 1934 exile of his former patron, Plutarco Elías Calles.
While the specific details of the plans of the revolution differed from López Obrador’s vision in breadth and power, it is the state structures of the Mexican Revolution that he most seeks to create; an omnipresent political party with a charismatic leader calling for true democracy to, once and for all, rule over Mexico. Ironically, for a politician publicly bent on ushering in a new age of democracy, the details are in the devil of authoritarianism that has historically haunted Mexican politics.
Conclusion
Andrés Manuel López Obrador is an explosive and inspiring force in contemporary Mexican politics. Once a politician on the fringes of Mexico’s left in the late twentieth century, he has attempted to sell to Mexicans time and time again that social revolution did not die in 1940 when Lázaro Cárdenas left office. In 2018, López Obrador, using his massive political repertoire to whip the imaginations of Mexicans of all social backgrounds, finally got his chance to implement the next phase of Mexico’s transformation. Taking lessons from the messaging and focuses of revolutionary leaders, López Obrador successfully articulated a coherent vision for this transformation. But, as Jorge Ramos noted in his Time Magazine profile of López Obrador, “sooner or later he will realize that just one person cannot save Mexico. Others have tried and failed.”[xlvii] Like the revolutionary leaders of the early twentieth century, López Obrador and his mission are straining under the weight of high expectations and creeping authoritarianism, causing López Obrador’s undelivered promises of the Fourth Transformation and fiendish politics to soon face a reckoning at the ballot box during the upcoming summer elections. López Obrador’s presidency was destined to be a balancing act between the vices of Mexico’s storied past and the virtues that the Fourth Transformation promises. Thus far he has steadily woven the threads of history and revolution. But will López Obrador once and for all learn the lessons of Mexico’s past and deliver positive change to a disillusioned Mexico?
“Isn’t everyone, in a single moment of his life, capable of embodying […] good and evil at the same time, letting himself be simultaneously led by two mysterious, different-colored threads that unwind from the same spool, so that the white thread ascends and the black one descends and, despite everything, the two come together again in his very fingers.”[xlviii]
– Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz
Special Thanks to Professor Dr. Michel Gobat of the University of Pittsburgh Department of History on his valuable input and guidance.
Cover Photo from Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Official Instagram page.[xlix]
[i] Roberto Salinas-León et al., “AMLO and the ‘FOURTH Transformation’ in Mexico,” January 22, 2021, https://www.cato.org/policy-report/november/december-2019/amlo-fourth-transformation-mexico.
[ii] Olivia Durif, “Translating the Fourth Transformation (Interview),” NACLA, April 17, 2019, https://nacla.org/news/2019/04/17/translating-fourth-transformation-interview.
[iii] Enrique Krauze, Mexico: A Biography of Power, 264 (London: HarperCollins, 1997).
[iv] Krauze, Mexico, 264
[v] Krauze, Mexico, 287.
[vi] Krauze, Mexico, 288.
[vii] Krauze, Mexico, 297.
[viii] Venustiano Carranza, “Plan De Guadalupe,” Guadalupe Plan, accessed March 3, 2021, http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/mexican-revolution/guadalupe-plan.htm.
[ix] Krauze, Mexico, 341.
[x] José Roberto Cisneros, “López Obrador Arranca Su Precampaña Presidencial Con Un Decálogo De Propuestas,” ADNPolítico, December 13, 2017, https://politica.expansion.mx/politica/2017/12/12/lopez-obrador-arranca-su-precampana-presidencial-con-un-decalogo-de-propuestas.
[xi] “¿Qué Es La Cuarta Transformación De México Que Presume AMLO?,” Nación321, December 1, 2018, https://www.nacion321.com/elecciones/que-es-la-cuarta-transformacion-de-mexico-que-presume-amlo.
[xii] Luis de la Calle, “AMLO 100 Days: Impressing Radical Change and Building Unrestrained Power,” Wilson Center, March 6, 2019, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/amlo-100-days-impressing-radical-change-and-building-unrestrained-power.
[xiii] Ibid.
[xiv] Ibid.
[xv] Ibid.
[xvi] Ibid.
[xvii] Theodore Hamm, “Viva Rudy?,” THE BROOKLYN RAIL – EXPRESS, June 2003, https://web.archive.org/web/20080503183843/http:/www.thebrooklynrail.org/express/june03/vivarudy.html.
[xviii] Reuters @ExpansionMx, “López Obrador Dice Que Revisará Los Contratos Petroleros Si Gana La Presidencia,” Expansión, September 6, 2017, https://expansion.mx/politica/2017/09/05/lopez-obrador-dice-que-revisara-los-contratos-petroleros-si-gana-la-presidencia.
[xix] Keith Johnson, “Mexico Tries to Turn Back the Clock on Energy,” Foreign Policy (Foreign Policy, October 4, 2019), https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/04/mexico-amlo-lopez-obrador-energy-reform-rollback-pemex/.
[xx] Jorge Buendia, Joy Langston, and Eric Magar, “Mexico Election 2018: A Historic Vote across the Nation,” Wilson Center (Wilson Center, June 25, 2018), https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/mexico-election-2018-historic-vote-across-the-nation.
[xxi] Azam Ahmed and Paulina Villegas, “López Obrador, an Atypical Leftist, Wins Mexico Presidency in Landslide,” The New York Times (The New York Times, July 2, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/world/americas/mexico-election-andres-manuel-lopez-obrador.html.
[xxii] “Asegura AMLO Que Aspira a Ser Como Francisco I. Madero, Lázaro Cárdenas y Benito Juárez,” AMLO, November 4, 2017, https://lopezobrador.org.mx/2017/11/04/asamblea-informativa-en-susticacan-zacatecas/.
[xxiii] “Presidente Reconoce a Lázaro Cárdenas Como Fuente De Inspiración y Ejemplo a Seguir Para La Cuarta Transformación,” AMLO, October 19, 2020, https://lopezobrador.org.mx/2020/10/19/presidente-reconoce-a-lazaro-cardenas-como-fuente-de-inspiracion-y-ejemplo-a-seguir-para-la-cuarta-transformacion/.
[xxiv] Azam Ahmed, “The Firebrand Leftist Far Ahead in Mexico’s Presidential Polls,” The New York Times (The New York Times, June 29, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/29/world/americas/mexico-election-lopez-obrador-president.html.
[xxv] Associated Press, “Former Mexico President Enrique Peña Nieto Directed Corruption, Says Ex-Official,” NBCNews.com (NBCUniversal News Group, August 20, 2020), https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/former-mexico-president-enrique-pe-nieto-directed-corruption-says-ex-n1237443?icid=related.
[xxvi] Shannon K, O’Neil, “Calderón’s Presidency by the Numbers,” Council on Foreign Relations (Council on Foreign Relations, February 22, 2017), https://www.cfr.org/blog/calderons-presidency-numbers.
[xxvii] Schell, William. “Emiliano Zapata and the Old Regime: Myth, Memory, and Method.” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 25, no. 2 (2009): 327-65. Accessed March 3, 2021. doi:10.1525/msem.2009.25.2.327.
[xxviii] Roberto Salinas-León et al., “AMLO.”
[xxix] Faust, Jörg. “Autocracies and Economic Development: Theory and Evidence from 20 Th Century Mexico.” Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 32, no. 4 (122) (2007): 305-29. Accessed March 3, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20762251.
[xxx] Bryan, Anthony T. “Political Power In Porfirio Diaz’s Mexico: A Review and Commentary.” The Historian 38, no. 4 (1976): 648-68. Accessed March 3, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24444300.
[xxxi] Romero, Vidal. “Of Love and Hate: Understanding the Determinants of Presidential Legacies.” Political Research Quarterly 67, no. 1 (2014): 123-35. Accessed March 3, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23612040.
[xxxii] Keith Johnson, Foreign Policy, 2019.
[xxxiii] Bryan, Anthony T. “Political Power In Porfirio Diaz’s Mexico: A Review and Commentary.” The Historian 38, no. 4 (1976): 648-68. Accessed March 3, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24444300.
[xxxiv] Keith Johnson, Foreign Policy, 2019.
[xxxv] “Presidente Reconoce a Lázaro Cárdenas Como Fuente De Inspiración y Ejemplo a Seguir Para La Cuarta Transformación,” AMLO, October 19, 2020.
[xxxvi] Krauze, Mexico, 350.
[xxxvii] Shannon K. O’Neil, “Mexico’s Ruling Party Is a Dead Man Walking,” Council on Foreign Relations (Council on Foreign Relations, May 7, 2018), https://www.cfr.org/blog/mexicos-ruling-party-dead-man-walking.
[xxxviii] Vidal Romero, Political Research Quarterly, 2014.
[xxxix] “Intelectuales y Científicos Piden a AMLO La Cancelación Temporal De Megaproyectos,” El Universal, February 8, 2021, https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/cultura/intelectuales-y-cientificos-piden-amlo-la-cancelacion-temporal-de-megaproyectos.
[xl] Azam Ahmed and Paulina Villegas, “López Obrador, an Atypical Leftist, Wins Mexico Presidency in Landslide,” The New York Times (The New York Times, July 2, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/world/americas/mexico-election-andres-manuel-lopez-obrador.html.
[xli] Anthony T. Bryan, The Historian, 1976.
[xlii] “Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas No Ve a AMLO ‘Al Nivel De Hidalgo, Morelos o Juárez,’” ADNPolítico, December 5, 2019, https://politica.expansion.mx/mexico/2019/12/05/cuauhtemoc-cardenas-no-ve-a-amlo-al-nivel-de-hidalgo-morelos-o-juarez.
[xliii] Roberto Velasco-Alvarez, Spencer Nederhood, and Sakshi Parihar, “The Lefts, Mexico, and Latin America: A Conversation with Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas,” Chicago Policy Review, July 11, 2017, https://chicagopolicyreview.org/2017/07/11/the-lefts-mexico-and-latin-america-a-conversation-with-cuauhtemoc-cardenas/.
[xliv] Reuters, “Mexican President Offers Defiance to Major Opposition Alliance,” Reuters (Thomson Reuters, December 23, 2020), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-politics/mexican-president-offers-defiance-to-major-opposition-alliance-idUSKBN28X2PQ.
[xlv] Boix, Carles, and Milan W. Svolik. “The Foundations of Limited Authoritarian Government: Institutions, Commitment, and Power-Sharing in Dictatorships.” The Journal of Politics 75, no. 2 (2013): 300-16. Accessed March 3, 2021. doi:10.1017/s0022381613000029.
[xlvi] Arturo Angel, “2020 Con Violencia Récord: Homicidios Aumentaron En 11 Estados ,” Animal Político, December 29, 2020, https://www.animalpolitico.com/2020/12/violencia-2020-mexico-record-11-estados-aumento-asesinatos/.
[xlvii] Jorge Ramos, “Andrés Manuel López Obrador Is on the 2019 TIME 100 List,” Time (Time), accessed March 3, 2021, https://time.com/collection/100-most-influential-people-2019/5567771/andres-manuel-lopez-obrador/.
[xlviii] Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz (New York: Farrar, Straus Giroux, 2009).
[xlix] López Obrador, Andrés Manuel. “Memorándum El gobierno de México es amigo del gobierno de Estados Unidos de Norteamérica. El presidente de México quiere seguir siendo amigo del presidente Donald Trump. Pero, sobre todo, los mexicanos somos amigos del pueblo estadounidense. A ellos me dirijo desde Paraíso: Juremos que nada ni nadie separe nuestra bonita y sagrada amistad. Andrés Manuel López Obrador Presidente Constitucional de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos.” Instagram. June 2, 2019. Accessed March 3, 2021. https://www.instagram.com/p/ByODkRhnjQC/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link.
Policy & Political Review 