Letter from Mexico

Until its defeat in the 2000 presidential election, the ruling party—for the last 70 years of the 20th century the Party of the Institutional Revolution (or PRI in its Spanish acronym)—won its elections the old-fashioned way: through bribery, intimidation, murder and fiddling with the ballot boxes. Most people, both inside and outside the country, hailed Vincente Fox’s 2000 presidential victory—for the National Action Party (PAN)—as a breakthrough. A fair and free election, it was said, had at last brought an opening for true democracy to Mexico.

Unfortunately, Fox proved to be a poor president. A lifelong businessman whose incredibly wealthy family’s properties include the country’s biggest boot manufacturer, Fox was born a plutocrat unprepared for the chaos and corruption of everyday Mexican political life. Believing himself a strong decision maker, he campaigned on a platform calling for a list of changes which he promised to implement. Up until now almost none of the “reforms” he committed himself to have come to be. Among them, the most notorious are his promises to privatize the state oil and electrical monopolies.

Into this growing vacuum, stepped Andres Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), the current mayor of the Federal District, which is the core of metropolitan Mexico City. López, immensely popular because of his populist programs, including providing social security retirement benefits for the elderly and building more housing for the poor, is the front runner in the presidential sweepstakes at this time, with polling figures higher than both other candidates put together. This has frightened the PAN and the PRI, who have conspired to keep him from running by invoking a little used law to technically disqualify his candidacy.

Mexicans are furious. They see the move to disqualify López—correctly—as an attempt to deprive them of their right to democratically choose their president. All across the country, López support rallies are taking place. In late April, 1.2 million citizens of Mexico City filled their central square and all the surrounding streets, parks and rooftops.

AMLO, meanwhile, is on the offensive. He intends, he says, to take his campaign to the people; to hold a series of town meetings in which he will ask the people what they want him to do when he becomes President; to build a non-party political organization that could—depending on what it does—include his party, the PRD (party of the democratic revolution), but goes beyond simple party affiliation. His rhetoric of “learning from the bases” sounds very much like that of the Zapatistas, as do other pronouncements he has made. He is, as one colleague living in Oaxaca has said, “a fast learner.”

Whatever happens in the courts—and the outcome is still far from clear—what is as clear as a rare smogless day in Mexico City is that the country is AMLO’s for the taking. If he continues to walk the road of non-violent, peoplecentered, open campaigning that he is now trodding, Mexico could be in for a new era of democracy.

Late breaking news: In a surprise move on the 27th of April, the federal Attorney General who was pursuing the case against AMLO resigned "for the good of the country". The next day, Fox publicly guaranteed that whatever the outcome, AMLO would not be prevented from campaigning for the Presidency. The question now is whether, with the burden of fighting the government's phony charges lifted, AMLO will continue his campaign to organize the country from the ground up. My guess is that he will.