So I want to start today with a number that quite
honestly kept me up last night while I was going
through the research stack we compiled for you.
Oh, I think I know exactly which number you're
talking about. Yeah, it's 80 percent. 80 percent.
Right. That is roughly the approval rating. Andres
Manuel Lopez Obrador, widely known just by his
initials, AMLO had when he walked out of the
presidential palace in September twenty twenty
four, which just a pause there and contextualize
that for a second. That is statistically absurd.
I mean, in modern democracies, especially in
the polarized world we live in, by the time a
leader finishes a six -year term, usually everyone
hates them. Or at least half the country is completely
exhausted by them. Exactly. Usually, you know,
you're tired, the economy has hiccuped, you've
broken promises, scandals have piled up. You
look at leaders across Latin America or even
in the U .S. and Europe. They usually limp to
the finish line. But AMLO... He left office more
popular than most presidents are on their actual
inauguration day and his successor Claudia Scheinbaum
won in an absolute landslide yeah, it was a massive
mandate and yet and Here's the headache. I have
with the sources were diving into today The split
screen is just jarring. It's a very violent split
screen right because if you look at the domestic
polling data He is almost this Messiah who finally
saved the poor, but then if you read the international
press or the economic reports from Wall Street,
or human rights watchdogs, he's described as
a democratic backslider, a militarist, a guy
who let the cartels run wild and dismantled the
checks and balances of the state. Yeah, the critics
paint a very dark picture. So our mission today
for you listening is to figure out how we reconcile
this. How do we reconcile the beloved hero with
the authoritarian wrecking ball? Because they
can't both be 100 % true, right? No, they can't.
And that is exactly the mission today. We aren't
just looking at a politician here. We are looking
at a man who tried to engineer a revolution from
the top down. He literally calls his movement
the Fourth Transformation, or the Four -T. And
that's a pretty bold claim. I mean, that puts
him right next to, what, the founding fathers
of the country? Literally, yes. He sees himself
as the fourth major beat in a historical rhythm
for Mexico. So first, you have the independence
from Spain in 1810. Second is the reform war
in the mid 19th century with Benito Juarez. Third,
you have the Mexican Revolution of 1910 against
the dictatorship. And fourth, AMLO. Talk about
an ego. Or a deep sense of destiny. And that's
what we really need to unpack from the course
material today. Is the Fourth Transformation
a genuine structural revolution akin to independence?
Or was it just the most successful political
branding exercise in modern history? Well, understand,
if you actually pulled that off, we have to go
back to the swamp. Literally. Because before
he was the president, or even AMLO, he was just
El Peque. El Peque. Which, you know, sounds affectionate,
but looking at the picture of the fish it's named
after in our research file, it is a prehistoric
nightmare creature. Oh, yeah, the Heligarto.
It's a fish native to his home state of Tabasco.
It has this really long snout, incredibly sharp
teeth, and very tough skin. It's an ancient survivor.
I mean, it's ugly cute maybe, but mostly it's
just tough. And honestly, it fits his political
persona perfectly. So let's go to Tabasco. Because
this isn't the resort beaches of Cancun or the
high -altitude metropolis of Mexico City that
you might be picturing. Not at all. Tabasco is
the deep south. It is the tropics. It's oppressive
heat, humidity, oil, and water. He was born there
in 1953 in a very small village called Tepetitán.
His parents were merchants. They were shopkeepers.
So he wasn't living in abject poverty, but he
definitely wasn't elite either. Exactly. He wasn't
starving, but he was very, very far from the
political aristocracy of Mexico City. He grew
up basically listening to the everyday struggles
of customers in his parents' shop. But there's
something quite interesting about his heritage
in the biographical sources. Right, his grandfather.
Yeah, his maternal grandfather was a Spanish
exile. a communist from Cantabria. And then on
his father's side, the sources note indigenous
and African descent. So physically and genealogically,
he really embodies the mestizo reality of Mexico.
He looks and sounds like the everyday people.
But there is a massive shadow over his childhood.
I was reading the early biography section of
our deep dive materials and everything seems
pretty standard. Playing baseball, going to school
until 1969. The tragedy. Yeah. He was only 15.
This is the moment that almost all the biographers
and political psychologists point to as the defining
crack in his foundation. He was in the family
clothing store, which was called Novedades Andres.
He was there with his younger brother, Jose Ramon,
and they found a pistol. A real loaded pistol.
Yes. And you have to remember, in that region,
in that specific time, having a gun for protection
in a cash business wasn't uncommon. Now, the
historical accounts vary on the exact mechanics,
whether the brother was playing with it and dropped
it, or if they were messing around together,
but the gun went off. The bullet hit Jose Ramon
in the head. Yeah. And he died almost instantly.
God. And AMLO was right there when it happened.
He was right there. Some rumors over the years
from his political enemies have even suggested
he was holding the gun, though it was officially
ruled a tragic accident and he was never charged.
But just imagine the psychological weight of
that at 15 years old. Watching your brother die
violently in front of you involving a weapon
you were both handling? I mean that breaks a
person or it sends them into a permanent spiral.
or it hardens them into something completely
unbreakable. The contemporary sources say he
changed basically overnight. He became taciturn,
serious. deeply thoughtful. He even stopped playing
baseball for a long time, which was his absolute
passion. It sounds a lot like classic survivor's
guilt. Or survivor's purpose. Yeah. There's a
prominent theory in the literature that this
trauma gave him a sort of messianic complex.
The idea that I survived when he didn't, therefore
I must have been spared for a specific higher
reason. It gave him a bulletproof belief in his
own destiny. because you can't shame him, you
can't scare him, because he's already seen the
absolute worst thing possible. So he carries
his immense weight, and eventually he leaves
the tropics to go to the big city. He enrolls
at UNAM, the National Autonomous University in
Mexico City, which is really the center of Mexican
intellectual and political life. And here he
earns another nickname, not El Peje this time.
No, in university he was widely known as a fossil.
Which, uh... I assume doesn't mean he was really
into paleontology? No, not quite. In Mexican
university slang, a fossil is a student who just
never graduates. They just hang around campus
forever, taking up space. AMLO started his degree
in political science in 1973. He didn't actually
get his degree until 1987. Wait, 14 years. 14
years. Was he like, I have to ask, was he just
failing his classes or was he partying? Neither,
actually. And this is so key to understanding
his future political style. While his future
rivals, the technocrats, were speeding through
their degrees, getting PhDs at Yale or Harvard,
and learning macroeconomics from textbooks, Amla
was essentially ghosting his classes. This is
not showing up. Right. He was living in a student
house funded by the Tabasco government, heavily
influenced by a local poet named Carlos Pellicer.
And he was going back to Tabasco to do the actual
grueling work of grassroots politics. So he was
getting a degree in real life. Specifically,
a degree in how power works on the actual ground.
He worked as the director of the Indigenous Institute
of Tabasco. He lived in a humble hut. He worked
directly with the Chantel Maya people. He learned
very early on that power in Mexico isn't about
having the best economic theory. It's about being
the guy who delivers the bag of cement or the
guy who fights the oil company for you. So while
the elites in Mexico City are learning how to
manage inflation rates, he is learning how to
mobilize an entire village. Precisely. And he
started this journey inside the established system.
He joined the PRI, the Institutional Revolutionary
Party, in the 1970s. We should probably clarify
what the... TRI was back then for you listening.
Because to an outsider, Institutional Revolutionary
Party sounds like a total oxymoron. It does.
It was the perfect dictatorship, as the writer
Mario Largas Llosa famously called it. They held
absolute power for 70 straight years. They controlled
the labor unions, the press, the oil, the schools,
the elections. If you wanted to do politics in
Mexico, you had to be in the PRI. There was literally
no other game in town. But he eventually breaks
with them. He does. The big break happens in
1988. This is the year the whole system cracked.
AMLO joined a leftist splinter group led by Cuauhtemoc
Cardenas, which is a legendary name in Mexican
history, who said the PRI had become way too
corrupt and too neoliberal. They formed the Democratic
Current, which eventually became the PRD. In
1988, that is the year of the famous election
fraud, right? The night the system crashed, Cardenas
was actually winning the presidential vote count
against the PRI candidate. Suddenly the government
computer screens just went blank. They said there
was a glitch. When the screens came back on hours
later, the PRI candidate, Carlos Salinas, was
magically winning. Wow. That is not even trying
to be subtle. No, it was blatant and it was a
defining trauma for the Mexican left. It taught
AMLO a crucial lesson that the institutions,
the Electoral Commission, the courts, the media,
were completely rigged against them. You couldn't
just win by getting more votes. You had to have
a movement so massive it could overwhelm the
fraud. And this leads directly to that visual
from 1996 that really launched his national profile.
I was staring at the photo in the stack. He's
wearing a white button -down shirt, but the shirt
is just soaked in blood. It's a completely striking
image. He was running for governor of Tabasco
for the PRD, and he was protesting Pemex, the
state -owned oil company for polluting indigenous
land. He was leading a physical blockade of the
Whale Wells. And the state police moved in with
riot batons. And he didn't run away. He stood
his ground. He took a baton to the head. He got
his head cracked open. the news cameras were
rolling. That image was beamed across the entire
country. It wasn't some polished politician in
a tailored suit giving a dry speech. It was a
fighter literally bleeding for the everyday people.
It sends a very clear message. I am willing to
take a physical beating for you. Exactly. That
visual branding is incredibly powerful. It catapulted
him out of the swamps of Tabasco and onto the
national stage. By the year 2000, he is ready
for the big leagues. He runs for head of government
of the federal district, basically the mayor
of Mexico City. And he wins. And this period
from 2000 to 2005 seems like the ultimate laboratory
for everything that comes later in his presidency.
But looking at the sources on his time as mayor,
it's actually really confusing. I expected to
read about a radical leftist firebrand, but his
policies were weirdly mixed. It's what analysts
call his populist pragmatism. On one hand, yes,
he did the classic populist left -wing stuff.
He created the first universal cash pension for
seniors in the city. He gave direct cash to single
mothers and the disabled. He even built the first
new public university in the city in 30 years,
the UACM. Right, the social safety net stuff.
But then look at who he partnered with to fix
up the historic center of the city, which was
crumbling and highly crime -ridden at the time.
Carlos Slim, the telecom billionaire. The richest
man in Mexico, and at times, the richest man
in the entire world. The ultimate capitalist
titan. AMLO invited him in to invest millions
to gentrify the downtown area, and then for security
policy. He didn't hire a progressive sociologist.
He hired Rudy Giuliani. Wait. The Rudy Giuliani?
The zero -tolerance, broken -windows mayor of
New York City? A very same man. But Giuliani
is the exact opposite of a leftist. Why on earth
would AMLO bring him in? because AMLO recognized
a fundamental political truth. The working class
hates crime even more than the rich do. The poor
are the ones who are the victims of muggings
on the public bus. They don't have private security.
So he brought in the famously toughest cop in
the world to show he was deadly serious about
security. It was a masterstroke of pure pragmatism.
He proved to the middle class that he could work
with billionaires and hardliners if it served
his practical goals. Plus, he built massive infrastructure
like the Metrobus rapid transit system and those
highly controversial second stories on the periferico
ring road. The double decker highways. Exactly.
They were controversial for urban planning, but
they were highly visible proof that he was building
things. But just as he's riding high, seemingly
untouchable as mayor, the system tries to take
him out again. This is the period known as the
Desafuero. And honestly, reading the details
of the actual crime he was accused of in our
research, it feels like a total joke. It feels
like a joke, but the political consequences were
deadly serious. It was 2004. The federal government,
which was led by President Vicente Fox of the
conservative pan party, tried to legally strip
AMLO of his mayoral immunity. His pharaoh. And
the crime. Was it high treason? Did he embezzle
millions of pesos? He built a hospital access
road. A road. A generic dirt and asphalt service
road to a private hospital. A federal judge had
ordered work to stop due to a minor land expropriation
dispute. The city crews basically kept working
for a few more days before stopping. The federal
government seized on this and claimed it was
contempt of court. So let me get this straight.
They were going to impeach the leading presidential
candidate in the country over a hospital driveway.
Yes. But the political math was very simple.
If he was officially charged with any federal
crime, he legally couldn't appear on the ballot
for president in 2006. It was a blatant technicality
designed to assassinate his candidacy. That seems
incredibly short -sighted by President Fox and
his opponents. Didn't they realize this would
just turn him into a massive martyr? They underestimated
his political instincts completely. They thought,
we have the letter of the law on our side, so
we win. But AMLO turned it into a massive narrative
of the corrupt elite versus the people. You had
the famous silence march. What was that? Hundreds
of thousands of people marching through central
Mexico City in absolute silence to support him.
He spun the narrative beautifully. He told the
crowds, they aren't coming after me. They are
coming after you by trying to take away your
democratic right to vote for me. And it worked.
It worked perfectly. President Fox ultimately
had to back down to avoid a massive civil uprising.
The case was quietly dropped. AMLO left the mayor's
office with an unheard of 84 percent approval
rating, and he walked into the 2006 presidential
election as an absolute titan. But then we get
to 2006. And we have to slow down here because
reading the sources. This feels like the exact
moment that broke modern Mexico. It is the open
wound, the trauma that has completely defined
the last 20 years of Mexican politics. So paint
the picture for us. It's election night. It's
AMLO versus Felipe Calderón of the conservative
pan party. And the numbers start coming in. And
they are tight, agonizingly tight. The preliminary
results show Calderon ahead by just a whisper.
How much of a whisper? 0 .56%. That's a difference
of about 244 ,000 votes in a country of over
100 million people. And AMLO, remembering 1988,
remembering the night the system crashed, says,
I don't believe it. He screams fraud immediately.
He demands a massive vote by vote, booth by booth
recount. But the federal electoral tribunal says
no to a full recount. They only allow a partial
one. and then they officially declare Calderon
the winner. And this is where AMLO does something
that I think a standard Western politician would
just never do. A standard politician concedes
the race, writes a memoir, makes some money giving
speeches, and maybe runs again in six years.
What did AMLO do? He held the capital city hostage.
He called on his millions of supporters to literally
occupy Paseo de la Reforma. For you listening
who haven't been to Mexico City, describe Reforma.
Imagine shutting down 5th Avenue in New York
or the National Mall in DC or the Champs -Elysees
in Paris. It is the absolute economic, cultural,
and historical artery of the city. He set up
protest tent cities. For weeks. Kilometer after
kilometer of tents, sleeping bags, portable toilets,
and angry speeches blocking the entire financial
district. That must have completely infuriated
the middle and upper classes. Oh, they despised
him for it. The traffic was an apocalyptic nightmare.
Businesses lost millions of dollars. It was pure
chaos. But AMLA was sending a very clear message
to the elite. If you steal the presidency from
me, you do not get a functional country to govern.
And then he took it a step further, right? The
legitimate presidency. Yes. This was the moment
where many moderate observers thought he had
finally lost his mind. In November 2006, in the
Zocalo of the main square, he held a public ceremony.
He put on a presidential sash, a fake one. He
swore an oath of office to the crowd. He even
appointed a shadow cabinet called the Cabinet
of Denunciation. He declared himself the legitimate
president of Mexico. I mean, to the outside world,
that looks like a delusion. It looks almost like
a cult leader. It definitely looked pathetic
to his critics. Polling at the time showed 56
percent of the public strongly disapproved of
him using that fake title. But to his hardcore
base, it was the ultimate act of defiance. It
kept the social movement alive. He spent the
next six years touring the country as this shadow
president. He literally visited every single
municipality in Mexico, no matter how remote
or dangerous, to build a grassroots organization.
So he was playing the ultimate long game. The
longest possible game. But he runs again in 2012
and he loses again. He does. He loses to Enrique
Pena Nieto, who brought the old PRI back to power.
And this time the margin was much clearer. He
lost by about 6 percent. He still claimed fraud,
of course. He accused the PRI of buying millions
of votes using prepaid grocery store gift cards
from a chain called Soriana. But the country
as a whole had kind of moved on. And this is
the point where a political story usually ends.
He's a two time presidential loser. He's getting
older. His own party, the PRD, is clearly tired
of him. They actually sign a political agreement
called the Pact for Mexico with the new PRI president
to support neoliberal economic reforms. And this
leads to AMLO's second act of either sheer genius
or sheer madness, depending on who you ask. He
divorces his party. He just leaves the PRD, the
major national party he helped found back in
the 80s. He walks completely away. He tells them
you are collaborating with what he calls the
mafia of power. And he decides to start his own
political party entirely from scratch. He calls
it Morena. The National Regeneration Movement.
Exactly. And note the cleverness of the name
Morena. Culturally, it refers to the Virgin of
Guadalupe la Morenita, the dark skinned virgin
patron saint of Mexico. It is a incredibly powerful
religious and nationalist dog whistle wrapped
in a political acronym. That is deeply savvy.
And he builds this thing from zero in 2014 to
winning the actual presidency in 2018. That is
an incredibly fast rise for a brand new party.
It's a political blitzkrieg. And by 2018, the
historical stars had finally aligned for him.
The PRI government under Peña Nieto had completely
collapsed under massive corruption scandals.
The cartel violence was spiraling completely
out of control. The horrific tragedy of the 43
students disappeared and Ayotzinapa happened.
The country was heartbroken, exhausted and furious.
And Emil was the only major figure standing there
saying, I told you so. I told you they were corrupt.
And he builds this massive electoral coalition
called Juntos Jaremos Historia. Together we will
make history. But looking at the actual makeup
of that coalition in the source text, it's a
total Frankenstein monster. It really is. He
brings in the traditional hard left with the
Labour Party, sure. But he also brings in the
PES, the Social Encounter Party. And these are
staunch evangelical social conservatives. They
are anti -abortion and anti -gay rights. Why?
Why would a lifelong progressive leftist ally
with the evangelical religious right? Because
he needed the absolute maximum number of votes
to overwhelm any potential fraud. And he recognized
deeply that the Mexican working class his base
is fundamentally socially conservative. It was
pure ruthless pragmatism. The central message
wasn't about progressive social issues. The message
was simply anti -corruption and hugs not bullets.
And the result was an absolute tsunami at the
polls. 53 % of the popular vote. In a multi -party
system that is massive. It was the first outright
majority since 1988. He won 31 out of the 32
states. He crushed the PRI and the PAN. They
were basically obliterated. So finally, after
12 grueling years of campaigning, he walks into
the National Palace. He's the actual president.
And he announces the fourth transformation. The
40 officially begins. So let's talk about the
style of this presidency first. Because the sources
make it clear he didn't just change the policies.
He fundamentally changed the vibe and the aesthetic
of the presidency. Completely. He immediately
rejected what he called the imperial presidency
of his predecessors. He refused to live in Los
Pinos, which was the highly luxurious presidential
residence with these manicured gardens and mansions.
He just opened the gates to the public. Ordinary
people were literally walking through the elite
bedrooms, taking selfies where the old presidents
used to sleep. And he moved his own residence
into the National Palace, right? Yes, into an
apartment inside the historic government building
downtown. the symbolism of living where Benito
Juarez lived. But the biggest sample of all the
one that became a global news meme was the airplane.
The infamous Boeing 787 Dreamliner. I looked
up the specs on this thing. It was absurdly fancy.
Oh, marble bathrooms, a master bedroom suite,
leather recliners. The previous administration
had bought it. Amala looked at it and said this
is a grotesque insult to a country with so much
poverty. He flat out refused to ever step foot
on it. He flew commercial airlines for his whole
term. You would constantly see cell phone photos
of the president of Mexico sitting in a window
seat in coach, sandwiched between regular commuters,
eating a bag of peanuts. And he tried to sell
the luxury plane, right? For years. He couldn't
find a buyer willing to pay the price. It actually
became a bit of a farce. He even held a national
raffle for the plane. But the grand prize wasn't
actually the plane itself. It was just a cash
equivalent split among winners. It was an administrative
mess. But the symbolism worked flawlessly. The
message was, I am not a rich king. I am one of
you. But symbols are cheap. Let's talk about
the actual massive economic decisions. We have
to stop and really dwell on the airport cancellation
because reading the timeline, this is the exact
moment where I think the international business
community had a collective heart attack. The
Texcoco airport saga. Yes. Right. Because this
wasn't just a sketch on a napkin. This was a
massive futuristic Norman Foster design, the
famous architect who did the Apple spaceship
headquarters in California. Right. It was already
30 percent built. There were billions of dollars
of steel and concrete already in the ground.
and AMLO comes into office and just says, now
we're not doing this. He argued it was riddled
with corrupt contracts, wildly expensive, and
environmentally disastrous because it was sinking
into an ancient lake bed. But his method for
canceling it was the real shocker. He holds a
public consultation. Like a national referendum
vote. A vote is a very generous term. It was
run entirely by his own party, Marina. It was
completely unauthorized by the Independent Electoral
Commission. They set up voting booths mostly
in poor neighborhoods where his hardcore supporters
lived. Less than one percent of the national
population actually voted. And surprise, surprise,
they voted to kill the megaproject. But here
is what I really don't get from reading the financial
reports. The sources say it literally costs more
money to cancel the existing contracts paying
off the Wall Street bondholders and construction.
than it would have cost to just finish the damn
thing. We're talking about four billion US dollars
in cancellation fees. That is literally lighting
money on fire. Why would a populist man of the
people intentionally burn four billion dollars?
This is a crucial insight into his mindset. If
you look at it purely as an economic decision,
it is totally irrational and stupid. But if you
look at it as a political decision, It is a stroke
of dark brilliance. How does that make sense?
It was the ultimate power move. He was sending
a definitive message to the Mexican oligarchs
and the international markets. He was saying,
you are not in charge of this country anymore.
I am. So it was an assertion of raw dominance.
absolute dominance. He essentially proved that
his personal political will could and would override
basic economic logic. He broke the golden handcuffs
that usually constrain developing world presidents.
He was perfectly willing to pay $4 billion just
to prove that he was the unquestioned boss. And
from that moment on, the business elite were
terrified of crossing him. And he replaced that
futuristic hub with the AIFA airport, which was
built on a military base, which is, let's just
say, significantly less glamorous. It's basically
a functional warehouse compared to the foster
design. But for Amlow, it was a major campaign
promise kept. And he built other massive projects,
too. The Mayan train, which is a huge tourist
railway cutting right through the Yucatan Peninsula,
which environmentalists absolutely hated because
it was destroying ancient caves and virgin jungle.
Right. But he pushed it through by legally classifying
it as a matter of national security to bypass
the environmental injunctions. And he built the
Dos Abocas oil refinery, a massive investment
in fossil fuels because his goal was total energy
sovereignty. He wanted Mexico to completely stop
importing refined gasoline from Texas. Okay,
let's pivot to the other giant promise, security.
The famous slogan, hugs, not bullets. Abrazos
nobelazos. The philosophy behind it sounds beautiful
on paper. The core idea is that violence is inherently
caused by extreme inequality and a lack of opportunity
for young men. You cannot simply shoot your way
out of a drug war. You have to heal the underlying
society. So the theory goes if you give out scholarships,
create jobs and give pensions, the cartel recruitment
pool dries up and the crime will naturally fade
away. But the cartels in reality, they aren't
exactly social workers waiting for a grant. They
have armored vehicles. and anti -aircraft guns.
Exactly. And this idealistic philosophy hit a
brutal brick wall in October 2019. The event
known as the Culiacanazo. Reading the account
of this in our notes, this story feels like a
dystopian action movie script. It was an absolute
disaster for the Mexican state. The military
captured Ovidio Guzman, who was one of the sons
of the infamous El Chapo. They grabbed him in
a house in Culiacan, Sinaloa. It was supposed
to be a standard extraction operation. And then
the Sinaloa cartel called for backup. They didn't
just call for backup. They mobilized an entire
private army. Within minutes, hundreds of heavily
armed gunmen in tactical gear surrounded the
entire city. They burned semi -trucks and buses
to block all the highway exits. They initiated
massive prison breaks. And worst of all, they
surrounded the military housing complex where
the soldiers' wives and children lived. They
sent direct videos to the military commander
saying, we will execute your families right now
if you don't let them go. They took a city of
almost a million people hostage. They completely
outgunned and outmaneuvered the Mexican state
in broad daylight. And AMLO, who is the commander
-in -chief, made the final call. He explicitly
ordered the military to release a video. You
just let a top -tier drug lord walk away. He
let him go. Later in his press conferences, he
said he did it to save lives. He argued that
a horrific bloodbath involving hundreds of innocent
civilians would have happened if the army tried
to fight their way out. Which, I mean, you can
certainly argue is a rational humanitarian decision
in that terrifying moment, but politically, historically,
what kind of signal does that send to the cartels?
It sent the terrifying signal that the democratic
state is not the supreme authority in Mexico.
It proved that if you have enough heavy weapons
and ruthlessness, you can successfully negotiate
with the president of the republic. It was a
profound humiliation. Now, they did eventually
recapture Ovidio years later in 2023 in a much
more violent operation where 29 people died and
they extradited him to the U .S. But the damage
to the state's aura of invincibility was done.
And zooming out, did Hugs Not Bullets actually
work? Did the overall violence go down during
his six years? Not really, no. 2019 and 2020
were some of the most horrific years on record.
By the end of his term, the homicide rates did
stabilize and dip slightly down about 7 percent
by 2022, but they were remained at historically
staggering levels, over 30 ,000 murders a year.
And critics argue that the strategy of intentionally
not confronting the cartels directly allowed
these groups to vastly expand their territory.
They started heavily extorting legitimate businesses
like avocado and lime farmers and basically taking
over local municipal governments. And yet here
is a wild paradox. While he was preaching hugs
and non -confrontation, he simultaneously militarized
the country more than any right wing general
ever did in modern Mexican history. This is perhaps
the greatest contradiction of his entire legacy.
He came into office and immediately disbanded
the federal police, claiming they were fundamentally
rotten and corrupt. He replaced them with a brand
new force called the National Guard. But the
National Guard is basically just the military,
right? Exactly. It was supposed to be under civilian
command, but it was overwhelmingly staffed by
active duty Army and Navy personnel. But he didn't
stop at policing. He gave the military almost
everything. What do you mean by everything? They
aren't just fighting crime anymore. The Army
is now building the civilian airports. The Navy
is running the customs offices at the seaports
to stop fentanyl chemicals. The Army is constructing
the Mayan train. The military was put in charge
of distributing the COVID vaccines. They are
even running a newly launched state -owned commercial
airline and managing tourist hotels. But why?
Why? Why does a historic leftist who spent his
youth protesting army abuses suddenly give the
generals the keys to the entire civilian kingdom?
Because he genuinely views the traditional civilian
bureaucracy as hopelessly lazy and irredeemably
corrupt. But the army, he calls them Pueblo uniformado,
the people in uniform. He sees them as loyal.
They don't ask questions. They don't demand bribes
from him. And they build infrastructure incredibly
fast. He basically fell in love with their rigid
efficiency. But human rights groups and critics
warn that once you give the armed forces that
much independent budget and economic power, it
is going to be nearly impossible for any future
president to put them back in the barracks. OK,
let's switch gears to the other side of the coin,
because despite the rampant cartel violence and
the controversial militarization, his approval
rating stayed glued at around 80 percent. And
reading the data, it has to be the money, right?
The social programs. It is absolutely the cash.
This is the concrete bedrock of his enduring
popularity. He completely redesigned how welfare
works. He eliminated all the traditional intermediaries.
He cut off funding to independent NGOs, to local
community leaders, to farmers unions. He said
they were all skimming off the top and he just
sent the money directly to the individual citizens.
Through debit cards. Exactly. The Biana Star
or welfare cards. He doubled the cash pension
for the elderly. And crucially, he made it a
universal constitutional right. Even if you are
a wealthy businessman, you get the pension. It's
a right of citizenship, not a conditional handout.
He also created a massive program called Jovenes
Construyendo el Futuro Youth Building the Future,
which provided paid monthly apprenticeships to
keep unemployed young people away from cartel
recruitment. And he also pushed through aggressive
minimum wage hikes, right? Massive increases.
We are talking double digit percentage hikes
year after year. The conservative business sector
screamed that this would inevitably cause hyperinflation
and crash the formal economy. But it didn't.
It vastly lifted the economic floor for the poorest
workers in the country without destroying macroeconomic
stability. So if you are a grandmother living
in a rural village in Chiapas or Tabasco, you
used to feel completely ignored by the political
elite. Now suddenly you get a direct bank deposit
every single month and the envelope basically
says it's directly from the president. And you
finally feel seen by the state. That deep emotional
connection is worth exponentially more than any
shiny new airport or abstract democratic institution.
He restored a sense of dignity to the extreme
poor. But how did he actually pay for all this
cash distribution? Because giving universal pensions,
it's expensive. Did he take out massive international
loans? No. And this is another major surprise
that confounds his critics. He is actually a
severe fiscal hawk. He hated national debt. He
flat out refused to take on massive debt, even
during the worst economic shocks of the COVID
pandemic when every other country was printing
money. So where did the billions come from? He
paid for it through a doctrine he called Republican
austerity. He viciously slashed the operating
budgets of almost all the federal government
ministries. He fired thousands of mid -level
bureaucrats. He cut federal funding for scientific
research bodies. He slashed the budget for environmental
protection. He cut culture and arts funding.
He basically gutted the administrative state
to free up cash to feed the poor. So it was a
massive transfer of wealth. Robbing Peter to
pay Paul. Or stripping the fat to feed the muscle,
depending entirely on your political viewpoint.
But the macroeconomy stayed incredibly stable.
The Mexican peso was so unexpectedly strong against
the dollar during his term, they started calling
it the super peso. Wall Street investors ironically
kind of loved him because he absolutely refused
to blow up the national budget deficit. Let's
talk about foreign policy and the massive elephant
in the room, the orange elephant. Donald Trump.
Oh, the bromance. I mean everyone on paper thought
this relationship would be a catastrophic disaster.
Trump launched his political career calling Mexicans
rapists and promising to build a wall. AMLO is
a fierce left -wing Mexican nationalist who wrote
a book criticizing Trump. It should have been
an all -out diplomatic war. And yet they got
along famously. How is that even possible? Pure
transactional pragmatism from both men. AMLO
quickly realized that Trump did not care at all
about abstract things like democratic norms or
press freedom or human rights inside Mexico.
Trump only cared about one single visceral issue,
migration. Stop the visible flow of undocumented
people to the U .S. border. So to avoid Trump's
threat of crippling economic tariffs, AMLO just
became the wall. Essentially, yes. AMLO deployed
his newly formed, heavily armed National Guard
to the southern border with Guatemala to physically
beat back migrant caravans from Central America.
He did Trump's dirty work on immigration enforcement.
And in exchange, Trump completely stayed out
of AMLO's domestic business. Trump never criticized
the controversial energy reforms or the attacks
on the Mexican Electoral Institute. It was a
very clean trade. You give me the border security
I need from my base and I give you total silence
on your domestic agenda. Exactly. They respected
each other as strongmen. When AMLO visited Washington
DC in 2020, it was surreal. They were publicly
showering each other with praise in the Rose
Garden. AMLO later explicitly said about Trump,
we are not a colony and he respects us. But AMLO
did actively stand up to the US on the issue
of weapons. Yes. This was a very aggressive and
innovative diplomatic move. His government formally
sued U .S. gun manufacturers in American federal
court. Companies like Smith & Wesson and Barrett.
What was the core legal argument there? The Mexican
government argued that these American corporations
knowingly design, market, and distribute military
-style weapons in ways that actively appeal to
and arm the Mexican drug cartels. Because the
stats in our research note that something like
70 % of the guns recovered at crime scenes in
Mexico originate from the U .S., the so -called
Iron River of weapons. Right. And surprisingly,
Mexico actually won a key victory in a U .S.
appeals court in 2024 to keep that massive lawsuit
alive. It was a very politically savvy move by
AMLO. It allowed him to shift the blame for the
rampant violence away from his own failed security
policies and point the finger directly at the
U .S. while also highlighting a very genuine
cross border problem. And what about his relationship
with the rest of Latin America and the world?
Very ideological. He granted immediate political
asylum to Evo Morales, the ousted socialist president
of Bolivia in 2019. He literally sent a Mexican
military jet to rescue Morales as his government
fell. He also caused massive diplomatic friction
with Spain and the Vatican. He drafted formal
letters demanding that the king of Spain and
the pope publicly apologize for the atrocities
of the colonial conquest 500 years ago. Let me
guess. The King and the Pope declined. They completely
ignored it. But again, it wasn't really about
getting an apology. It was pure domestic political
theater to rile up indigenous and nationalist
pride. All right, we have to talk about the communication
style. The mañaneras. Because this seems entirely
unique in global politics. The morning press
conferences. Every single weekday, without fail.
Starting at 7am sharp. I just can't imagine someone
like Biden or Obama or McCrone standing at a
live podium for two to three hours every single
morning taking completely unscripted questions.
Well, it wasn't just taking questions. It was
a daily televised sermon. It was a historical
lecture. It was a comedy routine. He used it
to completely dictate the national news cycle.
By the time most middle -class Mexicans were
pouring their morning coffee, AMLO had already
unilaterally decided what the entire country
was going to argue about that day. But the sources
show it wasn't just folksy chats. It was a weapon.
Oh, it was a highly lethal political weapon.
He used the massive platform to ruthlessly attack
his critics by name. If a journalist wrote a
critical investigative article, he would project
their face on a giant screen behind him and call
them conservative mercenaries or corrupt thugs.
There was an incredibly dark moment with the
New York Times reporter in her notes. Did Natalie
Kitcheroff. Yes. The Times was preparing a story
about alleged cartel ties to his allies. He didn't
just criticize the journalism. He stood at the
presidential podium on national television. television
and read her personal private cell phone number
out loud to millions of viewers. In Mexico, which
is statistically one of the deadliest countries
in the entire world for journalists. Exactly.
It resulted in massive harassment. And the craziest
part was when Univision later asked him directly,
hey, isn't doxing a reporter a blatant violation
of Mexico's strict data protection laws? He looked
right at the camera and said, my moral authority
as the leader of this transformation is above
any law. Wow. I mean, that is the absolute textbook
definition of populism. The idea that I uniquely
embody the pure will of the people, therefore
institutional rules and laws simply do not apply
to me. Perfectly stated. And this absolute refusal
to accept criticism brings us to his most glaring
domestic conflict. the feminists. For a supposedly
progressive leftist leader, he had a massive
blind spot when it came to women. A huge blind
spot. Femicides, the targeted murder of women,
were rising dramatically. Women were furious.
They were organizing massive street protests.
And Amalo basically just dismissed them. He more
than dismissed them. He actively invalidated
their anger. He publicly claimed that the entire
feminist movement was just a cynical plot funded
by his conservative enemies to destabilize his
presidency. It's like his ego couldn't fathom
a legitimate grassroots grievance that wasn't
secretly just about him. Exactly. When women
organized the historic A Day Without Us protest
in March 2020, where millions of women just vanished
from public life, schools, and workplaces for
a day to protest gender violence, he saw it as
a direct political attack. In response to the
marches, he erected these massive, imposing metal
barricades entirely surrounding the National
Palace. But the feminists were brilliant. They
turned those ugly metal walls into a sprawling
memorial, painting the names of thousands of
murder victims across the stele. It was a visually
powerful symbol of his complete disconnect from
the women of his country. And speaking of 2020,
we have to touch on COVID -19. How did the populist
man of the people handle the plague? Honestly,
quite terribly at first. He severely downplayed
the virus. In the early weeks when the world
was locking down, he famously held up these little
religious amulets during a press conference there
called the Tontes and he smiled and said, this
is my shield against the virus. He kept traveling,
he kept hugging and kissing supporters and crowds.
He refused to wear a mask too, right? He almost
never wore one. He explicitly said he wanted
to project strength and calm to the population.
The actual result was tragic. Because of a drastically
underfunded health system and mixed messaging,
Mexico suffered one of the highest excess death
rates per capita in the entire world. However,
to give credit where the sources demand it, later
in the pandemic his government actually pivoted.
His foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard was incredibly
effective at aggressively sourcing vaccines.
They played geopolitics brilliantly, getting
massive shipments of shots from the U .S., China,
Russia, and even Cuba to roll out a very solid
national vaccination campaign. OK, so we reach
2024, the end of the constitutional single six
year term. He successfully passes the presidential
baton to his handpicked successor from Morena,
Claudia Scheinbaum, and he promises to retire
to his ranch in Palenque. A jungle ranch famously
named Lachingada. Right. OK, we need to translate
that for the listeners because Lachingada does
not mean the happy place. No, it doesn't. Lachingada
is a very, very flexible and heavily loaded Mexican
curse word. It fundamentally refers to a state
of ruin or violation. In common slang, to tell
someone to go to Lachingada basically translates
to go to hell or go for yourself. So the president
of Mexico literally retired to a ranch called
the Effing Hell. I mean, that is a hilarious
power move. He's saying, I'm done with you all.
I'm going to Lachengada. Goodbye. It perfectly
fits his deeply sarcastic and defiant sense of
humor. He promised the country he would retire
completely from public life. He said he would
delete his social media and not accept phone
calls from politicians and just sit on a hammock
and write historical books. Do we actually believe
him? Not for a single second. President Scheinbaum
has already visited him. His sons are incredibly
active and powerful within the Marina Party machinery.
His political shadow is still completely dominating
the National Palace. So as we wrap up, let's
try to summarize this absolutely massive historical
figure based on the deep dive. We started with
the paradox, the 80 percent final approval rating
versus the very real democratic backsliding and
institutional decay. The undeniable legacy of
Amlow is that he successfully destroyed the old
regime. The old duopoly of the PRI and the pan
are essentially dead walking. They are husks.
He built Marina into the new absolute political
hegemon. He fundamentally recreated a single
party dominant system, very much like the old
PRI of the 1970s, but entirely under his own
personal banner. So was the Fourth Transformation
a true revolution of the state or just a rotation
of who gets to hold the power? He certainly rocketed
the elites. He expelled the Ivy League technocrats
and brought in a completely new class of loyalist
politicians. And he irreversibly changed the
national conversation. The poor and the marginalized
are now permanently central to the political
narrative. No future politician can ignore them
and win. That is real. But did he fix the structural
rotting of the state? The violence is still terrifyingly
high. The public health system is broken. The
educational system is lagging behind global peers.
So the transformation was ultimately a masterful
political conco... conquest, but not necessarily
an administrative success. Exactly. He conquered
power brilliantly. He sustained it brilliantly.
But he didn't necessarily solve the agonizing
daily realities of the Mexican state. Well, here
is the final provocative thought for you listening.
AMLO's central overriding thesis for six years
was that if the leader is personally honest and
deeply loves the people, then everything else
just magically solves itself. Corruption ends
naturally. Violence ends naturally. Right. The
pure moral force of the leader is enough to fix
a broken nation. But looking at the massive dot
account, looking at the unprecedented empowerment
of the military, our ultimate question to you
to mull over is this. Is a democracy fundamentally
just about majority voting and immense personal
popularity? Or is it actually about the boring
stuff? the rigid institutions, the impartial
rules, and the annoying checks and balances that
constrain power. AMLO proved beyond a shadow
of a doubt that you can achieve historic popularity
while dismantling those institutions. The really
scary question is can Mexico survive that formula
in the long run? And that is the massive historical
cliffhanger we are left with as the Scheinbaum
era begins. Thanks for diving deep with us today.
We'll see you on the next one.