Mexico's president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has always done things his way, down to a recall referendum against himself that he called. We get into the why
Earlier this month, Mexico had an election. But it wasn’t business as usual. The vote was a first in Mexico — a recall referendum on the country’s president. The person pushing to recall the president … was the president himself.
Today we get into the curious history of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Read the full transcript here.
Host: Gustavo Arellano
Guests: L.A. Times foreign correspondents Leila Miller and Kate Linthicum
More reading:
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Gustavo: Earlier this month…. Mexico had an election.
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But it wasn’t business as usual.
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The vote was a first-of-its-kind in Mexico….a recall referendum… on the country’s president.
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Recalls happen all the time in politics….Opposition candidates use them to oust unpopular leaders from power.
But what’s weird is that…. in Mexico….the person pushing to recall the president…was the president himself.
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I’m Gustavo Arellano. You’re listening to THE TIMES, daily news from the LA Times.
It’s Thursday, April 21, 20-22.
Today…why Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador asked voters if he should quit the presidency…and what the move means for the future of Mexican politics.
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Gustavo: My colleague Leila Miller recently covered this unusual election. She’s a foreign correspondent based in Mexico City. Leila, welcome to the Times.
Leila: Thanks for having me.
Gustavo: So critics of President Lopez Obrador say that the recall was just political theater….but what does the president himself say the point of the vote was?
Leila: So Lopez Obrador… he says that this vote was to strengthen direct democracy in Mexico. So he has this phrase that he always uses, which is in Spanish, “el pueblo pone y el pueblo quita,” which means the people give and the people take.
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Leila: He would mention that phrase many times when discussing this recall.
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Leila: Basically making the point that the people should always have the power, not the government. And if they're not satisfied with their leaders, they should be able to kick them out.
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Leila: And it's important to note that Lopez has always had a high approval rating throughout his presidency. He had the highest rating, a few months into his office where it was about 67%. I think many people would say that he was probably never in any real, real trouble.
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Leila: It was a really interesting recall because it's not how we typically think of a recall election. You would normally think of a recall election being most supported by the opposition movement. But in this case, opposition leaders were telling people not to vote because they said that the election was a complete farce. They were saying that it's being promoted so strongly by the president and its supporters that it's not really a recall.
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Gustavo: Your reporting on the recall took you to the president’s home state of Tabasco…in southern Mexico. What’s it like there?
Leila: Tabasco is… it's a poor state, more than 50% of the population lives in poverty. And I decided to go to the president's hometown to talk to people there. The president was born in a really small rural town, about an hour and a half away from Villahermosa, which isTabasco’s capital. Some people remembered how he would play baseball when he was.. he was a boy down in. Although he left the village when he was really young people, remember him and people have this sense that the president hasn't forgotten them. The federal government during Lopez Obrador’s presidency came in and remodeled a lot of homes and build new ones for people in need. People think that the president has helped them and that they should help him in return.
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Leila: On the day of the actual election, I went to some polls in Villahermosa, the capital Tabasco at this one pole station that I went to, the line was extremely long. It was searching down the block and I spoke to this man who was there. He was waiting in line. His name is Manuel Antonio.
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Leila: And he had driven more than an hour and a half to get there.
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Leila: And had been waiting in line with his nephew for about an hour. And it was a really, really hot day, but he just needed to get to the polls to vote for the president.
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Leila: He, you know, spoke to me about major infrastructure projects that the president has launched and has been building over Mexico.
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Leila: So he mentioned that spoil refinery in Tabasco and a tourist train. That's going to run through the Yucatán Peninsula.
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Gustavo: And this polling station in Villa Hermosa….how many people were there?
Leila: So this polling session, it had so many people that, that it ran out of ballots.
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Leila: I spoke to one woman. She was about 75 years old and she was turned away. And was really upset because they didn't have enough ballots left for her. She told me that she supported the president because of the cash assistance that she gets from him, which goes to… to elderly people.
Gustavo: Now, it's not surprising that Lopez Obrador would have so much support in his home state of Tabasco, but how does the rest of Mexico feel about him and that referendum?
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Leila: About 17 to 18% of people who were eligible to vote ended up participating and an overwhelming number of those ended up voting for the President.
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Leila: So the recall wasn't binding because you needed about 40% of people eligible to vote, to participate in the election for it to be binding.
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Leila: But the president pointed to this 17 to 18% to say that most people that voted did vote for him. And he used that and his supporters used that to declare victory.
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Gustavo: Leila, thank you so much for this conversation.
Leila: Thank you.
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Gustavo: Coming up after the break…he’s known as AMLO, Lopez Obrador, and even Peje. But what does Mexico’s president stand for?
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Gustavo: Welcome back…Another of my LA Times foreign correspondent colleagues is Kate Linthicum. And she’s covered Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador for years, and joins us now. Kate, welcome to the Times.
Kate: Hey
Gustavo: So before the break, we were talking with our colleague Leila Miller about AMLO’s recent recall election. But I just don’t think enough Americans know about his past… So who was Lopez Obrador before he became president of Mexico?
Kate: Yeah. So, AMLO as he's known, was the mayor of Mexico city from 2000 to 2005. He was super popular; the most popular leftist in Mexico. And he had a huge population of people that loved him, but he ran for president twice in 2006 and in 2012. And he lost both times.
Gustavo: But hasn’t he stayed in the public eye throughout it all? I remember my dad, who pays a lot of attention to Mexican politics…he told me AMLO visited…like… every district in Mexico during his campaigning.
Kate: Yeah. So in 2006, he lost by a very small margin.
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Kate: AMLO claimed he had been cheated out of the election. He claimed vote fraud.
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Kate: So he took to the streets of Mexico city with his supporters. They camped out on Reforma, one of the main avenues, for weeks.
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Kate: Kind of disrupting life as usual in the Capitol.
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Kate: And then yes, he made this track basically around the entire country, um, visiting every municipality, shaking hands with people, you know, from the north down to the Yucatan Peninsula.
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Kate: And I think it was a really effective strategy because not only did he get to know political operators in every corner of the country, He also just really kind of burnished this image of, um, amount of the people.
Kate: If you elect me, I'm not gonna sit in the presidential palace and Mexico city and hobnob with the elites. I'm gonna be out in the country with like “mi gente”. They're basically,
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Gustavo: You know who he reminds me of? Former California Governor Jerry Brown.
Kate: Yeah, I think that's a really good comparison and it's difficult because you know, kind of defies comparisons, he's got aspects of so many different politicians, you know, there's parts of his policy and his style that remind me of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.But then there are other parts of him that are like Margaret Thatcher from England. So he kind of just is this mix of, of so many different political personalities.
Gustavo: Yeah, but he always seems kinda grouchy. And he knows it, too, so he’s always leaning into that.
Kate: Yeah, he's kind of like your grandpa, who's really, really smart and wise, but kind of gives you a hard time and yeah, yeah. He's kind of hard to make smile. But I think people like that because there is this tradition in Mexico of politicians who maybe have taken advantage of their positions of power, have enriched themselves. Politicians who have been jailed on corruption charges. AMLO, you know, if nothing else, he really does come across as somebody who is earnest, honest, kind of a straight shooter.
Gustavo: Yeah, that everyman persona helped Lopez Obrador finally win in 2018. The presidency of Mexico in a landslide.
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Gustavo: What were some of the promises that he made to get people to finally vote him in?
Kate: So he made huge promises. He promised nothing less than a transformation of Mexican society. We promised to get the economy on track, to lift people out of poverty to basically fix Mexico's crime problem. He had this campaign slogan,”abrazos no balazos.” Like he said, basically, we're going to tackle crime at the root by addressing poverty by giving social programs to poor kids, instead of fighting cartels with the military.
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Kate: I think it's important to note that the political conditions in 2018 in Mexico were really different than during the previous elections in 2006 and 2012.
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Kate: Basically in 2018, we were in this moment globally where anti-establishment politicians were winning. This was the era of Trump and Bolsanaro. Kinda people who spoke plainly and presented themselves as anti-establishment characters.
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Kate: So here in Mexico, you had a population that was just so sick of politics as usual. In 2018, we had had massive corruption scandal come to light. Governors charged with basically embezzling huge amounts of money. Scandals leading all the way up to former president Enrique Peña Nieto. And then just a horrible, horrible homicide crisis.
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Kate: 2014, you had the disappearance of the 43 students in Guerrero.
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Kate: That was just a huge kind of psychological moment, I think, here in Mexico. And I think people were just so tired of the status quo that when AMLO came in folksy-style, promising to put attention on the poor and to have a different kind of strategy for fighting crime, people just responded to that in an incredible way. And he ended up winning in a landslide.
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Gustavo: After the break…AMLO’s scorecard on the issues.
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Gustavo: And we’re back with Kate Linthicum. So Kate, I’m curious how AMLO has done with his 2018 electoral promises. The big one was providing more support to the poor and working class in Mexico. How’s he doing on that?
Kate: So, AMLO has given direct payments to, he says 70% of families in Mexico. So if you are a student, if you're a single mom, if you’re an elderly person, you're now getting these, these small, monthly payments from the government, which is something that we never saw here before. So that's been really popular with people. But whether I'm low has actually made a dent in poverty, here is a big question.
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Kate: People are still, you know, in poverty at rates that they were before.
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Kate: Whether AMLO is to blame for that is an important question. I mean the whole world suffered when the coronavirus hit, but there are, you know, a lot of economists who say AMLO’s approach just hasn't worked. A really interesting thing is the way he responded to the pandemic.
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Kate: As countries around the world were kind of throwing money at the problem, just throwing money into their economies to make sure they didn't basically suffer. AMLO did the opposite. He was super austere, he was cutting across the government throughout the pandemic. So it was a very different approach. And economists are kind of divided on it. Some people say, well, you know, Mexico is in a situation now where it's not in terrible debt. Its finances are mostly in order. And others who say that austerity at that very critical time, when you had people out of work, people going hungry, that that ultimately kind of kept or, or pushed more people into poverty.
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Kate: I don't think AMLO can claim a lot of credit for that, or can count that as a victory.
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Gustavo: It's weird because on one hand giving money to so much of society, that sounds like guaranteed basic income, which is very much a leftist plank of an economy. But then austerity, that's that's right. You said it earlier. That sounds much like Margaret Thatcher, like Ronald Reagan.
Kate: Yeah. AMLO has aspects of his policy that, you know, remind me of like the GOP in the eighties. But other aspects of him are like Bernie in 2016. So he's difficult to define. He's very much his own creature, his own political creature. Whether or not he's been terribly effective. I mean, those are important questions to ask. But what is clear is he is extraordinarily popular.
Gustavo: Violence though…violence is at record levels right now in Mexico, even though, as you said earlier, AMLO’s policy was hugs, not bullets. And yet…he's continued to use the Mexican military to try to crack down on all this violence.
Kate: Absolutely. He promised to take a very different approach to violence here in Mexico, and he really hasn’t
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Kate: What is clear is that the violence has not gone down really at all. Homicides are still hovering near record levels. Disappearances are still at very, very high levels.
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Kate: In Mexico, the police are kind of like historically really corrupt. You know, you look at polls, nobody trusts the police. People trust the armed forces more than they trust anybody else. // So that's why I think he's gone with the military. I mean, they're the most, kind of in theory, incorruptible forces here.
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Kate: But when you think about what the military is or the national guard, that's not law enforcement, those aren't people who are trained to investigate crimes, to bring perpetrators to justice. So it's not really attacking violence at the root, which is what he promised to do. And actually, whereas previous presidents did put a big emphasis on trying to train police and improve like local police forces. AMLO has really let that slide and his strategy has been like pretty much just the military. You know, in terms of tackling this problem, addressing this problem in a real way. That's just not happening right now.
Gustavo: So Lopez Obrador has faced a lot of problems during his administration. His approval ratings have fallen in recent months. So why on earth would he tempt fate and tell voters…Okay, aye pues…you have a chance to take me out. Go for it.
Kate: I think this was an opportunity for him to continue campaigning. He's kind of best when he's in campaign mode, you know. He's best when he's up against enemies. So it kind of helps just remind people of the cult of AMLO.
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Kate: There's two kind of reads on, on why he carried out the selection. One is he just wanted sort of a new mandate from the people. A reminder that, you know, he has tremendous support in the country still. And that, that would kind of give him more political power. Because he's a populous, right? Like for him, he really derives his power from the people.
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Kate: That's important to him that he can show, you know, His enemies in Mexico's business community or other political parties or his critics, you know, in the media that, Hey, I have the support of the people, no matter what you kind of say about my policies or anything else.
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Kate: But there are other people who worry that AMLO is testing the waters to try to stay in power when his term is up. To basically try to extend his time in office, uh, which would be illegal under Mexico's constitution. You're allowed one six-year term here.
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Kate: For those who worry about AMLO’s authoritarian leanings, his increased reliance on the military.
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Kate: His refusal to kind of acknowledge, you know, that he's ever wrong. For those people., this was a worrisome sign that he was basically trying to prove that he has political support now so that he could extend his term.
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Gustavo: Kate, thank you so much for this conversation.
Kate: Thank you.
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Gustavo: And that’s it for this episode of THE TIMES, daily news from the LA Times.
Tomorrow: will Shanghai’s lockdown woes make China rethink its zero-COVID policy?
Kasia Broussalian was the jefa on this episode.
Our show is produced by Shannon Lin, Denise Guerra, Kasia Brousalian, Ashlea Brown, Angel Carreras and David Toledo. Our engineer is Mario Diaz. Our editor is Kinsee Morlan. Our executive producers are Jazmin Aguilera and Shani Hilton. And our theme music is by Andrew Eapen.
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I'm Gustavo Arellano. We'll be back tomorrow with all the news and desmadre. Gracias.
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