{"id":43970,"date":"2024-09-17T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-17T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/?p=43970"},"modified":"2024-09-16T12:13:07","modified_gmt":"2024-09-16T15:13:07","slug":"the-legacy-of-lopez-obrador","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/the-legacy-of-lopez-obrador\/","title":{"rendered":"The legacy of L\u00f3pez Obrador"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“W<\/mark><\/em>anting to reform everything is the same thing as wanting to destroy everything.”<\/mark><\/em> \u2014Vincenzo Cuoco, 1801<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Mexico, there is an average of one murder every 15 minutes, or 95 per day. Fourteen of the 50 most violent cities in the world are located in this country, according to 2024 data from the consulting firm World Population Review<\/a>. Tijuana and Acapulco top the list, with more than 110 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. The Mexican government\u2019s Ministry of Security and Citizen Protection reported that between 2018 and 2024, 180,000 murders occurred. This is 30,000 more than during Enrique Pe\u00f1a Nieto\u2019s term, 60,000 more than under Felipe Calder\u00f3n\u2019s administration and more than double the number during Vicente Fox\u2019s presidency. In June 2024 alone, there were 2,673 homicides. Six states account for 50% of intentional homicides: Guanajuato, Michoac\u00e1n, State of Mexico, Baja California, Jalisco and Sonora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of September 2024, it is estimated that there are 116,000 missing persons in Mexico, though this figure has only been tracked since 2006. In 2022, there were 52,000 unidentified deceased persons and updating these figures is difficult as forensic services are insufficient. According to the National Search Commission, which is responsible for coordinating actions to locate and identify missing persons, the states of Baja California, Mexico City, State of Mexico, Jalisco, Chihuahua, Tamaulipas and Nuevo Le\u00f3n account for 71.7% of the unidentified bodies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The General Law on Forced Disappearance, created in 2017, envisioned the National Forensic Data Bank, but it has yet to be implemented. These numbers represent the basis of a situation that could be worse. In 2018, a few months before L\u00f3pez Obrador assumed the presidency, a refrigerated truck with 273 decomposing bodies was found \u201cabandoned\u201d in the state of Jalisco. Initially, it was thought that organized crime had left it there, but it turned out that the state government was using it because the morgue, with a maximum capacity of 200 bodies, could not hold more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the Mexican government\u2019s inability to address this issue and stop the spiral of violence<\/a>, various collectives have emerged, almost all led by women, the mothers of missing persons. The “Madres Buscadoras<\/em>” (Searching Mothers) are more than 60 organizations that since 2019 have found over 1,230 people in clandestine graves and 1,300 people alive in various states of the country and even in Central America. However, their activity has also become dangerous, with over ten searching mothers killed, some in front of government buildings. L\u00f3pez Obrador openly ignored them during his government despite his promise to support them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neoliberal populism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

During this administration, 14 social welfare programs were created. Seven of these are direct benefits, such as pensions for the elderly, scholarships for basic, middle and higher education and support for people with disabilities and single mothers. Between 2019 and 2024, the government spent 2.73 trillion pesos (about $140 billion) on these programs and according to its own data, 79% of households in the country receive at least one of these benefits. This explains why, despite severe insecurity and impunity, the ruling party didn\u2019t face significant electoral backlash. However, it also explains why the fiscal deficit is nearly 6% of GDP<\/a>, the highest in the last 35 years, data from the Bank of Mexico show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 2000, the organization Article 19 <\/a>has recorded the murder of 167 journalists, 47 of them during L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s term, the same number as during Pe\u00f1a Nieto\u2019s presidency. The year 2022 was the worst, with 13 journalists killed. Reporters Without Borders considers Mexico one of the most dangerous and deadly countries in the world for practicing journalism. The telecommunications sector is dominated by Telmex, radio and television by Televisa, while Organizaci\u00f3n Editorial Mexicana, also known as OEM, owns 70 newspapers, 24 radio stations and 44 news websites. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During his administration, L\u00f3pez Obrador never appeared before Congress\u2014except when he took office\u2014never met with opposition leaders and ignored various groups, including the mothers of missing persons. However, the doors of the National Palace\u2014where he resides and works\u2014were always open to the country\u2019s top businessmen, especially those from the aforementioned companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Politics without rule of law<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The L\u00f3pez Obrador administration classified all information related to its most emblematic works, such as the construction of the Felipe \u00c1ngeles Airport, the Maya Train and the Dos Bocas Refinery, under the guise of national security, with the aim of avoiding public scrutiny. This explains why Mexico ranked 126th out of 180 countries in the 2023 Transparency International index, with corruption levels similar to El Salvador, Kenya and Togo and the worst among the OECD countries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the raison d’\u00eatre of the state and government is, above all, to provide security to its citizens to prevent the horrors of the “state of nature,” we can say that this function has long ceased to exist in Mexico and it worsened between 2018 and 2024 under a government that promised to stop the violence with \u201chugs, not bullets.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No matter from which angle it is viewed, the balance of L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s government is negative and this is the legacy that will be passed to his successor, Claudia Sheinbaum. Whatever significance people may attribute to her victory as the new head of state and government, it is overshadowed by her determination to follow L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s directives to the letter, by her lack of a personal agenda and by her voluntary submission to the whims of the leaders of the Morena party, whose only political project is to prove who is more servile to the outgoing president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Mexican presidentialism has unwritten rules that have changed little and among them, two are inevitable: first, the outgoing president immediately loses power and second, for the new president to succeed, they must break with their predecessor, especially if they are from the same party. L\u00f3pez Obrador is aware of this, which explains the pressure he has put on his party\u2019s new legislators to fast-track approval of his reforms affecting the judiciary and autonomous bodies<\/a>, so that none of these institutions can pursue him or his associates once they leave office. As the saying goes, \u201cfear lends wings.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No matter from which angle it is viewed, the balance of L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s government is negative and this is the legacy that will be passed to his successor, Claudia Sheinbaum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":188,"featured_media":43954,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16872,16815],"tags":[15635],"gps":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-43970","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mexico-en","8":"category-crimen-organizado-en","9":"tag-debates"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/188"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43970"},{"taxonomy":"gps","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gps?post=43970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}