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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | January 2006 
Populist Leading Presidential Race
 Alan Stoga - MiamiHerald.com
| | If elected, AMLO could become the dynamic, modernizing leader that Mexicans hoped for, but did not get, when President Vicente Fox broke 70 years of PRI political monopoly in 2000. |
Although the Mexican presidential election is not until July, the dynamics of the contest already seem set: the election is Andrés Manuel López Obrador's - AMLO, for short - to lose. His personality, his vision and his ambition are defining the race, with other candidates following in his wake.
The problem for the United States is that AMLO is a populist, nationalist, against globalization, and instinctively anti-U.S., in the old tradition of Mexico's traditional ruling party, the PRI, from which he defected years ago when it began to modernize. Like other Latin American populists, he appeals to the millions of poor people who have not benefited much in fact, or at all in perception, from the economic liberalizations of the '90s or the more recent boom in oil prices.
What would it mean to U.S. national security if AMLO is the next president of Mexico?
AMLO is leading for a simple reason: His hard core constituency - desperately poor people - is much larger than anyone else's. His proposals to give them cash, to make the wealthy pay taxes and to reduce the salaries of government workers, which is essentially the formula he used to run Mexico City for the past four years, resonate because they are simple and direct. Poor Mexicans are responding to a candidate who speaks their language, and who has demonstrated he will give them a small, but tangible slice of the economic pie. In a country where poor people have little reason to trust most politicians, AMLO seems to be different.
Nothing in that formula inherently threatens the United States.
AMLO does not seem to be a radical leftist like President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. Instead, he appears to be a traditional Mexican nationalist, someone whose economic model is rooted in an era of large, state (or, at least, locally) owned enterprises under government control, who believes in income redistribution and who has little real interest in the world outside Mexico's borders.
As Mexico City's mayor, AMLO chose his battles carefully. On the one hand, he built high-profile public works projects that created the image of a government reshaping the city. On the other, he largely ignored the city's brutal security situation and accused his critics of a conspiracy when they demanded that he get serious about crime. Confrontation and divisiveness were central parts of AMLO's political style, especially when put on the defensive. For example, when aides were forced to resign because of corruption that was caught on film, he rearranged the facts into a conspiracy against himself.
Of course, if elected, AMLO could become the dynamic, modernizing leader that Mexicans hoped for, but did not get, when President Vicente Fox broke 70 years of PRI political monopoly in 2000. But unlike Fox, who was a committed if ineffectual reformer, AMLO appears to believe that the old Mexican political style can be resurrected, casting himself as the new caudillo.
Is all of this good or bad for the United States? The only relevant test is whether a President AMLO is more or less likely to put Mexico on a path of prosperity and increasing stability. And, while it is easy to see how AMLO's populism could get him elected, it is much harder to see how it would translate into a viable plan to make his country competitive in the 21st century. If Mexico is not competitive, it will not be economically viable - which would inevitably mean more migrants, more drugs and more violence moving north.
That is a frightening scenario. Of course, there is nothing the United States can do - except worry - about who becomes the next president of Mexico. But it seems like it is time to start worrying.
Alan Stoga is president of Zemi Communications and vice chairman of the Americas Society. ajstoga@zemi.com
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