New Yorker: Obrador, Trump and the Error of Comparison

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also known as AMLO, won 53 percent of the vote along with taking the majority of legislature seats. Issues in Mexico include the war on drugs, complacency against the Trump administration and failure to prosecute major criminal cases. By building grassroots support over two decades, López Obrador ended the 88-year-old hold grip on power by two parties, PRI and PAN. Rivals challenged him as an extreme leftist or a “socialist in sheep’s clothing.” His victory restores agency to the millions of ordinary Mexicans from indigenous and agrarian communities in the significance of their vote, writes Jon Lee Anderson for the New Yorker. López Obrador has raised expectations with a “strong sense of historic purpose in what he is doing.” Anderson concludes that López Obrador’s populism promises to be more inclusive than that of Trump’s and other right-wing conservative leaders around the world – “built not on a hatred of ‘the other,’ or on a need to prevail at the expense of others, but rather on an intuitive faith that Mexicans can overcome their current reality with a redeployment of their most outstanding national traits – hard work, resourcefulness, pride, modesty, and bravery.” – Yale Global