The 2006 election cycle started out with a clear front runner—Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, widely referred to simply as AMLO. The frontrunner, the son of a shopkeeper of modest means, attended the National University in the early 1970s, at a time when the university was a hotbed of radicalism. He then returned to his native state of Tabasco, on the Gulf Coast, and for six years worked as state director of the National Indigenous Institute (INI). During this time, he carried out community development projects among the Chontal, an impoverished indigenous group.2
Lopez Obrador became Tabasco state chair for the PRD and began to attract national attention. To protest the rigging of municipal elections in 1991, he organized a march to Mexico City, almost 500 miles away. AMLO ran for governor in 1994 and was defeated by Roberto Madrazo, who far exceeded campaign-spending limits to win the governorship. This resulted in Lopez Obrador organizing a second protest march to Mexico City. In 1996, AMLO led a four-week occupation of Tabasco oil fields to protest environmental damage. After federal troops forcibly dislodged the protestors, he appeared on national TV with his head drenched in his own blood.3
In 1996, AMLO was elected national president of his party, the PRD. Under his leadership, the PRD gained votes and increased its number of office holders. In addition to bolstering the party at election time, he repeatedly hammered on the theme of the FOBAPROA (Bank Savings Protection Fund) bank bailout, which he described as “the corrupt being rewarded for irresponsibility.”4
In 2000, Lopez Obrador was elected mayor of Mexico City. He benefited from Cardenas having resigned as mayor to run for president, since his replacement, the more popular Rosario Robles, boosted the standing of the PRD in the city. PRD popularity, plus Lopez Obrador’s natural gifts as a campaigner, enabled him to edge out two formable opponents—well-known lawyer and former PAN deputy Santiago Creel and former Mexican ambassador to the United States Jesus Silva-
Herzog.5
As mayor, AMLO provided monthly stipends of $60 to the elderly, the handicapped, and single mothers—a program that proved to be extremely popular. At the same time, he double-decked an expressway and undertook other road projects, currying the favor of more affluent auto owners. He demonstrated his concern for education by providing school supplies to public school children without charge, opening nine high schools catering to low-income students, and founding the Autonomous University of Mexico City, whose students are selected by lottery, not entrance exams.6
If nature abhors vacuums, political establishments abhor highly popular challengers. Lopez Obrador was indeed such a challenger. A 2004 opinion poll found that 39 percent of those polled favored him for the 2006—2012 presidential term, compared to only 23 percent for his closest rival, who at the time was First Lady Marta Sahagun. In an attempt to decrease AMLO’s popularity, in 2004 several videos were leaked to the media. One showed his finance chief Gustavo Ponce smoking a cigar and playing high stakes baccarat in Las Vegas. This was followed by another video depicting his chief political operator Rene Bejarano stuffing thousands of dollars in cash, provided by a city contractor, into his pockets. Since none of the videos directly implicated Lopez Obrador, their airing left him largely unscathed. Indeed, since a prominent PAN senator admitted having seen the videos before they went on the air, they convinced many that the videos were establishment dirty tricks aimed at undercutting AMLO.7
Two months after the video scandals, as they became known in Mexico, the Fox administration called for the removal of Lopez Obrador’s immunity from criminal prosecution. The Mexico City mayor, along with other top government officials, can only be indicted if Congress votes to strip of him of his immunity. According to Mexican law, those who are under indictment cannot run for office.
The indictment the Fox administration sought resulted from Lopez Obrador supposedly having ignored a judge’s order to halt construction on a road that crossed private property to provide access to a hospital. AMLO not only denied any wrongdoing but declared that removing his immunity was a desperate attempt to keep him off the 2006 ballot. On April 7, 2005, Congress voted 360 to 127 to strip AMLO of his criminal immunity, a process known as desafuero. In response, on April 24 more than 1 million staged a peaceful demonstration to protest the desafuero. Foreign media almost universally viewed the desafuero as being a politically motivated maneuver keep a formidable rival off the ballot. Fox, afraid that the whole effort might lead to instability and spook investors, dismissed his attorney general, who was handing the matter, and did not raise the question of AMLO’s supposed offence again. Rather than keeping AMLO off the ballot, the desafuero enhanced his popularity by casting him as an underdog standing up to the powerful.8
In July 2005, Lopez Obrador resigned as mayor to campaign full-time for the PRD presidential nomination. His accomplishments as mayor, his Spartan life style, and his apparent lack of interest in self-enrichment resulted in his leaving office with an unprecedented 76 percent approval rating. AMLO enjoyed such overwhelming popularity that the PRD did not even bother with a primary election. Lopez Obrador simply became its presidential candidate, thus effecting a generational change from Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, who was nineteen years his senior.9
World History
