The Immovable AMLO

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador waves a flag on the balcony of the National Palace to kick off Independence Day celebrations on September 15, 2020, in Mexico City. (Hector Vivas/Getty Images)

When Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected president of Mexico in 2018, he promised a government “for the good of all, with the poor coming first.” He pledged to break with neoliberalism and its attendant inequalities, violence, and corruption. After more than two years in power, AMLO remains rhetorically committed to a vision of equality. But he has pursued this vision with a set of very fixed ideas. As new challenges have emerged, he has not adapted. His inflexibility threatens to undermine the promise that his election represented.

His government’s handling of the coronavirus is emblematic of this problem. When COVID-19 cases began to surface in Mexico last spring, AMLO’s response bordered on denial. A total lockdown would have been difficult to pull off in a country where a majority of the population earns a living from informal work. “I can’t stop working,” one hamburger vendor told reporters. “If I don’t sell, I don’t eat. It’s as simple as that.” But AMLO’s own activities demonstrated a lack of concern about spreading the virus. Initially, he made no changes to his practice of making trips around the country, which brought him into close contact with thousands of his supporters. He also promoted deadly misinformation. At the end of March, during one of his daily morning conferences, AMLO took out a pair of “amulets” and said that they would protect him and the country from the pandemic. Even after catching and recovering from COVID-19 in early 2021, AMLO chooses not to wear a mask in public.

As the number of cases rose, the government suspended large public gatherings and in-person schooling but avoided imposing a mandatory lockdown. Inconsistent public messaging encouraged voluntary restrictions, asking Mexicans to maintain safe social distance. Despite many people having little choice but to keep working outside of their homes to survive, Mexico experienced an 8.5 percent reduction of its gross national product in 2020, its worst economic contraction in almost ninety years.

In keeping with AMLO’s commitment to “republican austerity,” direct financial support has been minimal. Big business, he announced, had evaded taxes and didn’t deserve support: “No more bailouts like those given to banks in the era of neoliberalism.” But AMLO’s government has offered little help to ordinary people either. Some benefits were dispersed early, but there was no large-scale effort to provide insurance or basic income to the millions who found themselves short of work. Mexico’s coronavirus relief spending remains among the stingiest in the world: less than 1 percent of GDP. That figure is dwarfed by the relief policies of other Latin American countries; Chile and Brazil’s relief packages, for instance, amounted to about 8 percent of GDP.

The coronavirus has devastated Mexico. In September 2020, AMLO predicted that the worst was over. By the end of 2020, cases spiked, peaking in late January of this year. Black markets emerged for oxygen tanks, as family members tried to take care of sick relatives who could not, or would not, access public hospitals. According to data from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, somewhere between 18 and 55 million Mexicans (in a country of roughly 130 million) have contracted the virus. Mexico has the lowest rate of testing in the Americas and the highest positivity rate. By the end of February, the government reported approximately 185,000 deaths due to COVID-19. Mexico, with the world’s tenth-highest population, ranked third in the world for deaths, behind only the United States and Brazil. But looking at “excess deaths” compared to previous years reveals that official figures have grossly understated the cost to Mexico: by mid-December, there were already 380,000.

After returning from his illness in early February, AMLO spoke optimistically about rolling...