Mexico: President Targets “Oligarchies” and Incites His Loyalists

“Viva Mexico!”: Nationalist left-wing leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador sparked large crowds at a public rally in Mexico City on Saturday by attacking the right in the US and Mexico’s “oligarchs”. A year after his successor was elected.

“Cooperation, yes, submission, no,” he began in front of tens of thousands of supporters, as “some lawmakers” denounced Republicans and talked about sending the U.S. military to Mexico against the cartels.

“Mexico is a free and independent country and not a colony or protectorate of the United States,” he hammered before the wave of people that filled the enormous symbolic space of the Zocalo beneath the presidential windows.

Officially, on March 18, 1938, Mr. The rally was called by López Obrador.

In a long historical account, Mr. López Obrador accused the Mexican right-wing party BAN of being born “by criticizing the expropriation of oil” that allowed the nationalization of the industry.

“Whatever they do, the oligarchs will not come back to power,” he said, defending his policies (like average wage increases, the strength of the peso) as the end of his single mandate approaches six years in 2024.

Buoyed by his popularity, his Movement for National Revival (MORENA) has every chance of remaining in power during presidential and local elections scheduled for mid-2024.

Mexico City Mayor Claudia Scheinbaum and Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard sat behind him and listened to him.

The President said he was “confident” that the “officer” who would be his movement’s candidate would “use the same principle in favor of the people and in favor of the nation”.

The rally came three weeks after the opposition marched against electoral reforms approved by parliament.

The opposition and a section of civil society have announced appeals to the Supreme Court, saying the reform threatens the National Electoral Institute (INE), which is in charge of organizing elections.

The reform “tests the independence of electoral and judicial institutions,” which worried the United States, and Mr. Lopez Obrador was accused of interference.

“I think we need to change the INE. They are corrupt and they already stole an election from López Obrador,” said 22-year-old student Eduardo Ramirez, referring to the controversial 2006 presidential election in which the current president challenged him. failure

AMLO had already spoken in front of tens of thousands of people at the end of a more than five-hour march on November 27, a fortnight after an earlier mobilization by the opposition.