Mexico’s Outsider Looking Up
If leading presidential contender Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wants to make good on his promise to stand Mexican politics on its head, he’ll need a lot more supporters like Vicente San Miguel.
San Miguel was one of thousands of Lopez Obrador fans who cheered the former Mexico City mayor over the weekend as he toured violence-racked cities along the Texas border.
It was a surprising turnout: Opposing parties hold nearly every local, state and federal office in these parts.
“I don’t follow politics much. I’ve never even voted,” said San Miguel, a 35-year-old engineer who came to a Sunday morning campaign appearance. “But I really like this guy.
“I like his integrity and what he’s done in Mexico City…. I told my dad, ‘Make sure to wake me up.’ I didn’t want to miss this.”
Like Mexican President Vicente Fox, whose victory in 2000 broke the 71-year reign of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, Lopez Obrador hopes to win next year’s presidential election with the promise of change. He also needs a large voter turnout to have a chance against the PRI’s political machine.
So with no money to spend on TV or radio advertising and a pledge to refuse cash from special interests, Lopez Obrador plays the little guy standing up to the corrupt and powerful. He makes his appeals at gymnasiums, rented halls and on the back of Chevy pickups.
He scares a lot of Mexicans with his leftist talk about putting the poor first and paying monthly stipends to single mothers and the elderly.
But with half the country’s 100 million-plus people living in poverty, there’s a big market for what he’s selling. If the election were held today, polls say he’d win.
During a low-budget caravan Sunday along Mexico’s northeast border, Lopez Obrador preached humility, austerity and populism. He said he would decline presidential jets and fly commercial, end fat pensions for millionaire ex-presidents and lower prices for electricity, gasoline and natural gas.
He mocked high-ranking politicians who charge the government for medical treatments in the United States and promised to make them wait in line at public clinics like everybody else. He condemned stagnant wages that drive Mexicans to the United States, and promised tariff protections for farmers.
His support is not limited to the poor, many of whom came to his rallies in castoff clothing. His political base in Mexico City includes a mix of limousine liberals and working class.
And then there are upwardly mobile types such as San Miguel, who say they’re lukewarm about Lopez Obrador’s Democratic Revolution Party but inspired by a man who says he can save enough money ending corruption to build up the country.
“Fox shattered corruption into big pieces,” he said. “This guy will finish the job.”
That belief, in defiance of Mexican history and human nature, echoes one popular message on the black-and-yellow T-shirts being sold in the Lopez Obrador barnstorm: “Que nadie nos robe la esperanza.” Loose translation: “They can steal everything but hope.”
Supporters say there is reason to expect miracles from Lopez Obrador, given his humiliation of the political elite this past spring.
Museo Rufino Tamayo
Rufino Tamayo (August 26, 1899 – June 24, 1991) was a popular modern Mexican painter. He was a Zapotec Indian and was born in Oaxaca, Oaxaca. Tamayo was an outsider in post Revolutionary Mexico, politically neutral and opposing the muralists' commitment to a public, popular art. His own paintings draw on Mexican folk art and ceramics for their themes and in their rich use of colour and texture, but their sophisticated compositions are more closely indebted to Cubism.
In his paintings, Tamayo expressed what he believed was the traditional Mexico and did not follow the more politically based paintings
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Narco News Al Giordano has a break down of the different scenarios that can occur and how López Obrador can still come out as a winner.
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The big question: How long can the party last?
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