Opinion | Andrés Manuel López Obrador did not fix Mexico

The truth is, when López Obrador ends his stint in office on Sept. 30, following elections this coming Sunday, he will bequeath to his successor a Mexico that looks very much like the one he received six years earlier. It’s the same violent country ruled by a corrupt government sitting atop a mediocre, unequal economy that millions of disenfranchised Mexicans have suffered for decades.

Weird as it may sound, this grim diagnosis offers an unprecedented opportunity to put Mexico on a path to an inclusive, prosperous future.

The Mexican economy has barely inched ahead over the past four decades. Forty-four years ago, Mexico’s gross domestic product per capita was three times that of South Korea. Today, it is less than half as large. And it remains one of the most unequal countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

It suffers the highest share of adults without a high school diploma among OECD nations and the lowest share with a college degree. Over a third of Mexicans live in poverty, according to government estimates. By some measures, barely 12 percent qualify as middle class. Eight percent — some 11 million people — have fled to seek prosperity in the United States. Oh, and over 30,000 are killed every year.

The picture hardly meshes with the glittering promises many made three decades ago, when Mexico bound itself with the United States and Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA was sold as a surefire path to replicate the success of East Asia’s “tiger” economies, turning Mexico into the main manufacturing base for the largest consumer market in the world.

Instead, as the Mexican economist Santiago Levy has pointed out, Mexico was split in two. A coterie of large, productive firms with access to foreign capital and the U.S. market flourished in the north, alongside myriad small, unproductive, informal firms that account for a fourth of the nation’s GDP and more than half its employment.

At fault, for sure, was faith in a “Washington Consensus,” which held that macroeconomic stability, privatization, open trade and education would fix all of the nation’s ills — ignoring how Mexico’s politically captured institutions discouraged the productive deployment of physical and human capital.

But the core flaw responsible for Mexico’s failure lies in the calcified political architecture that kept sclerotic elites in power. Political parties swung in and out of government, perpetuating the nation’s class-bound social contract, never offering real change.

The country embraced multiparty democracy in 2000 following 70 years of rule by the Revolutionary Institutional Party — the ubiquitous PRI. Eighteen years later, López Obrador, an old PRI stalwart, led his populist National Regeneration Movement to wrest power from a cosmopolitan elite that settled in during the democratic era.

Perhaps the most significant change over this period was the deterioration of Mexico’s governance. Mexicans’ trust in their system of government, measured by the World Bank, has declined notably since the era of single party rule — whether it’s about accountability, the government’s ability to protect them from violence or the level of corruption. The rule of law index by the World Justice Project ranks Mexico in 116th place among 142 countries.

Regardless, López Obrador stands as perhaps the most popular Mexican president in living memory, thanks mostly to a combination of cash transfers and rhetorical skirmishes with “the elites.” He has appointed himself champion of the people and architect of a “4th Transformation,” which he placed, with characteristic immodesty, in line after independence from Spain, the anticlerical War of Reform of the 1850s and the Revolution commencing in 1910.

To be sure, the poor have gotten some money. In 2022, 34 percent of Mexicans were covered by some social program. López Obrador expanded social spending, largely via a universal pension for the elderly, (funded partly with money that had been devoted to children). He increased the minimum wage, which was good news for the fraction of workers in formal employment. He built a refinery and a railway, which might one day bring development to the backward south of the country.

But that’s about it. Like the technocrats from the end of the PRI’s long rule or the democrats that followed them, the 4th Transformation didn’t dare transform the difficult stuff. “The political equilibrium,” Levy told me once, “is exactly the same as it has always been.” The ruling elites are still making out like bandits.

There is lots to be done. How about tackling corruption, essential to address the apocalyptic levels of violence? Or why not build a truly independent system of justice that could guarantee Mexicans the protection of the law?

If the next president really wanted to mess with the ruling elites, she could really try opening Mexico’s markets to competition. She could increase tax revenue, which rank at the very bottom among OECD nations. Reforming labor and social security laws to include the many Mexicans excluded from the nation’s safety net would help. All this could help build a social democracy.

Given the grim history, it is probably naive to believe that Mexico could take the path to shared prosperity. The main candidates vying for the presidency in the elections on Sunday — front-runner Claudia Sheinbaum, from the president’s party, and her opponent, Xóchitl Gálvez — both come from the political class that built and maintained Mexico’s inequitable status quo over the last century.

The main grounds for optimism, however, stem not from the candidates but from the state Mexico is in. If nothing else, López Obrador made clear how desperately Mexicans demand change. He did not provide much of it, mostly coasting on his charisma. But whoever succeeds him will have to deliver. The next president can no longer ignore Mexicans’ demand for a fairer, more equitable, prosperous nation.