When Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and his Morena party won a landslide victory in Mexico’s 2018 election, they were confronted with a rightwing neoliberal state apparatus constructed to maintain the status quo. But rather than increasing taxation rates, he sought to fight corruption. He halved his own salary, and set about recovering unsettled taxes from big corporations and wealthy individuals. It was a success, with $350 million reputedly recovered from Walmart.
In Mexico in Transformation, David Raby argues that, despite criticisms of AMLO from both left and right (of being either a ‘timid reformist’ or a ‘populist’), his ‘Fourth Transformation’ is not only peaceful and democratic but represents a programme of radical change. The creation of a welfare state, with vastly expanded education and healthcare inclusion, along with significant environmental and public transport improvements, would appear to support this claim.
