Photo Source Eneas De Troya | CC BY 2.0
Andrés Manuel López Obrador achieved on July 1 what he openly and obsessively strove for during 14 years: he was elected president of Mexico. But at what costs and with what sacrifices of professed ideals? His election has triggered a bizarre array of flattering and exaggerated responses from U.S. left commentators: that he’s a “radical socialist”, a person who will focus on relationships with Latin America and criticize the U.S., and that he’s a critic of neo-liberalism. It’s probably true that 45 years ago he trained himself as a politician and organizer by memorizing speeches of Salvador Allende and Fidel Castro, but the company that he keeps recently is quite different.
López Obrador (AMLO) railed for years against what he called “la mafia del poder” (the mafia of the powerful), but more recently, as his last campaign took shape, he was making peace with various magnates, especially in the right-wing-Catholic-dominated industrial city of Monterrey, a few hours from Laredo, Texas. His main contact for this purpose was Alfonso Romo, who has made his money from private school ties, marrying an heiress, the Oxxo convenience store chain, the manufacture of beer and cigarettes, Coca Cola bottling, genetically-modified organisms, and, according to this article in the Mexican investigative magazine Proceso, ripping off his richer in-laws. Romo is also a benefactor of the Legionnaires of Christ, a right-wing…