Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today's show in Mexico. In a landslide election, voters have chosen Andrés Manuel López Obrador to be Mexico's next president. Celebrations broke out across Mexico City Sunday night. The former mayor of Mexico City, who's known as AMLO, will become Mexico's first leftist president in decades. During a victory speech on Sunday night, he vowed to transform Mexico by reducing corruption and violence.
PRESIDENT-ELECT ANDRÉS MANUEL LÓPEZ OBRADOR:[translated] The new project of the nation will seek to establish an authentic democracy. We don't bet on building an open or closed dictatorship. The changes will be profound but will happen with a strict adherence to the legal established order. There will be corporate freedom, freedom of expression, of association and of beliefs. We will guarantee all the individual and social freedoms, as well as the political rights of citizens, consecrated in our Constitution. There will be no need to increase taxes in real terms, not for the country to fall into debt. There will also be no hikes in petrol. I will lower the general cost of living and the public investment to propel productive activities and to create jobs. The objective is to strengthen the internal market, to try to produce what we consume in the country. We won't act in an arbitrary way, and there will be no confiscation or expropriation of property. The transformation will consist in basically banishing corruption from our country. We won't have a problem in achieving this objective, because the people of Mexico are the heir of great civilizations.
AMY GOODMAN: Preliminary election results show López Obrador captured 53 percent of the vote, more than twice that of his closest rival. This marked AMLO's third time running for president. In Britain, Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn praised López Obrador. Corbyn tweeted, "Today brings a new beginning for México. Congratulations @lopezobrador. His election as President with more than 50% of the vote offers the poor and marginalised a genuine voice for the first time in Mexico's modern history. I'm sure #AMLO will be a president for all Mexicans," Corbyn tweeted.
López Obrador's victory comes after the most violent electoral season in modern Mexican history. At least 136 politicians have been assassinated in Mexico since September.
We go now to Mexico City, where we're joined by Christy Thornton. She's an assistant professor of sociology and Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins University. She was an election observer for the Scholars and Citizens Network for Democracy, currently writing a book about Mexican economic history.
Professor Thornton, talk about the election. Talk about the celebration in the Zócalo and what AMLO, what this new leftist president, president-elect right now, has promised.
CHRISTY THORNTON: Yeah, good morning, Amy, from Mexico City. It's really been an incredible atmosphere here. The victory of AMLO, and the margin with which he did it, really signals a new day here. I think it's beyond the expectations of even some of AMLO's strongest supporters to have seen him win the presidency with what the initial result says is 53 percent of the vote. We have to think about this was a field of four candidates. So for him to have won an absolute majority is something that we haven't seen in recent Mexican elections. And so, this is really a very strong victory, a very strong message. And it will be the case not just in the presidency, but in the legislature, as well, and in a number of state governorships. AMLO's MORENA party, which he founded in 2014, has really become a vital new political force here in Mexico that's really set to shake things up.
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about what this represents in terms of Mexico and the United States. Also, President Trump tweeted his congratulations. The corporate media is often now referring to López Obrador as "Mexico's Trump." It's not clear exactly why. Maybe they equate being opposed to NAFTA as being Trump.
CHRISTY THORNTON: Yeah, that's right. So, I think that the—López Obrador's election will have a number of important implications for the United States: on trade, as you said, the renegotiations of NAFTA; on security, with regard to the drug war; and with regard to migration. I think all three of those things are things in which we can expect a serious change from this Mexican administration. And we'll have to see what the relationship is between Trump and López Obrador.
You're right that a number of mainstream media outlets have made this kind of absurd comparison. And I think one of the reasons that has happened is the kind of—the worry from establishment politicians and mainstream media outlets about the idea of populism, and the worry about populism where they completely eviscerate the political content of that. And so, if you compare Trump and López Obrador, you could say that they are both, quote-unquote, "populists," but obviously their political platforms are on completely the opposite sides of the political spectrum. So, those kinds of comparisons, I think, are really bunk. López Obrador is really something more like a Bernie Sanders.
And what we saw here in Mexico City last night and in Tijuana, in major cities all over Mexico, people commented to me over and over that it felt like 2008. It felt like when Obama won the elections, and there was a kind of historic breaking of some precedent, right? And so, we have—that seems much more like an obvious comparison, the kind of breaking open of the political system and the hope for real change. Now, obviously, that comparison leaves those of us in the United States to worry about what might come next—right?—and what can actually be changed. There are real structural impediments. But, for now, the power of this movement indicates that Mexicans desperately want that change and are willing to fight for it.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what AMLO represented, what he promised. Talk about his stand on the wall, on immigration and on NAFTA, exactly what he's saying.
CHRISTY THORNTON: Yeah. So, there are a number of important areas where AMLO has said that he will change policy. With regard to NAFTA, he has kind of moderated his position over the years, but he has said that he wants the negotiations to wait until he assumes the presidency, and that members of his team will now be in the negotiating room. And so, he really hopes to now become an important part of the NAFTAnegotiations as they go forward. The most important thing for López Obrador on that is the protection of Mexican farmers and the Mexican agricultural sector. Obviously the United States really protects its agricultural sector in a way that is against a, quote-unquote, "free trade agenda." And that's been devastating for Mexican agriculture. So that's something we can expect to see López Obrador really push against.
With regard to migration, he has said that he intends to move Mexico's migration focus to the northern border rather than the southern border, where it's been, really at the behest of the U.S. government. So Mexico has really militarized its southern border with Guatemala as part of the larger U.S. policy against immigration, against refugees and SIVs and economic migrants. And so, López Obrador has said that he wants to reverse that policy, to demilitarize that border, to care for migrants here in Mexico and to move the center for migration up here to the north, rather than militarizing in the south and really terrorizing migrants as they cross the national territory. So, those are two areas in which there could be a real change in policies that affect the United States.
With regard to security, he has indicated that he wants to demilitarize the, quote-unquote, "war on drugs and organized crime," that was started by Felipe Calderón in 2007, 2008. The military has been sent into the streets with horrific human rights consequences—more than 100,000 people killed, 30,000 disappeared—and those of the conservative numbers. As you said, it's been an incredibly violent year this past year in Mexico. The statistics may indicate that it's the most violent year since they started keeping statistics here in Mexico. So, he has indicated that he intends to kind of back the military off of these law enforcement functions. And in your opening clip, a woman mentioned scholarships, not assassins, right? And so, that becarios, not sicarios, that was a big part of his platform, that he wants young people to have educational and economic opportunities that won't drive them into the hands of the drug cartels. So, it's really a sweeping change in Mexican policy that we can expect to see. And with the majorities in the House of Deputies and the Senate that he seems to have won, according to the exit polls, we can really expect to see some important changes.
AMY GOODMAN: Let's go back to Andrés Manuel López Obrador speaking at his victory rally last night in the Zócalo, in the main square in Mexico City.
PRESIDENT-ELECT ANDRÉS MANUEL LÓPEZ OBRADOR:[translated] We will follow three basic principles: to not lie, to not steal and to not betray the people. Long live Mexico! Long live Mexico!
AMY GOODMAN: So, that is AMLO last night. All the major candidates have conceded. Christy Thornton, give us a thumbnail sketch of his rise to power. I mean, back when the Zapatistas rose up in the mid-'90s, he was already running.
CHRISTY THORNTON: That's right. So, López Obrador was part of a kind of left insurgency from within the PRI. As your listeners and your watchers probably know, Mexico was effectively a one-party state, and the PRI controlled all levels of government, from the federal down to the local, for most of the 20th century. López Obrador was really important in the late 1980s in pushing to democratize from within the PRI. And then, when the 1988 elections were stolen fraudulently by the PRI—the computers were literally unplugged and replugged in, and when they came back, they mysteriously showed the PRI candidate winning—he broke off and was part of the new left party that was formed after that, called the Party for the Democratic Revolution. Over the decades since 1988, the Party for the Democratic Revolution has joined the PRI and the right-wing PAN party, the National Action Party, in a kind of consolidation towards the center. So the PRD was run by kind of centrist affiliates with the PRI, people who were willing to go along with the PRIand the PAN agenda. And so, we saw, after the Ayotzinapa crisis, where those 43 students were disappeared—and we still don't know exactly what happened to them—we saw López Obrador and a number of the founders of the PRI split—or, of the PRD, I'm sorry, split off from that party. And so, after that moment was when López Obrador formed his new party, MORENA.
He had run for the presidency in 2006, and there was massive fraud in that election. He lost by less than half of a percentage point. He ran against the current president, Enrique Peña Nieto, in 2012 and lost by a more sizable margin. One of the things that's been really interesting here, as an observer, has been to see the extent to which the machine for sort of election fraud, for the buying and coercion of votes, for the kind of corralling of voters to the voting places, it was definitely in action yesterday in the elections, but it was not enough to overcome this kind of tide of support for López Obrador and for his new party, MORENA. So this is really an incredible victory not just for this left candidate and his party, but really for the practice of Mexican democracy. This is really a new day for Mexican democracy. And you'll see people out in the streets celebrating this for some time to come.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Thornton, as we begin to wrap up, you retweeted, "I am not sure people understand just how big an impact AMLO's election has the potential to have on Central American->US migration patterns. A MEX gov w/no interest in intercepting migrants on US' behalf? I dunno, man." Talk about that, as we wrap up.
CHRISTY THORNTON: Yeah, absolutely. So, the militarization of the southern border has been done as part of a kind of security cooperation agreement between the United States and Mexico, that stems from the beginning of the militarization of the drug war. The Mérida Initiative is an initiative that has sent something like $3 billion in training and equipment and military equipment to Mexico. And they have militarized that southern border in such a way that the Mexican government has really been acting as a proxy for the U.S. government in trying to keep Central American migrants out and really terrorize them as they try to cross that border. If López Obrador demilitarizes that southern border, allows migrants to cross Mexico, provides the protection for migrants that he has indicated, it will really change how migration is being handled. And that's something that the Trump administration will certainly confront, going forward.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you for being with us, Christy Thornton, assistant professor of sociology and Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins University, speaking to us from Mexico City. She was an election observer there for the Scholars and Citizens Network for Democracy, currently writing a book about Mexican economic history. And, of course, we'll have more on this tomorrow on Democracy Now!
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today's show in Mexico, where voters have elected Andrés Manuel López Obrador to be Mexico's next president. The former mayor of Mexico City, who is known by his initials AMLO, will become Mexico's first leftist president in decades. López Obrador ran an anti-corruption, anti-violence campaign and has vowed to expand pensions for the elderly, boost spending for social programs and increase grants for students. On Monday, López Obrador and President Donald Trump had about a half-hour phone conversation, according to Trump, discussing immigration and trade. This is President Trump calling on Mexico's president-elect to collaborate on border security and NAFTA.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think he's going to try and help us with the border. We have unbelievably bad border laws, immigration laws, the weakest in the world, laughed at by everybody in the world. And Mexico has very strong immigration laws, so they can help us.
AMY GOODMAN: López Obrador captured 53 percent of the vote, more than twice that of his closest rival. This marked his third time running for president. López Obrador's victory comes after the most violent electoral season in modern Mexican history. At least 136 politicians have been assassinated in Mexico since September.
For more, we go to Mexico City, where we're joined by John Ackerman and Irma Sandoval. Irma Sandoval is a professor and director of the Center for the Study of Corruption at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, set to become comptroller general in President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador's government. John Ackerman is the editor of the Mexican Law Review and a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He's also a columnist for Procesoand La Jornada newspapers. They happen to be married.
Welcome to Democracy Now! John Ackerman, let's begin with you. Talk about the overall significance of this victory for López Obrador, who has been campaigning for this, it seems, for decades.
JOHN ACKERMAN: Yeah. Thank you, Amy. A real pleasure and a real honor to be on your show. You guys are the best.
Yes, López Obrador has been struggling for this, and the entire Mexican people have struggling for democracy, for decades. We supposedly had democracy in the year 2000, when ex-Coca-Cola executive Vicente Fox came into power, but he, you know, within a few months, basically cut deals with the old authoritarian regime and has really failed the Mexican people—not only him, but also his successor, Calderón, and, of course, Enrique Peña Nieto, over the last five or six years, have really—has really generated a vast crisis in corruption, in violence, in censorship, in repression of social movements.
And finally, this Sunday, July 1st, the Mexican people have really come up in, you know, a peaceful revolution. It's really quite amazing. It was amazing to see the poll stations this Sunday packed with long lines of voters, people who were really just fed up with this failure of the Mexican so-called democratic transition and want to really try again. This is a real historic moment, because throughout Latin America we've been having all this experimentation with left-wing and progressive governments throughout the region, from Brazil to El Salvador to Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, as to Uruguay, and Mexico had been left out of this pink tide. We have been stuck with this single ideology of neoliberal authoritarianism since the 1980s. But now, finally, it looks like we're going to be able to try something new.
AMY GOODMAN: A lot of the corporate media in the United States is referring to AMLO, to López Obrador, as "Mexico's Trump," talking about him as an anti-NAFTA populist. Your response?
JOHN ACKERMAN: No, there's absolutely no comparison between López Obrador and Trump. Trump is a right-wing demagogue who is quite ignorant about both national and international affairs. He's a chauvinist. He's someone who preaches hate. López Obrador is a quite sophisticated, modern, intellectual leader who is looking to, yes, defend the Mexican national economy, Mexican workers. He's actually pro-NAFTA. It's interesting. For many years, the left in Mexico has been anti-NAFTA, but things have changed. He's, you know, more similar to Bernie Sanders, if you want to do a comparison. But if you want to look at Latin America, it would be more like José Mujica or Lula da Silva. Jeremy Corbyn is a great friend of López Obrador. So, that's sort of his school of thought. This is—it's very quite funny to see how people think that anything that questions the status quo have to be similar. Trump and López Obrador have nothing to do with each other, from my point of view.
AMY GOODMAN: Irma Sandoval, you are going to be a part of the government, the comptroller general of Mexico. You're part of the team. Were you surprised by the massive outpouring of support? The significance of how much López Obrador won by?
IRMA SANDOVAL: Yeah. Hi, Amy. This is a historic moment, and we are very, very happy, because this moment really synthesized a lot of decades of struggles in Mexico, struggles for human rights, struggles for social movements, and also a very meaningful struggle that we had last year that is the struggle for justice in Ayotzinapa. And I think that everybody in Mexico is very happy of this moment, of this achievement. And also, personally, I'm very proud, very honored of being part of the team that is going help López Obrador to confront corruption, to combat corruption and to finish with this important—with this problem in Mexico.
Yeah, the meaningful is huge. The meaning is huge, precisely because López Obrador, as you may know, as your audience is aware, has won in the past. And in the past, he proclaimed himself as the legitimate president, with no legal result. But then, this moment is the contrary: He's going to be the legal president, the President López Obrador, with the highest level of legitimacy in modern history. So we are all very, very happy. And I'm sure that we are going to get the goal of finish corruption in our public life.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Irma Sandoval, talk about the role of women in the election of AMLO.
IRMA SANDOVAL: Well, it's very important. The general coordinator of his campaign, of López Obrador's campaign, was a very prominent entrepreneur. Tatiana Clouthier was the coordinator of his campaign. And the 50 percent of the Cabinet that he offered is composed by women. So, I'm very proud of that also. I think that López Obrador has—is the politician that has offered the real feminist legacy for Mexican politics, because when he was mayor of Mexico City, half of his Cabinet was confirmated, was formed by women, as well. And in this occasion, he's going to repeat this experience.
AMY GOODMAN: And Mexico City has elected its first female mayor, is that right? Claudia Sheinbaum.
IRMA SANDOVAL: Claudia Sheinbaum is also a great leader. And she's going to be, I'm sure, the best mayor of Mexico City.
AMY GOODMAN: I'd like to ask about how President-elect Obrador is likely to tackle drug violence in Mexico. He spoke briefly about how he would do this on Sunday.
PRESIDENT-ELECT ANDRÉS MANUEL LÓPEZ OBRADOR:[translated] The failed strategy to tackle insecurity and violence will change. More than using force, we will attack the causes that create insecurity and violence. I am convinced that the most efficient and most humane way to confront these evils necessarily demand we combat inequality and poverty.
AMY GOODMAN: John Ackerman, how exactly is López Obrador going to do this? And what role does the United States play in this, as well?
JOHN ACKERMAN: [inaudible] be changing the discourse, the logic on this. We have been going through a drug war for the last 12 years with Calderón, with Peña Nieto, very much politically motivated. You know, so, Calderón started this drug war, put the military out in the streets in the end of 2006, in a very similar way with, you know, Bush invading Iraq, to try to compensate for this lack of legitimacy in the context of the electoral fraud of 2006. And we've with this for the last 12 years, and also from lots of pressure from the United States to continue on that decapitation strategy, which has led to a bloodbath, you know, so 350,000 dead over the last 12 years, 35,000 disappeared, 25,000 displaced. So now López Obrador is talking about peace instead of war. So that's just, you know, changing the discussion.
Now, what he's going to do concretely, he's talked about really going at the base of the support for organized crime, so he's going to offer 3 million scholarships to youth, so that they can either have access to higher education or begin apprenticeships with businesses, or, on the other hand, there's also this generalized idea to support the countryside. So he wants to support the peasants. He wants to go for price supports for basic products from the countryside and, in general, support and move towards a possible food self-sufficiency in Mexico so we're not just importing and buying at Walmart. You know, so, Mexico is now the second-largest Walmart country in the world. We're increasingly dependent on U.S. agro products, and so—you know, Mexico, with this incredibly productive countryside. So, you know, supporting the peasants, supporting the youth, that would undercut the base support for the narcos, and, in general, trying to move towards a new strategy which is not based on the militarization, not fighting fire with fire, is what he says.
We need to investigate crimes. One of the great and the most important problems with this issue is that only 9 percent of crimes are even reported to the authorities. That's because the Mexican people, rightly, in fact, don't trust the criminal investigators. Often when you report a crime, you end up being investigated yourself, because they are often in the pocket of the criminals themselves. So you have to combat corruption, create more confidence and have people report crimes and have those reports actually get to—on the punishments for the criminals. And so, you know, let's go to the institutions, go to the questions of poverty and economic development, instead of just creating increased violence and war scenario. And here, you know, the discussion yesterday with Trump was pretty clear, from what I understand. I don't think the transcript was released, but López Obrador was saying this. He said this before. We want—from the United States, we don't want you guys to be sending us helicopters and arms. We want us—have a real joint strategy for economic development, to stop at the roots, so that we don't have this incredible flow of migrants, and they can make a living in Mexico themselves.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to talk about the level of violence, as you were talking about, during the most violent electoral season in modern Mexican history, at least 136 politicians assassinated in Mexico since September, a number of journalists also killed in the lead-up to Sunday's elections, including the reporter José Guadalupe Chan Dzib, who was killed Friday night in the southern state of Quintana Roo. John Ackerman, the significance of this? I mean, at least seven journalists recently killed in Mexico, not to mention this massive number of people who want to run for elected office.
JOHN ACKERMAN: Yes, this is a very sensitive issue. Over the last 10 years, we've had a hundred journalists assassinated. And, as you said, during the electoral season, these last 10 months, over a hundred politicians have been assassinated. I mean, this is really out of control. Last year, 2017, was the most violent year in Mexico for decades. Even 2007, '08, '09, the high point of the Calderón violence didn't get this high. So, we need an urgent solution. The Mexicans are willing to play their part.
The big problem, the roots of this problem, is the lack of a separation between the criminals and the government. People speak of, you know, a narco state, in which the government itself is in cahoots with and participating directly with organized crime. So, you know, if Irma does her job, which I'm sure she will, and other levels of the state-level governments really combating corruption and separating the criminals from the public function areas, I think we can actually make a major step forward here, you know, to have a real rule of law. You know, it's not easy. It's not going to happen from one day to the next. But the presidential terms of Mexico are 6 years long—no re-election, but 6 years long. And if López Obrador does what he says he's going to do, says he's going to wake up at 5:00 in the morning, as he did as mayor of Mexico City, working from 5:00 in the morning until midnight, make those six years feel as if they were 12, we could actually make progress in this area.
AMY GOODMAN: Irma Sandoval, if you could talk about immigration policy? You have President Trump sitting with the Dutch prime minister in the White House yesterday, saying he had a great half-hour phone call congratulating López Obrador and that they will work together to enforce immigration policy, that the U.S. has the worst immigration laws, making the U.S. the laughingstock of the world, and that AMLO has agreed to enforce Mexican immigration laws, which are much better.
IRMA SANDOVAL: I think that the AMLO is going to take the approach of solving this problem through development. He's going to offer economic, social and cultural development for Mexicans. Mexicans need, aspire—they want to live their lives in their country, within their culture and with their families. And I think that that's going to be the solution for the immigration problem that we have with the U.S. And AMLO, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is very clear with that. In terms of combat corruption, also we are going to try to struggle to combat impunity, because impunity is real—it's really the other side of the coin of corruption. To some extent, people are used to the levels of corruption. But we really—we cannot deal more with that is with impunity. And, of course, if we combat impunity, we are going to solve injustice. We are going to solve poverty. We are going to also confront all the social troubles that generate the highs—the high flows of migration in our country. So, corruption, impunity, poverty and other social challenges, we are going to confront.
AMY GOODMAN: And, John Ackerman, this issue of whether Mexico will start deporting Central Americans, for the United States, before they make it to the United States?
JOHN ACKERMAN: This is already happening. So, Enrique Peña Nieto's policy, along with Luis Videgaray, his foreign minister, has been a real disgrace for Mexico. Mexico has given up on its long tradition of sovereignty, you know, not sort of radical nationalism, but just basic sovereignty, in terms of foreign relations, in terms of control over their own territory. With Peña Nieto and Videgaray, basically, they're taking orders directly from Trump—well, not even from Trump, from Jared Kushner. And they have beefed up the southern border with the Plan Frontera Sur. And at the migration detention centers in Mexico, the biometric data from Central America and even Mexican migrants are going directly to the computers of the U.S. ICE offices. Now, obviously, there needs to be some collaboration—right?—economic, political. We share a continent. We share a region. But Mexico should—you know, I'm speaking from my own personal point of view, but Mexico should recover some sort of basic sovereignty and shouldn't be acting as, you know, the Border Patrol, extended Border Patrol, of the United States.
Now, of course, Mexicans need to, you know, actively encourage migration. And as Irma said, the Mexicans themselves, there are plenty of migrants in the United States who are happy there, but most people in Mexico and many migrants in the United States themselves would like to be in their homeland, would like to be able to have productive jobs and a productive life in Mexico themselves. And with López Obrador, there's going to be a lot of hope at that. And so, if Trump really wants to have a good relationship with Mexico, and really wants to stop migration, from his point of view, what would be in his interest is a wealthy, growing and safe Mexico to the south of the border. So, you know, I really hope that Trump opens up his eyes, sees the opportunity in Mexico today with López Obrador, and instead of grabbing Mexico as his punching bag or, López Obrador says, instead of grabbing Mexico as his piñata, you know, wakes up and tries to have a more respectful relationship with Mexico and with Mexicans. And I think then we can move forward as a more productive and peaceful North America and Latin America.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us. John Ackerman is editor of of the Mexican Law Review, columnist for the Mexican papers Proceso and La Jornada. And Irma Sandoval is set to be comptroller general in the new government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
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