Mexico votes for change
Andrés Manuel López Obrador rolled to victory in Mexico’s presidential election on July 1, promising to reduce poverty and get the country’s violence under control. At the end of today’s episode, we’ll talk about what it means to “strike a chord” with someone.
Welcome to Episode 68 of Plain English, a podcast for English learners. The transcript of today’s episode can be found online at PlainEnglish.com/68. Every single episode of Plain English comes with a free word-for-word transcript on the web site. Many of you will be able to understand every word, or most words, just from listening. But some of you might benefit from reading the transcript as you listen. And if you speak one of our six supported languages—Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Chinese or Japanese—if you speak one of those languages, then you can see instant translations of the hardest words and phrases without ever having to press pause. The translations are pretty cool if you haven’t seen them. Just go to PlainEnglish.com/68, find the tab that corresponds with your language, and you’ll see about 100 words per episode highlighted in dark red. When you get to one of those words, just hover your mouse over the word (or tap on it if you’re on your phone) and you’ll instantly see the translation of the word into, say, Spanish or Portuguese or whatever. I really like this feature because you can understand every word without having to press pause.
AMLO rolls to victory in Mexico
His first two losses were narrow, but his win was anything but: Andrés Manuel López Obrador, crushed his two opponents in the Mexican presidential election earlier this month, as Mexicans of all stripes voted for change in Latin America’s second-biggest economy.
López Obrador, or AMLO, as he is popularly known, campaigned on three key promises: to end corruption, reduce violence, and to reduce Mexico’s poverty. The three messages struck a chord with Mexicans, who wanted a break from the last 25 years of relatively centrist, stable rule.
The status quo has served Mexico well in many respects, especially in the more modernizing, manufacturing-centered north. States like Queretaro and Guanajuato, and cities like Monterrey, are now tightly integrated into a North America-wide supply chain and have benefitted from this trade with Canada and the United States. Cities like Guadalajara have seen a services-based and technology-based renewal. But more southern states, like Oaxaca and AMLO’s home state of Tabasco, are different. These more agriculture-focused states have not seen the same progress. Though the country’s overall rate of poverty has fallen, the progress has been uneven. AMLO’s promise to revive Mexico’s agriculture sector resonated with people in the southern states. He also promised to increase wages for the lowest-paid government workers and strengthen social programs and protections.
But more than anything else, what propelled AMLO to victory was the sense, shared in all parts of Mexico, that the parties who have alternated in power in Mexico in recent decades have lost the ability to govern effectively, becoming mired in corruption scandals and unable to get the country’s violence under control. In his victory speech, AMLO said that the violence and corruption in Mexico is “the result of a political regime in decay,” and he called the government “a committee at the service of a minority.”
Mexicans delivered AMLO the biggest margin of victory in modern history. The country has no runoff system and there were three main candidates; still, AMLO got about 53% of the vote and he will have a governing majority in Congress—a remarkable feat for the leader of a relatively new political movement. The movement appears to be a grab-bag of smaller interests, including leftist parties, trade unions, religious groups, and even some conservatives. AMLO’s challenge in government will be to keep his coalition together as he turns to the difficult task of governing.
Once in power, AMLO, who has rarely traveled, will represent Mexico on the world stage—both to foreign leaders and to foreign investors. The Mexican election could clear the way for the re-negotiation of the NAFTA trade deal, a priority for both Donald Trump and AMLO. While negotiating this deal and implementing his agenda at home, he will also have to convince foreign investors that Mexico is still a safe place to invest.
He has promised to maintain close relations with the United States and had a cordial call with President Trump shortly after his victory. He has promised economic stability. Even some of his critics have said that he has tempered the left-wing rhetoric that characterized his previous campaigns and turned many voters off from him in those contests.
Many people were voting for president for the first time and didn’t remember AMLO’s past campaigns. About 13 million people between the ages of 18 and 23 were expected to vote for the first time. Mexican presidents serve single six-year terms, so anyone under the age of 24 has never voted in a presidential election before this one. AMLO’s piety appealed to these voters in particular. He lives in a two-bedroom apartment in a middle-class neighborhood in Mexico City and gets around in a Volkswagen Jetta. He promised to turn the presidential palace into a public park.
The Jetta-driving populist will take over as president on December 1. Speaking of that—that seems like a really long time. In the United States, we vote for president on the first Tuesday of November and the winner takes office on January 20, so two and a half months. That strikes me as a long time to wait to take office; in the UK, when a prime minister’s party loses, he or she is moving out of 10 Downing Street the next day. Mexico will have to wait an astounding five months before the newly-elected president takes office. If I were the winner, especially of a different party, I would not want the current occupant hanging around for five months.
Today I want to say hi to a listener in Mexico—his name is Antonio and he’s a civil engineer in the state of Guanajuato. He’s working on his English because so much scientific research in his field is published in English and knowing English will improve his career. He also said he likes to be able to watch movies without subtitles—I’ll let you decide which is Antonio’s true motivation here. He said he recently found the program on Spotify and went back and listened to all the old episodes, sometimes five or six old episodes a day. Now that’s dedication! Thanks for listening Antonio.
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