The leftist front-runner in Mexico’s presidential race has pledged to raise wages and create jobs along the northern border and other regions across the country—measures he said will bring economic benefits and stem migration to the United States and thus eliminate the need for President Donald Trump’s planned border wall.
“We won’t allow this wall to be built, we’ll persuade Donald Trump that it’s not necessary,” said Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor commonly known by his initials, AMLO, told reporters during a stop in Tijuana on Tuesday night. “And if he insists and wants to impose this wall, we’ll go to the United Nations and present a complaint.”
The 64-year-old candidate is making his third presidential bid after losing in 2006 and 2012. He has been rallying crowds across Mexico with his promises to eradicate corruption, impose austerity in government agencies, create jobs and help the poor—from students to the elderly.
As several thousand supporters gathered at the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) party offices in the city’s Río Zone, López Obrador primarily sounded those themes, with only passing references to the U.S. president, whom he said was “arrogant… for saying that he will build a wall all along the border so that Mexicans don’t go to work” in the United States.
As Mexicans find new opportunities at home, “let’s see how they manage to harvest crops in the United States,” López Obrador said, adding that the U.S. president “will have to ask that Mexicans come and work.”
These were messages that went over well with members of the audience, who had traveled from as far as Mexicali and Ensenada to hear him speak. A handful even had come from across the border.
“We are going to end corruption, it’s the country’s main problem, it’s the cancer that is destroying Mexico,” López Obrador said. “We are going to change the image that our country unfortunately has abroad, where the only news that reaches people is that of violence and corruption.”
To his followers, López Obrador offers hope for change in a country where many still struggle with poverty and injustice, and where a growing number of communities have been facing unprecedented violence. But his fiery talk of reform has also stoked fears as to how his policies ultimately would play out.
“He will have to persuade Mexico’s elites that he is not Hugo Chávez, that he is not Nicolás Maduro, that he is a person friendly toward free trade, toward market economy,” said Rafael Fernández de Castro, director of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California San Diego.
“In the past few weeks, it’s impressive how we’ve seen a López Obrador who is more inclusive…it seems that he’s a new López Obrador, and he’s been doing very effective outreach toward his political adversaries,” he said.
With five months to go until the country’s July 1 election, polls have given López Obrador a lead over his two main rivals. Last week, the Mexico City newspaper El Universal published a poll showing 32 percent support for López Obrador, who is running as a candidate for a coalition that includes MORENA and two smaller parties.
In second place, with 26 percent, was Ricardo Anaya Cortés, a member of National Action Party, the PAN, who is running under a coalition with two center-left parties. In third place with 16 percent was José Antonio Meade of the country’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI.
While the official campaign season is not scheduled to launch until March 30, all three have come to Tijuana to reach out to their political bases in the past month. With some 2.75 million voters, Baja California is a small state far from Mexico’s politically dominant central regions—one where voting tendencies in past presidential races have proven difficult to predict. The last time Mexico had a presidential election, in 2012, a majority of voters favored the PRI.
On Tuesday, the crowd cheered as López Obrador told of his plans for a 30-kilometer-wide economic zone that would stretch the length of Mexico’s northern border. Residents and businesses would benefit from a sales tax lowered from 16 to eight percent, and an income tax reduced from 40 to 20 percent. “We’ll stimulate development in Tijuana, in all border cities,” he said.
Money saved through eliminating corruption and reducing costly salaries, pensions and other privileges for high-level government officials would be used to raise salaries of workers at the lower end of the spectrum without the need for raising taxes.“We’re going to lower the salaries of those at the top, and we’re going to augment the salaries of those at the bottom,” López Obrador said.
While in Tijuana, López Obrador did not bring up the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, the agreement with Canada and the United States that is being re-negotiated. His top aides have said that if elected president, he would not pull out of the treaty, but would rather like to see modifications.
Nor did he raise the possibility of granting amnesty to drug cartel leaders as a means of ending violence—an idea that stirred much criticism when he brought up the idea last December in the state of Guerrero.
Gastón Luken Garza, a former Mexican federal congressman from Tijuana, called the proposals offered in Tijuana “a well-rehearsed list of generally attractive themes, though he doesn’t say how he’ll make them happen.”
López Obrador “has learned from his past two campaigns, and delivers a finely honed message that is eaten up by many,” said Luken, who made an unsuccessful mayoral bid in 2016 as an independent candidate.
Business leaders like David Mayagoitia have been watching and listening closely—to all three candidates, and for the time being are reserving judgment.
“I think he’s said some good things and not so good things,” he said of López Obrador. “We’re looking at him just like we would look at all other candidates that would come to our city and be running for president,” said Mayagoitia, president of the Tijuana Economic Development Corporation, a group that seeks to attract foreign investment to the manufacturing sector.
Mario Medrano, a 17-year-old Tijuana high school student, said he plans to cast his first ballot for López Obrador. “I don’t know if everything he is saying is a lie, but he is saying there will be good salaries here, and that prices will go down.”
Among those listening approvingly to the candidate’s message on Wednesday was Carlos Ríos, a 62-year-old landscaper who lives in National City.
“All the other politicians have stolen so much,” said Ríos, who holds dual U.S. and Mexican citizenship. “Our hope is that this president can make a difference and help the country’s neediest.”
EXPAT in BAJA Mexico 