Mexico: President AMLO's Inaugural Speech Offers 'New Hope'

After receiving the presidential sash in the Mexican National Congress, President Lopez Obrador gave a speech outlining an ambitious and encouraging government plan, based on bids to slash corruption, overturn neoliberalism and make important public investments.

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AMLO started his speech by thanking outgoing President Enrique Peña Nieto: "Mainly I recognize the fact of him not having intervened, as did other presidents, in the last presidential elections."

AMLO had previously claimed that the last two presidential elections were stolen from him. It is a good thing that the Mexican authorities, especially "the acting president, respect the will of the people," he said. 

"By mandate of the people, we begin today the fourth transformation of Mexico." AMLO wants to trigger a turning point in Mexican history that would be comparable to three other historic moments: Independence, a movement mainly led by Miguel Hidalgo, which liberated Mexico from around 300 years of Spanish domination; the Reform, a struggle between liberals and conservatives, which gave the "laws of the Reform" (one of the most important was the separation of the Church from the State, mainly protagonized by Benito Juarez); and the Mexican Revolution, a war to end the 30-year regime of Porfirio Diaz, after which the current Mexican Constitution was established.

AMLO has long talked about the fourth transformation of Mexico, in which he aims to change the political regime. Saturday, he said, started a "peaceful and orderly transformation, but at the same time deep and radical because it will end corruption and impunity that prevent the rebirth of Mexico."

AMLO's narrative, from before being elected president, has had the fight against corruption as one of its central pillars. "The crisis in Mexico was originated not only by the failures of the neoliberal economic model applied during the last 36 years, but also by the predominance, during this period, of the most filthy corruption, both public and private." Nothing has damaged Mexico more than the corruption of the people governing the country, and that tiny minority that profits from influences and "lobby."

"Neoliberalism is corruption,"he continued. "It sounds strong, but privatization in Mexico has meant corruption." Economic management during the neoliberal period, from 1983-2018, "has been the most inefficient of Mexico's modern history." Adding to this, due to the concentration of wealth in a "few hands, the majority of the population has been impoverished."

President Lopez Obrador emphatically distanced himself from the 40 years of neoliberal politics that have led Mexico into unprecedented economic crisis. "I say it without ideology: neoliberal politics has been a disaster, a calamity for the public life of the country. For example, the energy reform they said would come to save us has only caused the lesser production of oil and the excessive price increase of energy."

The energy reform, approved in 2013 by his predecessor Peña Nieto's government, translated into the gradual privatization of oil in Mexico, one of the only countries in Latin America that previously had full control of this natural resource, expropriated in 1938 by Lazaro Cardenas.