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While browsing the New York Times last night, I found an op-ed by Mexican economist and sociologist Jorge Zepeda Patterson titled, Despite everything, Lpez Obrador has my vote.
Obviously, I had to read it. While the president of Mexico is someone I would have voted for all three times (when he ran for president in 2006, 2012 and won in 2018), but not a fourth, his behavior since he became president is something that has completely baffled me more than once.
But Zepeda made a good point: There are essentially two Mexicos, and the side that AMLO has made clear that he is active in despite the fact that many poor people are not currently being helped by him constitutes a much larger population. Numerous social programs and rhetoric aimed at reminding the poorest that he is by their side to maintain the popularity of both the man and the party he leads.
The two Mexicos Zepeda refers to reminded me of the years I spent teaching in an American high school in the town of Quertaro. This was my first exposure to the other Mexico, because before that I had only really hung out with what could best be described as middle class Mexicans.
The campus itself was beautiful and well-kept, the students well dressed and mostly fair-skinned. It was considered one of the best schools in the state, and teachers were recruited nationally and internationally to ensure students had consistent exposure to both languages.
It was my first show in Mexico, really with kids who had grown up having everything they needed and wanted. Most were the children of the city’s elites: business owners and politicians. Tuition for a single child was a bit higher than what would be affordable with Mexico’s minimum wage, and all student families had employed servants in their homes.
Many students there also had their own (new) cars from the age of 16, and a few had bodyguards waiting for them right outside the school parking lot to take them home. Some of them were poor compared to their richer classmates: maybe they were driving an old car or going on a less elaborate vacation.
I was certainly poor compared to the poorest and I was not poor (not for Mexico anyway).
The year I started teaching, 2006, was the year Lpez Obrador ran for president against Felipe Caldern. Those of you who were here, or who followed the news during this time, will recall that AMLO set up his rightful government in Mexico City’s zcalo for several months, insisting that he indeed had won the presidential election.
My students were crazy about it. They weren’t so crazy about ideological issues but rather the increased traffic problems due to the ongoing protest they encountered on their regular trips to Mexico City.
While there were a few nice students (how far would you go if you thought I had unfairly failed you and the administration refused to do anything about it, I asked them), most have clearly indicated that they were not happy with the situation. Yet they were teenagers, a bunch of any social class who were not known to think of the greater good rather than their own convenience.
I mostly taught social science classes, so social class and stratification were topics we discussed a lot. To my surprise, many students have told me that they consider themselves to be middle class when asked.
They were young, sure, and I guess if you just took it off American TV then maybe they could see themselves living like some of those popular upper middle class families on sitcoms that are sort of. so always magically rich. They squinted in bewilderment at the graphs that showed they were among the top 5% of the richest families in Mexico.
Although the students were mostly polite, intelligent and very honest people, teaching there was difficult for me. Besides realizing that I was just too sensitive to be a teacher (a kid saying it’s boring might ruin my day and send me home in tears), it was hard to see a kid who was rude and disrespectful. in class and could barely write his own name driving to school in a Jaguar day in and day out.
If it was hard for me what could it have been for the janitorial staff, guards, food service workers who all got up very early to take the bus for their long shifts at school?
It is no surprise to me that AMLO and his party became, and remained, so popular that the distance between the types of income my student families were accustomed to and those earned by the workers who served them s has increased further in recent years.
And the president who kept saying things like No was not going to help them; they don’t need help, they’re the exploiters! has not yet aged for most of his followers. While AMLO’s appeal isn’t just to stick with the rich, I think that’s part of it.
The president talks about the disconnect between economic expectations and the realities of the majority of Mexicans.
Do you easily pay a 300 peso blanket to walk into a bar and then open a tab or do you know the exact price of a kilo of tomatoes, rice and tortillas because every peso counts? For most Mexicans, the latter is reality, and it is its people.
So whether or not the growing number of poor prosper under AMLO is almost irrelevant. The coronavirus has brought down many formerly lower middle-class Mexicans into their ranks, but that’s not part of the divisive conversation, you know, the one the president controls through his good vs bad alignments featured in his maaneras ( morning press conferences) every day.
For those who are struggling, it must just do good to have someone say: I am not on the side of people that you have to watch winning over and over again; I’m on your side.
So while Morena lost his qualified majority in Congress, which would have allowed Lpez Obrador to change the constitution without consulting the opposition (thank goodness), the popularity of parties at the more local level increased. Morenas’ candidates won the majority of gubernatorial positions to win this election.
The other Mexico can certainly continue to ignore the plight of the growing number of people left behind as inequalities grow here, but unless it offers an alternative, it will do so at its peril.
Sarah DeVries is a writer and translator based in Xalapa, Veracruz. She can be contacted through her website, sdevrieswritingandtranslating.com and her Patreon page.
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