Former president of Mexico, commonly known as AMLO. He founded the Morena party in 2011 and first won power in 2018. He is the political mentor of his successor, Claudia Sheinbaum. Party membership under his leadership was loose; Morena took in candidates indiscriminately in its early years because it "only cared about winning, not about legacy or groundwork", according to Javier Aparicio of CIDE, a university in Mexico City. Much of its success relied on Mr López Obrador's charisma.
He doubled the minimum wage in real terms during his six years in office. He abolished Seguro Popular, a government-run health-insurance scheme, in 2020, promising a universal, "Nordic" health-care system. His replacement was poorly run and underfunded; he soon scrapped it, leaving no public coverage in its place. He scrapped Prospera, a pioneering conditional cash-transfer programme, in 2019, replacing it with universal, largely unconditional programmes.
His security policy, known as "hugs not bullets", assumed poverty was the root cause of crime and violence. He avoided confronting criminal gangs. He created the National Guard to replace the federal police, but placed it under army control—a move critics say led to brutality and shoddier detective work.
In 2024 he pushed through a sweeping reform to replace Mexico's entire judiciary through popular elections, making Mexico the only country in the world to elect all of its judges.
If I have not seen so far it is because I stood in giant's footsteps.