AMLO’s first year: Mexico’s political, economic, and security trends
Past Event
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) assumed office in December 2018, promising to bring a fourth revolution to Mexico and to reduce Mexico’s inequality, corruption, and violent crime. Yet a year into his administration, homicides and violent criminality in Mexico have not diminished. While the new government has undertaken new security initiatives and adopted new anti-crime priorities, the brazenness of organized crime has increased. Despite anti-corruption efforts, the country’s economy has stagnated. Various anti-corruption and redistribution measures of the new administration have proven controversial. The AMLO administration has worked hard to secure approval of the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), but much of the U.S.-Mexican agenda ended up consumed by migration issues. Nonetheless, AMLO managed to avert a set of crises with the Trump administration and has collaborated with the anti-immigration objectives of the Trump administration. And despite the various challenges, AMLO’s domestic popularity and that of his party MORENA remains high.
To discuss the accomplishments and challenges of the first year of the AMLO administration, Mexico’s political, security, economic, and energy trends, and U.S.-Mexican relations, the Brookings Institution hosted a panel conversation with Amb. Roberta Jacobson (Ret), former U.S. ambassador to Mexico and senior advisor to Albright Stonebridge Group; Amb. Earl Anthony Wayne (Ret), former U.S. ambassador to Mexico and public policy fellow and advisory board co-chair at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute; Brookings Fellow Samantha Gross, and Brookings Senior Fellow Vanda Felbab-Brown. Brooking Nonresident Senior Fellow Charles T. Call moderated the discussion. After the introductory comments, panelists answered questions from the audience.
Agenda
Vanda Felbab-Brown
Director - Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors
Co-Director - Africa Security Initiative
Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology
Samantha Gross
Director - Energy Security and Climate Initiative
Fellow - Foreign Policy, Energy Security and Climate Initiative
Roberta S. Jacobson
Senior Advisor - Albright Stonebridge Group
Former Ambassador of the United States to Mexico
Earl Anthony “Tony” Wayne
Public Policy Fellow and Advisory Board Co-Chair - Mexico Institute, Woodrow Wilson Center
Former Ambassador of the United States to Mexico
Charles T. Call
Nonresident Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology, Latin America Initiative
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President López Obrador's extension of the term of Supreme Court chief Arturo Zaldívar is part of his strong effort to recentralize power in the Mexican presidency and hollow out the independence and power of other Mexican institutions. His other moves to bend the justice system to his will include a reform that lowered the salary of judges but did not improve the quality of prosecutors and his unwillingness to allow an independent selection of the attorney general, with López Obrador himself retaining the power of appointment. His latest move with the two-year extension of Zaldívar’s term is especially worrisome. Zaldívar is also the president of the powerful Federal Judiciary Council. The council appoints and dismisses judges, sets career advancement rules and disciplines judges. Zaldívar will be setting the council’s and, thus, the whole judiciary’s, agenda and priorities for two years. This allows López Obrador to influence how courts will rule in cases regarding the executive branch, what cases they take up and the legality of new policies. These moves are taking place when the effectiveness of the judiciary in Mexico remains limited and deeply concerning. The attorney general’s office has proven weak, unwilling to take up key cases such as against the suspects in the brazen attack on Mexico City’s security minister, Omar García Harfuch—an event that symbolized the impunity with which Mexican criminal groups operate. Mexico’s justice system showed itself equally meek and disappointing in inadequately investigating the alleged complicity of former Mexican Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos and dismissing the case, potentially the most significant case of corruption and criminal collusion charges against a high-ranking Mexican official in two decades. A decade and a half after Mexico initiated its justice system reforms, 95 percent of federal cases still go unpunished. President López Obrador has scored some points, but the already precariously weak rule of law in Mexico, and thus the Mexican people, will suffer.
