A triumph that sought a pillaged left in the region

Andres Manuel Lpez Obrador's victory in Mexico's presidential elections was celebrated as a victory for the Latin American left that is the result of a series of defeats that mark a sustained turning point in the region towards the center-right, and as noted by Presidents Evo Morales (Bolivia) and Nicols Maduro (Venezuela), as well as former Heads of State Rafael Correa (Ecuador), Cristina Fernndez (Argentina) and Dilma Rousseff (Brazil) ).

"Blow hard for conservative restoration", Correa summarized in Twitter

The panorama began to change in Argentina in 2015 with the triumph of Mauricio Macri, who ended 12 years of Kirchnerism; Then, the former banker Pedro Pablo Kuczynski won the presidential elections in Peru in 2016. In March, he resigned amidst corruption scandals and ceded power to his vice president, Martn Vizcarra; the same year, Dilma Rousseff was revoked by a political judgment and replaced by the centrist Michel Temer; in 2017, Sebastin Piera won the elections in Chile. And last June, Uribist Ivn Duque triumphed in Colombia

Further distances, distances less, all governments congratulated the candidate of the National Regeneration Movement.

However, the triumph of AMLO, against the grain of the regional tour, He has his explanation. Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dilogo think tank, recalls that in 2000, Mexico elected its first non-PRI president in 70 years, Vicente Fox (PAN, center-right) and his successor, Felipe Caldern, in 2006, from the same party. "It was at the moment when (Hugo) Chvez took power in Venezuela, Lula in Brazil, the Kirchner in Argentina, the Broad Front in Uruguay, and Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet in Chile, Mexico. has not been synchronized for some time. "Hakim

So close, so far

In the past, the Latin American context itself influenced López Obrador's earlier failures to come to power in 2006 and 2012 his opponents used the Venezuelan letter and accused the candidate of wanting to impose a model such as the one implemented by Chvez in Venezuela since 1999. A strategy that did not work this time, since the same AMLO does not have the same effect. ignored the government of Nicols Maduro – the same as Gustavo Petro during the recent elections in Colombia – and the sheer weight of Chavismo's loss of prestige facing the economic, security and immigration crisis in which country is located.

This week in Letras Libres magazine, Cuban historian Rafael Rojas pointed out that López Obrador's proposal to recover agricultural productivity and expand the domestic market "is similar to the agrarian reform formulated by Petro". The two leaders "will take both distance from the privatization and agro-export strategies on the ground, typical of the neoliberalism of the 90s, and the extractive offensive of the Bolivarian regimes in the 2000s ". Rojas points out that López Obrador and Petro are detached from Chvez's legacy and so-called socialism of the 21st century. "

Although in his government program, López Obrador does not detail his foreign policy for Latin America – The elected president must decide whether to follow certain guidelines adopted by Enrique Pea Nieto Perhaps the main is the position before the Venezuelan crisis.

Pea Nieto and Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray are the most active leaders in the Lima group, 14 countries – including Chile – which led regional pressure on Maduro, Mexico and Chile were the guarantors of the opposition dialogue in the Dominican Republic.

The low interest of AMLO for the region. "I think the impact will be small for two reasons: the departure from Mexico to Latin America since 2000 and the little personal interest and ignorance that López Obrador has in (from) the region. "says Manuel Alcntara, director of the Latin Lites Project of the University of Salamanca.