THE situation in Mexico is complex and very delicate. After the introduction of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, services and resources were disproportionately handed over to various multinationals. 

From the late ’80s under president Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-94) until the end of the presidency of Enrique Pena Nieto (2012-18), neoliberal policies imposed by the US and ultra-right domestic governments were a permanent fixture of the country.

A war orchestrated by Felipe Calderon Hinojosa on his accession to the presidency in 2006 caused an alarming increase in insecurity. Femicides rocketed to the highest levels in Latin America and the country had the highest homicide death toll with low-calibre weapons after Syria.

Mexico is now known as one of the most violent countries in the world. Coupled with a high rate of chronic crime, violence occurs more frequently than before and in sectors where it did not occur previously. 

Organised crime has become a daily constant in the life of Mexicans, who have found themselves hostages of insecurity. 

The horrors of war are seen daily in the streets almost anywhere in the country — everyone in Mexico is a potential victim of assaults, robberies, extortions, rapes, kidnappings and murders. 

The narco-war, the guerilla war and the US war to control the trafficking business and its borders have caused Mexico’s institutions to crumble. 

For 76 out of the last 89 years, Mexico has been governed by the same party and in the only intervals when the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) did not govern, the ultra-right PAN party governed for two six-year periods. 

The most effective way in which Mexicans have rebelled against established power throughout their history is through clandestine organisations — student groups, workers’ groups and trade unions. They have countered the order imposed by oligarchs or power groups that have imposed their will using the force of the state, military and police against the organised population, claiming to exercise the legitimate “rule of law.”

This argument has been used in recent years to legitimise violence against anyone who decided to rebel — sometimes shock groups and paramilitaries achieved their task within the corresponding legal framework. 

President Pena Nieto’s regime was dubbed “the perfect dictatorship” — a new form of class fascism. Pena Nieto’s unpopular rule was propped up by the the mass media who did their job by endorsing all his reforms in his six-year rule and portraying all dissident groups as delinquent. Violence was the object of fascism, but also the starting point of politics. 

So today Morena is a breath of fresh, clean air. It is the first time that an independent party with a socially aware leftist leader is the governing party of Mexico. 

A real deep change to the economic and political structures has long been needed in a country that has been governed using mafia practices and corruption at all levels. 

Along with Morena, what is known as the 4T (Fourth Transformation) has become a phenomenon. This was Amlo’s 2018 campaign promise to abolish the privileged abuses that have plagued Mexico in recent decades.

He has proposed a kind of socialism interwoven within the capitalist system and he has fought to protect the values that sustain Mexican society. 

That morality has encouraged the creation of new projects to build sustainability between communities and the economic benefit they can produce, making a dynamic between industry, commerce and society. 

Undoubtedly, the way in which Amlo will confront a system of corruption and encourage an economy subjugated by the previous powers is a titanic task. 

His action plan can be summarised in four points:

• Remove the privileges and waste of the political class. In this way the money saved is used to invest in social projects for the benefit of the community.

• Detect and halt the misuse of management in order to clean up the anomalies in financial statements. Amlo seeks to stop corruption and, of course, to punish those responsible.   

• The creation of new projects, such as the Mayan Train, an intercity railway that will traverse the Yucatan Peninsula.

• Develop international relationships in the UN, the creation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, and build continuous links of co-operation and mutual aid with Europe, Britain and the rest of the world. 

Thanks to this rapprochement with anti-establishment movements, peasants and communities, Amlo has won the structural bases for his proposals and gained the support he needed to fight the criminal elements that would evolve into a narco-government or narco-state.

Amlo has patiently managed to position himself against the right-wing groups as an intermediary leader of conflicts, one step ahead of the insurgent groups who live in the jungle and the mountains. 

In this way his image became one of a peaceful, non-violent but social leftist leader. However, the framework of war is an obligatory constant in his mandate against cartels, corruption and organised crime in all levels of goverment.