A New Path in Mexico

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.

• July 2, 2018

The shadow of Andres Manuel Lopez was cast on a screen Sunday as he gave his first victory speech as president-elect at his campaign headquarters in Mexico City.CreditMarco Ugarte/Associated Press

One hopes that Mexico’s elimination by Brazil from the World Cup soccer tournament on the day after he was elected president will not prove to be a bad omen for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leftist who rode a wave of popular outrage over Mexico’s corruption and violence to a landslide victory. But the prospects of a populist who makes as many promises as AMLO, as the president-elect is commonly known, are even harder to predict than a tournament as filled with surprises as this World Cup.

Why he won is not the mystery. Killings are at record levels, corruption scandals are ceaseless and nearly half the population lives in poverty. Like populists elsewhere around the world (and also north of Mexico’s border), Mr. López Obrador promised a break with the past. So voters not only denied the presidency to the two mainstream parties that have dominated Mexican politics for two decades, they also gave Mr. López Obrador a likely majority in Parliament.

That means Mr. López Obrador, the 64-year-old former mayor of Mexico City, has considerable leverage from the outset. But to do what? Here is where things become more complicated. “Only I can fix corruption,” Mr. López Obrador declared in his campaign, but he offered few details. He promised a broad range of social programs, including a public-works program to employ 2.3 million young people and higher pensions for the old, but at the same time he has insisted he will not raise taxes, proposing to fund the programs with billions of pesos to be saved by cutting corruption and waste. Perhaps.

Equally unclear is how Mr. López Obrador intends to curb Mexico’s endemic violence. A decade ago, the government deployed the military against the powerful drug cartels, yet more homicides were reported in May than in any single month since the government began the current record-keeping system two decades ago, and 2017 was the deadliest year.