Mexico’s populist president held court every morning for six years. He is now withdrawing from public life

Associated press

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Every day at 7 a.m., President Andrés Manuel López Obrador strolls onto a stage at Mexico’s National Palace, dressed in a sharp suit and tie, and peers into a room full of reporters and social media personalities with blurred eyes. “Buenos días, look alive!” the seventy-year-old leader shouts in a hoarse voice.

And the show begins.

Throughout his nearly six-year term in office, López Obrador’s morning media briefings, known as “las mañaneras,” have given him a powerful tool: a direct line to his political base, broadcast live on government and local news channels, and streaming online. Without pausing to go to the bathroom or even take a sip of water, the president sometimes stands on stage for more than three hours talking, often in long, rambling musings or extended rants, all in simple language that everyone who is on it tune in, can understand.

Before he leaves office on Monday, the daily briefings, loved by many supporters and criticized by opponents for being full of falsehoods and personal attacks, are emblematic of the particular brand of popular populism that López Obrador wielded to become one of the most powerful political forces that Mexico ever had. seen for decades. It is a model that his successor and protégé, newly elected President Claudia Sheinbaum, will find difficult to emulate.

“The national conversation is centered around him,” said Daniela Lemus, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico who researches political communication and has written about the briefings. “He is the main character of the mañaneras… and what he says becomes the main talking point of the media day and night.”

When López Obrador won the presidency in a landslide in 2018, he cast himself as a fighter for poor, working-class and rural Mexicans long neglected by the political elite. He started holding the briefings immediately after taking office in December and has continued to do so every working day almost without exception during his term of office.

They are popular with his supporters: For example, an elderly couple in Mexico City listens religiously to a small TV wedged between bags of seeds and nuts in their stall at a food market. Elsewhere, a magazine salesman records the broadcast to watch in the evening after work. Yet another fan of AMLO, as the president is popularly known, is streaming it on social media while looking for work.

“The mañaneras have opened our eyes. They show us all what Mr. López Obrador has achieved,” said Jesús Hernández Alarcón, a 79-year-old roasted corn seller. “We have understood a lot because the media is full of lies, many have fooled us. Now that we have the mañaneras, everything has changed for me.”

López Obrador often uses the space to provide updates on key projects and answer questions from a group of journalists and pro-government social media influencers, some of whom have been given a platform through their participation in the briefings – such as Carlos Pozos Soto, an eccentric , bow-tied, exuberantly pro-AMLO figure better known as Lord Molecule.

As time has gone by, the briefings have morphed into something akin to a morning show, with López Obrador inviting mariachi bands to serenade viewers on Mother’s Day, lecturing at length on Mexican history and hosting recurring segments such as “Who’s Who in the Lies of the week,” in which government officials attack critical media.

“This is a way to educate, to raise awareness, so that (traditional news organizations) cannot manipulate information,” López Obrador said one morning in August. “People are better informed and that brings many benefits. … There is no subject that is off limits, there is no censorship.”

López Obrador’s willingness to publicly battle journalists has been all the more impactful because his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto, almost never answered a question during his own six-year term.

But while the president calls the briefings a bastion of transparency in a country long plagued by corruption, critics say he has used them to malign opponents and journalists, spread false information and keep a tight rein on the political narrative .

Instead of answering a question directly, he often uses it as a launching pad to talk about one of his favorite topics. For example, he consistently dodges questions about the ongoing cartel violence in Mexico, or rails against his predecessors for starting the drug war.

López Obrador has attacked judges, criticized opponents during election campaigns and regularly targeted both domestic and foreign journalists.

In February, after a New York Times reporter requested comment for an article examining ties between his administration and drug cartels, the president revealed her cell phone number during a morning briefing.

And when an independent Mexican journalist said last month that she had been harassed by a gang of his supporters and forced to flee an event she was covering, López Obrador responded with a mix of contempt and disinterest.

“This puts me in danger, now anyone can attack me on the street,” Reyna Ramírez told the president. “You have polarized society. Don’t you have anything to say about that?”

“Did you last long enough?” the president said.

Press freedom advocates have raised concerns about his hostility toward critical media in a place that is more dangerous for journalists than any country not currently at war. At least 138 journalists have been murdered in Mexico over the past two decades, and many more have gone missing or been threatened, attacked, tortured or forced to flee their homes, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The president’s discourse created “a narrative of us versus them, of journalists who are the enemies of this political project, the opponents of the people … which reduces the urgency of protecting press freedom,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, the president’s president. CPJ representative in Mexico.

Meanwhile, a 2021 report from the political consultancy SPIN found that López Obrador made more than 56,000 false or misleading statements in his mañaneras over a 2.5-year period. One of these is his claim that cartels “respect citizens” and only fight among themselves.

“Just because the president walks on a stage and talks about something doesn’t mean he’s open,” Hootsen said. “If he lies all the time, and there are no consequences, then we are not talking about transparency.”

In the age of social media, videos and soundbites from the mañaneras often go viral online, further expanding the president’s audience.

“It’s not about what happens during the morning press conference itself, but about what happens afterwards,” said Kevin Zapata, a professor of social and public policy at the University of Nottingham who has studied the briefings. “A 30-second clip can be more powerful than the two hours on TV.”

For people who may not have much time to investigate López Obrador’s claims and deeply distrust the Mexican media, it is often the government’s narrative that ultimately dominates.

When asked about false information and attacks on journalists, his supporters often repeat the president’s lines of attack, saying, for example, that such criticism comes from a corrupt opposition and that the president is defending Mexican sovereignty.

López Obrador’s popularity helped his Morena party make major electoral gains in June’s elections. Morena will have an even larger majority in Congress if Sheinbaum assumes the presidency, and lawmakers recently passed a constitutional amendment that observers and critics say will likely lead to courts being packed with judges friendly to the party.

Sheinbaum has said she will continue the morning broadcasts. But most Mexicans agree she lacks the natural charisma that has allowed López Obrador to wield the mañaneras so effectively.

“It’s something that worked for AMLO because he’s a very unique figure and very charismatic. … But now democracy is becoming a popularity show in Mexico,” Zapata said. “A lot of people will try to emulate it, that’s for sure. But not everyone will be able to do that.”

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