(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Mexico City is preparing for potentially its largest protest in years, with hundreds of thousands of women expected to fill the streets on Sunday, March 8, and then stay home from work, school and public life on Monday. Mayors, priests, school principals, business owners, celebrities and even the first lady (at least initially) voiced support. One person not on board? President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Lopez Obrador swept to power on a promise of change. Millions of Mexicans voted for him in the hopes that he would reduce crime, take on corruption and make life better for the average Mexican. But, as his response to the women’s movement shows, he is stuck in the past, held back by old attitudes and their accompanying outdated prescriptions. Unless his mindset changes, he won’t bring the change that Mexicans really want and fix the huge problems their country faces.
Every day, 10 Mexican women are murdered. Thousands more are beaten, assaulted, harassed and threatened. And in almost every instance nothing is done. Sparked by the gruesome murders of a 25-year-old woman and 7-year-old girl, Sunday’s marchers are demanding the government do something to take on this widespread violence and discrimination.
Lopez Obrador’s first reaction was to ignore them. “Look, I don’t want to talk anymore about femicide...because this issue has been very much manipulated by the media,” he said, turning the conversation to raffling off the presidential plane. Later he blamed “conservative forces” and neoliberals for the movement’s continued steam.
He has long resisted grassroots campaigns, however progressive the cause. In 2004, when he was mayor of Mexico City, half a million Mexicans dressed in white to walk the length of Reforma Avenue (and fill the main boulevards of cities throughout the nation), demanding justice and an end to violence. Rather than join in, he dismissed the marchers again as “rightists” and refused to meet with the organizers.
This inflexibility permeates his approach to civil society. He has ended public funding for nongovernmental organizations running daycares, women’s shelters and medical clinics, and made it harder for private contributions to nonprofits to receive a tax deduction. To him, civil society is just “a pretext for conservatism,” not a source of innovative solutions and ballast for democracy.
Lopez Obrador’s antiquated approach and rigidity hamper his government’s policies more broadly. His 1970’s views on energy clash with the sector’s global transformation. He is doubling down on fossil fuels as the world moves to renewables. He is spending big on expensive refineries as Mexico faces a glut in capacity. And he is limiting the ability of the private sector to bring in the money and know-how needed to help Mexico’s energy sector catch up with the world, even as the state-owned Pemex, which provides the government with one fifth of its revenue, loses money and sinks deeper into debt.
His economic policies, too, are geared toward a Mexican economy of the distant past. The cancellation of a world-class airport (as important to move products as passengers), the end of Mexico’s export promotion agency to entice international factories to set up shop, and the decline in public investment in logistical infrastructure combined with the reintroduction of price floors for agricultural products and other subsidies for subsistence farming all reflect an economic model divorced from Mexico’s role today as a global manufacturing hub. His inability to adjust to 21st century economic realities pulls down investment and economic growth.
On security, his attachment to centralized models ignores best practices from abroad and successful pilot programs at home that have lowered levels of violence and crime. And his push to create an ill-conceived National Guard has left promising community policing programs in cities such as Morelia, and local police forces more generally, adrift. Add in the diversion of these new national forces to Mexico’s southern border to stop Central American migrants, and Mexico has become less safe. Last year, homicides topped 35,000.
Lopez Obrador’s intransigence is starting to cost him. Last summer he lost his Finance Minister in a huff, his resignation letter complaining that many underlings imposed on him “don’t know anything about public finance,” and were more focused on ideology than sound economics. Recently, the minister in charge of his administration’s signature forestation project to revitalize the south of Mexico submitted his resignation over internal differences. A recent Reforma poll shows that in his stronghold of Mexico City, Lopez Obrador’s negatives now outweigh his positives. Other surveys with national reach reflect declines as well.
The energy behind the women’s march illuminates how Mexicans, from many walks of life, want to change their country for the better. To do that, they need a president who can adapt, adjust, and address today’s challenges. Lopez Obrador has yet to show he can be that leader.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Gibney at jgibney5@bloomberg.net
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Shannon O'Neil is a senior fellow for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
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