September 17, 2018

In July 2018, Andrés Manuel López Obrador—popularly known by his initials, AMLO—earned a landslide win in Mexico’s presidential election. López Obrador is the founder and former leader of the liberal Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (National Regeneration Movement) party, known as MORENA. He will replace Enrique Peña Nieto as president on December 1, 2018.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador will take office as the president of Mexico on Dec. 1, 2018. Credit: Micaela Ayala V, ANDES (licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

López Obrador was born on Nov. 13, 1953, into a middle-class family in Tepetitán, a village in the southern state of Tabasco. He studied political science and public administration at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM, or National Autonomous University of Mexico) in Mexico City. He took a break from his studies to work for the Tabasco state government and in the administration of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI, or Institutional Revolutionary Party), Mexico’s dominant political party for many decades. López Obrador eventually completed his degree in political and social sciences in 1987.

In 1988, López Obrador joined a new center-left rival party to the PRI, a coalition that later became the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD, or Party of the Democratic Revolution). López Obrador led the PRD from 1996 until 1999. During that time, he gained notoriety for championing environmental protection and the rights of Mexico’s lower classes. From 2000 to 2005, he served as head of government for the Federal District of Mexico City, a position similar to mayor.

López Obrador was the PRD presidential candidate in 2006. Official results of the election indicated that Felipe Calderón of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN, or National Action Party) defeated López Obrador by less than 1 percent. López Obrador ran for president again in 2012 but lost by less than 7 percentage points to Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI.

López Obrador left the PRD and founded MORENA in 2012. MORENA gained official status as a political party in 2014. He led MORENA until December 2017, when he registered as a candidate for the 2018 presidential election. During the campaign, López Obrador pledged to deal with crumbling infrastructure, drug gang violence, economic disparity, and government corruption.