López Obrador no longer surprises in Europe

Europe has been dealing with the worst of populism in Latin America for several decades now: the presence of the dictator Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, who before his death left a 'political heir' in Nicolás Maduro, was just the beginning.

Nor is it surprising how the political kaleidoscope in the region is practically overshadowed by the worst chauvinism in living memory, because this is more like 1960 or 1970.

I know it is 2022 and perhaps that is why it should be more worrying because we know all too well this story that is repeated like a mantra (or like a dialectical curse). It's all demagogy and no progress for the middle class, much less for the poorer classes, who only stretch their arms to receive a subsidy but not a real option to improve their quality of life and break the atavisms.

Because that is what progress is all about when you govern to create real opportunities to create more inclusive and equitable societies. Allowing atavism to be broken and not perpetuating it.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador is not contributing, with his way of governing, to create better mechanisms of access to well-being and a better future for the traditionally most marginalised classes. He is just using them.

His government is also building a climate of citizen polarisation - as has happened in Venezuela - and on top of that he stigmatises the media and journalists.

This daily exercise, every day from the highest echelons of power, namely the Presidency of the Republic through Las Mañaneras, is stigmatising the work of the media and journalists, turning them into public enemies number one at a very delicate moment, because Mexico is currently the most dangerous country in the world to work as a journalist.

So far this year, seven reporters have been murdered and more will be added in the coming months. The call for attention in the European Parliament a few days ago regarding the role of Mexican President López Obrador in stigmatising journalists and their profession should not remain a dead letter.

The letter of response drafted by López Obrador also comes as no surprise. In Europe it is known that the politician from Tabasco is of average intelligence, not given to going abroad, and shies away from international events because he does not speak English. Uneducated people generally do not have much to discuss or to contribute and prefer to shut themselves away in their own fiefdom. López Obrador does this.

There are only three years to go. No one is immortal; everyone's time has come. Mexico will continue to stand and Europe will continue to do so. What is unheard of for the MEPs who voted in favour of this text, which calls on the Mexican government to investigate and punish crimes against journalists and activists, is that this time it is the president himself who is publicly condemning them.

Hermann Tertsch, a Spanish MEP, said in the gallery that cases like López Obrador's had not occurred in any other country because he had openly set himself up as a persecutor of the press against them and, moreover, showed himself capable of ordering tax investigations.

This is unprecedented. Instead of providing a framework of institutional respect and zero impunity, the president is doing the exact opposite: he is promoting hatred and encouraging the tearing down of journalists.

It is not just one particular case, but several. Anyone who does not agree with the way he thinks is pushed aside, pushed to one side, denoting a profound obsession but also an inability to accept that there are other, different opinions.

There are three years to go (there are already those who doubt that he wants to leave) and it seems that the hardest years will come because power is waning, because now the focus is on political successors and elections. And that is something that López Obrador dislikes. Europe is no longer surprised by anything.