In 2018, Andrés Manuel López Obrador­­ — known by his initials, AMLO — won election to the Mexican presidency in a sweeping landslide. A leftist populist, AMLO has cast himself as a champion of the poor, denounced Mexico’s “monstrous inequality,” and pledged to redistribute wealth and eliminate political corruption. His triumph was heralded as a “political earthquake” that delivered a “sweeping mandate” to “the most left-wing government in [Mexico’s] history.” In his inaugural address, AMLO vowed to overhaul the Mexican polity and articulated the orienting principle for his ascendant administration: “por el bien de todos, primero los pobres” (“for the good of all, the poor first”).

After the bloody Mexican Revolution in 1910 transformed the country’s feudal economic order into a nascent capitalist system, Mexico was ruled for decades by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or the PRI, an authoritarian and endemically corrupt political organization controlled by plutocrats. Devastating neoliberal reform descended on the Mexican political economy in the early 1980s — political leaders deregulated the market, privatized state-owned industries, dismantled social services, and entered trade agreements that exposed farmers and workers to vicious exploitation.

Three decades of market fanaticism destabilized what was already an economically repressed society — today, Mexico is one of the most unequal countries in the world. One percent of Mexicans own more than 40 percent of the nation’s wealth, while nearly half of the population is poor and millions  subsist on less than $2 a day. Mexico’s working class endures the longest hours and ekes out the lowest wages among any OECD country. Organized crime syndicates control large swaths of the nation and sprawling political corruption scandals have become routine.

AMLO emerged into this political landscape as a fierce opponent of the neoliberal regime and the inequality it spawned, to which he attributed much of Mexico’s social disintegration. “The neoliberal economic policy has been a disaster,” he declared in blistering campaign speeches. “Because of the tremendous concentration of income in a few hands, the majority of the population has become impoverished.” Disenchanted and depleted after decades of rising poverty, violence, and instability, Mexican voters — particularly the young and the marginalized — surged to the polls in unprecedented numbers to repudiate the ideology that had orchestrated the dismemberment of their society and embrace AMLO’s populist message. This wave of popular disaffection and progressive enthusiasm swept AMLO into Los Pinos — the Mexican executive mansion — while his newly formed political party, Morena, secured majorities in both congressional chambers.

AMLO’s zealous crusade against inequality and corruption, along with his autocratic impulses, has long rendered him one of Mexico’s most polarizing public figures. His administration’s record after two years reflects these dueling tendencies.

AMLO’s administration has implemented ambitious policies aimed at dismantling the country’s staggering wealth disparities, and his approval rating remains among the highest of any global leader. Among other things, his government has significantly hiked the federal minimum wage, raising it by 16 percent in his first month and an additional 20 percent last year (and doubling it for workers on the border). The administration has revealed it intends to raise the minimum wage by another 15 percent in 2021. In addition, AMLO’s government has restructured the national budget and introduced a slate of redistributive social programs. His reforms boosted Mexican workers’ incomes nearly 10 percent in his first year — more than double the increase for the entire term of his predecessor. Incomes for the poorest Mexicans spiked even more sharply, nearly 25 percent.

Yet despite the early success of his redistributive program, the charismatic and bombastic leader has managed to attract considerable criticism from voices on the left — much of it far from meritless. His administration has declined to increase taxes on the rich and imposed a series of austerity measures. He has allied himself with Donald Trump and, at the disgraced former president’s behest, deployed the military to stamp out illegal immigration. He has largely disregarded the misery flowing from the pandemic, refusing to institute lockdowns or even wear a mask in public. And he has embraced the updated version of NAFTA, a hallmark of the neoliberal regime that ravaged Mexico’s working class.

While he remains divisive, critics and supporters alike largely agree AMLO has done one thing that could reshape Mexico’s political economy: engineer a sweeping labor law overhaul.

Before the reform, Mexico was one of few countries that failed to guarantee basic organizing rights. In the wake of the Revolution, PRI leaders were determined to subjugate Mexico’s restive labor movement, which in their view threatened to subvert the newly established capitalist order. They established a sprawling regime-aligned federation to control the labor movement, and appointed loyal lieutenants to lead company-dominated unions — derisively dubbed “charros.” These company unions colluded with management to negotiate bogus “protection contracts,” intended to preclude independent organizing and suppress wages. Many U.S. firms eagerly exploited the arrangement, securing ghost contracts to cover plants they were constructing before even hiring employees. Strikingly, estimates suggest as many as 85 percent of Mexican labor contracts have never been approved by covered workers — many have no idea a union “represents” them and are unable to obtain a copy of the agreement governing their workplace. Labor activists challenging this system have been threatened, arrested, and murdered.

AMLO vowed to upend this repressive regime, pledging to “restore democracy to the trade unions and achieve true collective bargaining.” On May 1, 2019, he signed legislation aiming to dismantle company unions, root out protection contracts, and democratize Mexico’s labor movement. Among other things, the new law guarantees Mexican workers the right to freely organize and establishes a system of secret ballot elections. It creates independent bodies to administer union elections and adjudicate labor disputes and mandates that members ratify all collective bargaining agreements and elect union officials. Mexican labor leaders embraced the changes, describing them as “a huge opportunity to bring democracy to the union movement in Mexico.”  While company unions have filed dozens of legal challenges contesting the constitutionality of the reforms, the courts have so far uniformly upheld the new provisions.

Implementing these protections — and remaking the Mexican labor movement — will not be easy. One of the first high profile efforts to invoke the new system and uproot a company union underscores the challenges. In June 2019, at a Bridgestone factory outside Monterrey, a large industrial city, thousands of workers cast ballots to choose between an independent union and the traditional one that had represented them for years. After supporters of the independent effort were harassed and threatened, labor board officials bungled the vote, and the company impermissibly granted an eleventh hour bonus, the challenging union was ultimately routed.

All told, in a report issued several months ago, the Independent Mexico Labor Expert Board, created under the USCMA, highlights that “substantial progress” had been made in implementing the reform legislation. Yet the report soberingly concludes that “[m]ost unionized workers are not still able to democratically elect their leaders or ratify their collective bargaining agreements,” and the protection contract regime “remains intact.”