Will Mexico's left back Obrador's radical tactics?

The Party of the Democratic Revolution vote Sunday could affirm his aggressive tactics or choose a new leader.

from the March 14, 2008 edition

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Reporter Sara Miller Llana talks with supporters and campaign volunteers of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Still, López Obrador remains the de facto leader of the left in Mexico. The only reason that support for the PRD has fallen so precipitously is that it reached such highs on the coattails of López Obrador's popularity, says Federico Estevez, a political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico.

And like the flurry of new representatives in Ecapetec, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans are willing to support López Obrador's every effort. Alma Navarrete, who logs people's names and addresses before they become card-carrying members of his "legitimate government," says that 20,000 people in this municipality have become members of his government since she began volunteering more than a year ago.

Enthusiasm has surged now that López Obrador, who tours municipalities across the country regularly, has taken on a new cause: energy reform. As the government debates ways to increase oil production, the PRD has made itself the main obstacle to talk of any foreign investment. This resonates with voters.

"To privatize [Pemex, the state oil company], I don't think it's anything more than to enrich the wealthy and wealthy communities, while the poor become poorer," says Marta Elena Cabrera, who says she signed up as part of his government precisely to protect Pemex against private forces.

"For 25 to 35 percent of the country, López Obrador is the savior," says George Grayson, an expert on Mexican politics at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. "He is the one who stood up for them. He is the one who is voicing their concerns."

"The legitimate president of Mexico supports the poor," says Ana Bertha Santiago Castillo, who has signed up as one of López Obrador's "representatives."

That popular appeal is not to be underestimated, says Mr. Estevez, despite the elections this Sunday. Some analysts speculate that, if Encinas does not win the election, López Obrador – boosted by the sheer numbers of those who support his "legitimate government" – will form his own political party, says Alberto Aziz Nassif, a researcher at the Center for Research and Higher Education in Social Anthropology in Mexico City. López Obrador is also widely expected to rerun for president in 2012.

Estevez says that if moderates take PRD leadership, they will do their best to allow a significant role for the man who has grown Mexico's left to proportions it had not known.

They need him, he says. "Should the moderates win and somehow drive or counter López Obrador to the edge, then they lose."

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