What is the legacy of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador?

As Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador nears the final hours of his presidency, a debate is already raging over the legacy that the Mexican leader, widely known as AMLO, is leaving behind.

Limited to a single six-year term by Mexico’s Constitution, AMLO will leave office on Monday with an approval rating that never dropped below 60 percent.

Political parties that once dominated Mexico have been swept aside by the rise of his Morena Party, and his successor, President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, won a landslide victory in the country’s June elections.

“Lopez Obrador is leaving power with a very high level of popularity, which is very different from what happened in previous governments,” Pablo Piccato, a professor of Mexican history at Columbia University in the United States, told Al Jazeera.

But Lopez Obrador’s time in office has been more controversial than his widespread popularity implies, and his final weeks in power have seen protests against a number of reforms that his government has pushed forward.

While supporters credit AMLO with dramatic reductions in poverty through policies such as increasing the minimum wage, labour reforms, and welfare payments, critics accuse him of eroding democratic oversight and failing to address rights abuses and insecurity.

“AMLO has been saying all along that his government represents a break with the past, that it’s a new regime,” said Piccato, noting that Lopez Obrador also saw his administration as a break with the pro-market political philosophy of neoliberalism.

“But of course, things are not so simple.”

Reductions in poverty

Lopez Obrador often says that his government has ushered in a “fourth transformation”.

That effectively compares his tenure as president to previous periods in the country’s history – independence from Spain, an era of liberal reform, and the Mexican Revolution – that fundamentally transformed Mexico.

Supporters point to economic changes that have taken place during AMLO’s term as evidence that his administration ushered in another historic break with the past.

“The most positive area of AMLO’s administration has been labour reforms and poverty and inequality reduction,” Viri Rios, a Mexican academic and analyst, told Al Jazeera. “About 5.1 million people left poverty behind between 2018 and 2022, the most important reduction in poverty in more than 20 years.”

She also noted that the president ushered in a series of economic policies, such as doubling the country’s minimum wage and tripling it in areas near the border with the US where many companies set up manufacturing facilities. His government also instituted labour reforms that facilitated unionisation efforts.

But while AMLO has positioned himself as a champion of the poor who has challenged the country’s establishment and business interests, others in Mexico debate just how transformative his changes have been.

While Lopez Obrador has expanded programmes such as pension payments and cash transfers, Mexico’s social spending remains the lowest of all OECD countries. Fiscal policy in the country also remains relatively restrained.

“If you look at the amount of taxes Mexico collects as points of GDP, it’s about 16 percent. That’s a lower rate than the Bahamas,” said Rios. “There is not enough tax collection, and AMLO did not address that.”

People gather to listen to Lopez Obrador deliver his last State of the Union at the Zocalo, Mexico City’s main square, on September 1 [Eduardo Verdugo/AP Photo]

Ongoing security issues

On issues of crime and security, Lopez Obrador has defined his success in terms of continuity rather than change. While loved ones of the country’s disappeared continue to search for justice and Mexicans suffer from stunning rates of violence, AMLO argues that trends have remained mostly stable under his watch.

Data from the World Bank shows that the country’s murder rate fell from 30 per 100,000 people in 2018 when AMLO entered office, to 28 per 100,000 people in 2021. In 2022, Mexico recorded 32,223 murders, a nearly 10 percent drop from the previous year.

Those figures, however, still underscore an oppressive reality faced by many Mexicans.

A 2024 poll by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography found that more than 73 percent of people reported feeling insecure, with nearly 22 percent saying there were homicides in the area where they lived.

Accountability for the perpetrators of violence – by criminal groups and the state itself – is also rare, with nearly 95 percent of homicides going unsolved.

Students paint the words ‘AMLO you could not’ during a protest before the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of 43 teaching college students, in Mexico City on September 23 [Felix Marquez/AP Photo]

AMLO had initially campaigned on a promise to move away from the militarised approach to fighting crime that caused violence to skyrocket under previous governments.

But far from rolling back militarisation, Lopez Obrador has expanded the military’s power over public security and recruited the army to help with infrastructure projects and administrative tasks, even granting it control over ports and airlines.

Last Wednesday, Mexico’s Senate passed a controversial bill placing the National Guard, previously under nominal civilian control, in the hands of the military.

“Anyone in the National Guard will be subject only to military justice, with their own tribunals, the military justice system’s prosecutors, and decisions and sentences that will not be made public,” Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a US-based think-tank, told Al Jazeera.

“The military, through its operational control of the National Guard, will likely have a certain degree of veto power over security decisions by civilian leaders,” he added.

A divisive style

The president’s growing ties with the military have also put him at odds with advocates for the country’s disappeared.

By the government’s conservative estimate, 113,000 people remain missing in Mexico, many of them victims of criminal groups, state security forces, or both.

As a candidate, Lopez Obrador had promised accountability for abuses, such as the disappearance of 43 students from a teacher’s college in Ayotzinapa in 2014. International investigators accused the military of obstructing investigations and playing a possible role in what happened.

But once in office, AMLO has disappointed activists and relatives of the missing by backing the military’s version of events – a position that has sparked widespread anger and protests.

He also announced that his government would reassess the official number of missing people in Mexico, calling the current figures implausibly high. Human rights groups and advocates say they are a likely undercount.

“The dispute over Ayotzinapa broke relationships between victims and the president. That was when this possible alliance was broken,” Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a professor of policy and government at George Mason University, told Al Jazeera.

Volunteers who organise efforts to search for the bodies of missing loved ones even came under attack by AMLO, who accused the searchers of being motivated by “a delirium of necrophilia”.

That remark is typical of Lopez Obrador’s combative style of speech, which critics say has contributed to a growing sense of polarisation in Mexican politics.

“AMLO constantly talks negatively about his opposition, the press, civil society, even human rights institutions,” said Rios, the academic. “He has a very vocal way of confronting whoever opposes his agenda.”

Contentious reforms

That polarisation has been on display during Lopez Obrador’s final weeks in office, as the legislature pushed through a series of reforms long sought by the president.

The most contentious by far was a constitutional change that will make judges stand for election.

Critics said the move will politicise the judiciary and erode democratic checks and balances, while supporters argued it will make judges more accountable to the people.

The final vote took place earlier this month after protesters broke into the Senate chamber, disrupting proceedings and chanting “the judiciary isn’t going to fall!”

The bill passed in the Senate on September 11 by a margin of 86 to 41, clearing what was seen as the reform’s most significant hurdle.

That was not the first time AMLO’s critics have accused him of consolidating control over independent institutions. Last year, protesters also took to the streets in opposition to changes to the National Electoral Institute (INE), which oversees Mexican elections.

But while critics see a trend of democratic backsliding and the destruction of institutional independence, AMLO and his supporters have pitched the reforms as part of a struggle against entrenched, powerful interests.

“The regime of corruption and privileges each day is being left farther in the past and a true democracy and true rule of law are being built,” Sheinbaum, Lopez Obrador’s successor, said in a social media post celebrating the passage of the judicial reforms.

Now, as AMLO prepares to leave office, both his fans and detractors believe Lopez Obrador’s vision of politics will continue to shape the direction of the country.

With his Morena Party securing supermajorities in Congress and Sheinbaum preparing to take his place, the outgoing president’s most enduring legacy could be the realignment of Mexican politics that has taken place under his watch.

“Previously, several parties were in power and no party had complete control of Congress. Now Lopez Obrador’s party has been able to establish a supermajority, ” said Piccato. “That’s something new, and a lot of people are very concerned about that.”