News Summaries in September 2024
“Did Mexico’s President Achieve His Revolution?” Washington Post, Sept. 24, 2024 As his six years in office come to an end, Andrés Manuel López Obrador is enjoying some of the highest presidential approval ratings in the world. “More than five million people have escaped poverty on his watch,” write Post reporters Mary Beth Sheridan and David Agren. His protégé, Claudia Sheinbaum, will succeed him as president of Mexico on Oct. 1. But López Obrador has failed to change Mexico in many of the ways he promised, such as attacking corruption and impunity, ending the violence associated with the war on drugs, and reversing neoliberal policies that favored the wealthy. “Corruption and impunity remain rampant,” the reporters say. “Organized crime groups control wide swaths of the country’s territory. And while he vowed to overturn the neoliberal policies of his predecessors, he maintained Mexico’s free-market system and shrank the bureaucracy.” Among the remarkable aspects of his ten...