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Andrés Manuel López Obrador (b. 1953) has been the Head of Government ("Jefe de Gobierno", with a status somewhere between a city mayor and a state governor) of Mexico's Federal District (Mexico City) since the year 2000. López Obrador was previously the president of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in his home state of Tabasco and the president of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) at the state and national levels.

Born in the small town of Tepetitán, Macuspana municipality, in Tabasco state, López Obrador became interested in politics at an early age. He studied political science and public administration at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) before officially joining the PRI and collaborating actively in Carlos Pellicer's campaign for the governorship of Tabasco. He also decided to have an official anthem for the PRI although he didn't composed it himself.

In 1977 he was selected to head the Instituto Indigenista (Indian Institute) of his state, where he promoted the publication of Native American literature. In 1984 he relocated to Mexico City to work at the Instituto Nacional del Consumidor (National Institute for the Consumer), a government agency.

Although he worked for a time for Tabasco governor Enrique González Pedrero, Obrador resigned over political differences to join the new dissenting wing of the PRI led by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, which would later be transformed into an independent party, the PRD. He ran for office in Tabasco in 1988 under this new banner.

After losing that election, López Obrador served as PRD president in Tabasco until 1994, when, after losing a bid for the Tabasco state house (to the PRI, in a highly disputed election) he launched a run for the head office of his party. Obrador led the PRD from the 2 August 1996 until 10 April 1999. On 29 March 2000, he entered the Federal District's jefe de gobierno race, which he won later that summer with 38.3% of the popular vote, defeating Santiago Creel of the PAN (33.4%), Jesús Silva Herzog of the PRI (22.8%), and a couple of other minor-party candidates.

López Obrador has become one of the most recognizable and popular politicians in Mexico, although he has been criticized both for his populism and for his perceived inability to solve Mexico City's crime problems. His past as a distinguished member of the PRI for many years (where he condoned, justified or remained silent about government acts like the Tlatelolco massacre in 1968 and a similar event in 1971) and his more recent acts against the government after he joined the PRD (in Tabasco he led a civilian group which closed oil ducts belonging to Pemex, the governmental monopoly on oil, as a way of pressuring Pemex to indemnify some farmers claiming their land was contaminated) make him unpopular in many political circles branding him as an opportunist and not a law-abiding citizen. Despite this, he was voted the second-best mayor in the world by Mexicans at the ATA online poll in www.citymayors.com. Therefore, he is widely seen as the PRD's de facto candidate for the 2006 elections, although he has publicly denied having made up his mind as yet regarding a presidential bid. Should he run, he's considered one of the favourites, partly because both the two other main Mexican parties having had problems coming up with a viable and popular presidential candidate so far.

Some of López Obrador's supporters for the presidency consider him to be Mexico's equivalent to the other new left-populist presidents in Latin America, such as Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Brazil), and Néstor Kirchner (Argentina). However, his enemies call him a future Hugo Chávez (Venezuela).

In the media, López Obrador is frecuently referred to as AMLO and el Peje an abbreviation of pejelagarto, a species of fish from the Lepisosteidae family, found in Tabasco.

His confrontational style of politics has drawn criticism as well. Daily press conferences very early in the morning place him in the spotlight in a way simply impossible for a state governor. When asked if his conferences weren't a bit too early he answered only rich boys find it difficult to get up early (he usually despectively calls them "pirrurris", after a fictional character played by mexican comedian Luis de Alba).

He has showed a perhaps too acute class awareness: when in 2004 many non-governmental organization called for a march in the city against the too high crime levels in the country his first reaction was to brand the march as a political movement against him by a ultraconservative organization called "El Yunque" (The Anvil). Later, when the July march turned out successful beyond all expectations, attendance estimates ranging from 200,000 to one million, he still insisted in portraying the organizers as nothing more than political enemies and attendants as rich, nice and uncaring people with nothing better to do.

Lopez Obrador has resorted to the esporadic publication of comics as a way to communicate with the public (a bit like Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez) which are distributed by his goverment but the names of the writers aren't disclosed, the series called Tales of the City. In one of these comics, released some time after the march took place, one of the characters, a young upper-class girl, shows his grandfather photos of her and her friends taking part in the march as if they were attending a social event, posing and smiling before a sign. She ridiculizes their cook for not knowing what homicide means, and remarks she wasn't the only one who wore new clothes for the ocasion. In the same issue a young police officer says to a friend he's enraged, because he was assigned to provide security at the march and a stupid neighbor from the march calls me the good-for-nothing. Can you believe that? And I can't beat him because I'm a cop. This issue outraged the organizators of the march, and when López Obrador was forced to talk about this he simply said he approved the comic as published and thought it was okay. In the next issue, August 2004, a french journalist travelling the world making an story about mayors of capital cities arrives to Mexico City. His interviews with the characters provide the excuse to detail the many social programs of Lopez Obrador (like subsiding and direct payments to senior citizens). When Pierre, the journalist, questions one of the characters about the 2004 corruption scandal, he simply replies that nothing points to López Obrador being involved and that he should look at his acts of government instead. Pierre admires the construction of the second level of one of the city's highways (highly controversial) and wonders why on earth someone would want to destitute him (in reference to a political trial against him).

This issue (whose writer is anonymous as in all others) had an interesting passage: when Pierre is first introduced to the characters, one of them ask privately to his wife if Pierre's rich and thinks he should introduce him to his cousin, in the hopes she gets married to him and the family gets invited to Paris. It is interesting because this was printed by a nationalist left-wing government.

By 2004 and despite a corruption scandal involving many of his closest collaborators (but not López Obrador himself), he seemed the possible winner of the presidential elections of 2006. However, a judge accused him of deliberately disobeying a judicial order, and was subjected to a special political process to remove his constitutional protection against being subjected to judicial process. This caused great discomfort in AMLO's party, the PRD, not because of the accusation which is minor, but of its implications: as long as he is subjected to judicial process, mexican law disallows him from running for the presidency. Elections will be held in 2006, so the timing is critical. Since AMLO is PRD's most promising (some would say the only) option for winning the presidency, this has raised the whole party. Even if the political process against him fails, something very unlikely to happen, the accusation stands, and he will be prosecuted when he resigns to his current post to become presidential candidate. In that case, it is almost certain that he will not have time to deal with the accusation before he loses the opportunity to become candidate. If he loses the political process, then his only option is to be found not guilty before running for president.

The accusation itself is minor: a judge determined a road had been improperly built across private property previously claimed by the local government. The judge sided with the private owner, saying the property still belonged to him, and called for a suspension of all work, which AMLO supposedly failed to observe by going on with works for several months. If declared guilty, he will probably only be fined and lose some of his political rights. He has defended himself vigorously, but the accusation seems to have some ground, and it will be largely irrelevant if he is found not guilty after losing his chance to run for president. It looks unlikely that the judge will drop charges, so his strategy involves creating political pressure to force the judge to abandon his case.

Publications

• Los Primeros Pasos (First Steps)
• Del Esplendor a la Sombra (From Splendor to Darkness)
• Tabasco, Víctima de un Fraude (Tabasco, Victim of Fraud)
• Entre la Historia y la Esperanza (Between History and Hope)

Comics

In spanish, with graphics. The whole series is called Tales of the City. It is published as López Obrador thinks necessary as propaganda and distributed at homes in Mexico City. López Obrador never appears as a character, but is regularly quoted or mentioned by them. The numbers include figures and quotes supporting his government. Each issue is called "Chapter" by the series. Issue 3 and 4 are more like traditional comics with an ongoing story being depicted; issue 2 is mostly textual information with some drawings to illustrate a point. The characters intend to cover the spectrum of Mexico´s City population and most are regulars.

• Subtitled The dark forces against López Obrador, where his political enemies are depicted as black-hooded man with unnaturally large teeth. Published in 2004, 2.2 million were printed and distributed by his goverment. Number 3, it was the first one to caught media attention.
• Issue 4 criticizes the anticrime march of 2004. It has no subtitle.
• Issue 5: Sacre Bleu! Another comic for the critics! This episode promotes AMLO's social programmes and mentions in passing the corruptions scandals of the year.

• 1953 births
• Mexican politicians