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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.

In 1977 he was selected to head the Instituto Indigenista (Indigenous People's 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, and his more recent acts against the government after he joined the PRD, for instance in pressuring Pemex, the national oil monopoly, to pay farmers who claimed their land was contaminated, have made him unpopular or controversial in many political circles.

Despite criticisms, he is generally well liked by the citizens of Mexico City, and 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 presidential 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).

He insists on maintaining a running dialogue with the media, holding daily morning press conferences about the agenda of the district's government, and current events in the city. He has been criticized for this as well, with opponents claiming the press conferences are simply an excuse to get more publicity and media attention, and compared them to Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez's weekly TV broadcasts.

One of the most common criticisms of López Obrador is related to his perceived inability to reduce levels of crime in the city. In July 2004, after a spat of kidnappings of celebrities throughout Mexico (although few of them actually in the city), many non-governmental organizations called for a march in the city to protest the perceived high levels of crime. López Obrador criticized the march for being politicized, and referred to the reduced crime statistics in the city during his rule.

Both before and after the march, the city government distributed a series of comics, called Tales of the City to combat perceived media attacks on the government and López Obrador. The issue released after the July march hinted to the march being organized and attended mostly by upper-class citizens, and drew criticism from the march's organizers.

These incidents are indicative of the populism and working class political base of López Obrador and the PRD in general, for which he has drawn criticism. However, as is typical in the complexities of Mexican politics, it's difficult to say how much of the criticism is legitimate and non-partisan, and how much is engineered by supporters of rival parties, which typically appeal more to the middle and upper classes.

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

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, and possibly only realistic option for winning the presidency, this has raised the whole party. Even if the political process against him fails, which is unlikely, 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)

• 1953 births
• Mexican politicians