 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. Mexico's president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, ran on an anti-neoliberal pro-people platform when he was elected in 2018. However, since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, he has stood out for a somewhat contradictory position, denying the virus, calling for the reactivation of the economy, and not wearing a mask. To understand the factors behind the somewhat puzzling stance, we're joined by Mexican activist Magdiel Santos-Queros from Jóvones, and de la Argentina Nacional. Thank you, Magdiel. Why is Amlo taking this stance? Why is he taking this more conservative stance? What elements do he have to see there? Yes, I think that something that could perhaps look at the mirror of other Latin American countries, perhaps the case of Lula could be, is that so that López Obrador get to the presidency, he did it in his third attempt. And unlike the previous campaigns that had been put to the energy reform, that had been put to the free trade deal with the United States, that had been dedicated in a very hard way to the security strategy of the previous governments, in this last time he came compromising not to change this. So, from the start, the López Obrador government arrived with a very agitated political agenda due to the pressure of the groups in power and for a session that he did considering that it was the only chance that he could get without respecting his triumph, because we have to remember that in 2006 there was an electoral fraud and in 2012 it was not directly talked about a fraud, but rather a massive purchase of votes in favor of the official candidate, which was what prevented him from winning. So, on this occasion, the government arrived very recently, it arrived very recently, and then it will base its transformation project mainly on some measures of certain austerity, which have also been criticized because it is located that those measures of austerity instead of defending a strong state in front of other interests end up weakening the state very similarly to what neoliberalism has been, although he decreed that neoliberalism had ended in Mexico with its arrival to the government. But, and the other main measure that he has taken is to seek how the wealth generated through state activities or state income is distributed to different people, to the most disadvantaged sectors, the poorest sectors of Mexico. That has offered a lot of economic support to young people, to peasants, to older people of 65 years. But what happens with the pandemic, and well, that it is already expressed in a major economic crisis in which the oil prices also fall, and what goes forward is that the government of Mexico will not be able to resolve or continue to sustain that kind of economic support, and they will not be able to grow either. So, there is a theme that is also understood because there has been such an important economic necessity, such a prominent one, to reactivate the economy, even if there are dead people, because it is needed. According to the OPES Obrador project, that there is wealth to be able to fulfill with its campaign promises. And in that sense, it is quite serious because what this difficult situation is also to push two projects, which for him are key, which he has always defended, but that for very important sectors of those who live there, they are not, which is the trans-ismic corridor, which is a large number of mega-projects in the Itzma of Tehuantepec, to open the way to the trans-nationals so that they control that area and they can open the trade of the Atlantic to the Pacific, and the other, which is a tourist corridor that is called Tren Maya. It seems that it is a train that is going to be built in Yucatan Peninsula, although it really is not that, it is a train, there are several infrastructure projects, and it is the creation of at least 19 tourist cities suitable for this. So it has a tourist part, the 19 cities, the immobile speculation, the hotel, etc. and its counterpart, which in areas where there will not be tourism, the soha seed is grown on one side and on the other, which extends the farms by cycles that have contaminated that region a lot. So those two large projects that he pushes have an important resistance of the people, and he, regardless of the resistance, and above all, he is encouraged by that need to realize his projects, he is going to go with all of those projects, and surely in the next few months there will be several shocks with the effects of the popular movement, of the social movement, that they never thought in a blind way, but that several of them participated in the elections, knowing that in the scenario of the established policy, it was either the best option, or the only or the least bad of the options that there was in the political scenario. So that is happening now, it also happens at a time when we are a year old that there are intermediate elections, they are going to make the largest elections in the number of people who vote, and in the number of positions that are held, not the presidency, but several governments, deputies, etc. And then all the political parties are desperate to see how they are placed again, how they win positions in the last elections in which the Morena party, of López Obrador, raced with everything. So there is a scenario of a lot of confusion in that in the middle of this scenario or pre-electional scenario, they are fighting each other, they are thinking about the speeches, and on the one hand, on the right, it insists that López Obrador is a danger to Mexico, that you have to remove what is a threat, which is a communist threat, chavista, etc. López Obrador says that he wants to give a coup because he is doing it very consistently, and outside of that fight, of that fight of his power actors that are now consolidated, social movement in its majority is very clear that although they are not, that López Obrador, if they criticize it, it is not because he is chavista, because he is a communist left-wing, but precisely because he does not break the logical, economic, imperant from before, because he is holding the existing powers, and they know that the right, we know that the right is going to be worse if it comes to rule the country. And we are not promoting the exit of the president, but we do consider that it is very important to stop those dynamics that are going to grow against the population, and also in a scenario in which, despite the pandemic, all the crimes that there were, the massacres, right? In elitism, one massacres in which more than 19 people were killed, there, in the middle of the construction of this transism project, massacres in centers of rehabilitation of drugs for young people, in which drug trafficking grows, drug trafficking makes an attack against the Secretary of Public Security of Mexico City a few days ago, right? So we have a scenario in which violence does not end, in which it is growing, in which the figures of disappearances are updated, from 2006 to now, 14 years, we have about 71,000 disappeared, and the crimes go to the stock market, right? So in such a complicated scenario, the gaps between the politicians have to be agudized, and the social movement sector is outside of that logic, but there are still no possibilities to impose their own evil on this dispute, right?