 I'm Jay Fidel. This is Global Connections here on a given Thursday at 1pm and we're asking the question today, how AMLO and AMLO stands for Andreas Manuel Lopez Operador, President of Mexico, how AMLO is doing after the U.S. election. So interesting. And for this discussion, we have our regular contributor, Carlos Suarez. Hi, Carlos. Nice to see your smiling face. It's a great pleasure to reconnect with you, Jay, of course, and continue our dialogue as we do often about this important neighbor to the South, Mexico, largest trading partner there after China, and a very important part. And yet, often it's not on the radar for many Americans, or maybe it will be more now because given the transition in the U.S. to the Biden administration, we might expect to see more engagement very soon with Mexico. But there are a lot of things happening most importantly. Just in the last couple of days, we've had some big news coming out. President Lopez Operador of Mexico in a tweet has announced that he has been infected with the COVID-19, you know, another head of state following several others that we've had in the past. And so it presents a real interesting puzzle challenge, as you might imagine, to a lot of, you know, even questioning whether it's real or is it somehow a political strategy just to, you know, and it's difficult to say. And I've been consulting and, you know, many students I have in Mexico as well. I was, I must say, I'm a little, not entirely surprised, but I was quite surprised to see the overwhelming majority of what I would call reasonable people saying they have doubts about whether it's real. And I think it speaks to a lot of the credibility crisis. The president, President Amlo has been one of the leaders of the world who has often minimized and downplayed the pandemic from the start and taken a lot of criticism from it. Even jokes about how he has claimed that these religious amulets that he has are going to somehow protect him. He has been refusing to wear masks, very much similar to the other right-wing populace from Brazil, Bolsonaro, like Trump. Lopez Operador comes from the left. He's a populace leader from the left. But in following this sort of, this pattern of not taking it as seriously, many have begun to question now how real his announcement that he's infected really is. Not only that, but as we speak now, like in many parts of the world, I mean, Mexico and in particular Mexico City is undergoing the most, you know, highest level of pandemic deaths. Just this past week they announced 1,800 deaths a day, breaking the record of a single day. This is quite substantial. And here again, it underscores a lot of maybe frustration that people are finding mixed signals often from the government and beginning to have doubts about trusting if they're getting good information. And what we're also learning is that it's probably a much higher death toll than what we're seeing. And it's already among the highest in the world. So, you know, it remains to be seen, you know, how they get through this. But like often, you know, the president has faced now a credibility crisis. Let me add, though, that he does remain, you know, popular, I guess, among, you know, in part because there's not a lot of alternatives. But he came to power the election of two years ago now and inaugurated just over two years ago basically, you know, on a groundswell movement, a very, very wide support, rejecting the previous, you know, administration and the political system. But like always happens, you know, after a year or two, the honeymoon is over. And now, of course, he's confronted with this pandemic like all leaders, which has frozen the economy. And, you know, Mexico is suffering quite a bit downturn in the economy, health crisis that continues to rage. And it'll be interesting to see how this is going to play out in terms of the politics and the impact on this leader. You know, in our discussions and in my own observation of how he's been doing over the past few years, two years anyway, I've not been impressed. I've not been impressed with his way of dealing with Trump and the whole thing about the border in the wall and the demands Trump has made on him for, you know, troops at the wall and various concessions that Trump has demanded of him. And then I haven't been impressed with his, you know, position on, well, on any of the major issues confronting that I know, confronting Mexico. And certainly, he seems to be a bit of a trumpet, which is the worst insult I can imagine for anybody. And you wonder, and I want to go back with you for a moment, you wonder how in the world he got elected. You know, what is it among the Mexican electorate that would have elected this man president in the 21st century? Well, again, it's a quick short answer is that it was very much a protest of the previous very corrupt and unpopular president, you know, that was before him. And this particular leader, Amno, he had been, he had run two times before allegations of a lot of fraud in the first time where maybe the election was sold or from him. Hard to know, but he obviously did not win twice. And he did win the third time. And by most measures, it was a very relatively fair election, and he won it substantially. And while there was an appeal that he represented, you know, kind of like as a populist leader, an alternative, obviously critical of the previous, you know, he has governed also in that same way somewhat. He hasn't really expanded his base, let's say he's been eroding some of it. But as a populist leader, he is obviously in a curious way, he does have a lot of elements of Trump or the other leader in Brazil, Bolsonaro, they are from the right. And yet in a curious way, once you speak of this populist element, they kind of come full circle and they have some common elements. They have a disdain for experts disdain for the press. They alone have the solution, the sort of certain, you know, I guess, whatever we would call that. And, you know, with Amno, it's again, a system of government that has, you know, decades and decades of corruption and a lot of unpopularity. So when he came to power, it was with a, you know, partly a rejection of the past, kind of a rejection of the dominant political parties that had governed forever. And so in a curious way, he was elected more as an individual, not so much his party, which is really more of a new party that is really him. And certainly an appeal of populism, because Mexico suffers from deep injustice and equality, corruption. And so offering a solution that somehow, you know, we're going to just change all that. And yet you can't, you can't do it overnight. The system today now, several years later, perhaps there's drawing frustration, because confronted with this pandemic, he has not done very well at handling it and has lost a lot of the trust. Let me be clear, though, it's not as if he's completely, you know, lost all this popularity, but it is eroding substantially. And in particular, we're seeing the handling of this crisis. And even now his infection as opportunities for people to just criticize even more and to be concerned. He is after all, in fact, just an example of his populism, he gave up the presidential plane that had been bought by the predecessor and has tried to sell it, hasn't been able to. But effectively, as a head of state of a major country like Mexico, he travels by coach class on a commercial airline. And even last week, as he was just infected, Harry was traveling on an airplane coach class. So many people are like, you know, that's that's inappropriate behavior. Moreover, getting infected after so many months now a whole year of not taking it so seriously, not wearing masks. So many people are, you know, sort of, you know, it's to be expected. So yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. He is a 67 year old, but he's had heart attacks already as a heart attack survivor. He's in a high risk category. And for example, his populism was saying, well, he's not going to get the vaccine because he wants to be like everyone else, no special privileges. He will wait his turn until the middle of March. Now, by any more objective rational reasoning, a head of state should be a priority to keep alive. And he should be one of the first to get the missing. Yeah, not in this case. Yeah, I have this vision of it on the plane there. Having been found infected shedding virus all all over the plane. What a scene. But you know, what's ironic about it is that you know, if in a situation, and if you if you know, contrary, let me know. But in a situation like that, he had symptoms. He had symptoms. Then he went and got tested. It wasn't a random test. And so, you know, he's already down the track of COVID. And as you say, he's 67. He's got some comorbidities. He may be a real a real risk here. And and you know, the fancy drugs that Trump took and I think Pence, who else was one of one Trump's cohorts there? Oh, yeah. Giuliani took the Regeneron drug, which is, you know, after you get it kind of drug out. That's not going to be available to Amlo. And Trump can't help him with that. Trump is out of office. So, you know, he runs a real risk of getting very sick and dying. The irony is 10 feet tall, because he's the one who was ignoring the COVID all this time. Yeah, but but along what you described, for example, with Trump, there was often criticism of the while he gets, you know, whisked off to, you know, what is it to the military hospital, the best care in the world. Similarly, there's a lot of criticism that Amlo is going to have the luxury of actually, you know, quality care that most Mexicans will not. And especially again, as we speak today, the situation in Mexico City, especially is just that a very, very critical crisis. And added to that, there's been a bit of a scandal or maybe ongoing crisis because of mixed signals, mixed information that the government has been issuing. And in particular, you know, they use a system in Mexico of, I guess they're called like a traffic light sign, you know, red, orange, green, etc. And they have a criteria that it goes to this level, when it reaches a certain, you know, certain metrics, certain indicators, as it's coming out now, some information that the government issued different data and it should have locked down Mexico City in early December, they chose not to for several weeks. And when they finally did, the situation is now obviously at a very, you know, worse. And, and just different. So again, mixed signals that the government has sent has affected the credibility of that. And so the debates continue raging there, what's real, what's not add to that. And in general, Mexico has a strongest position to a lot of conspiracy theories. And partly because there's just so much, you know, crazy stuff, hard to believe, hard to get good accurate information. So it just fuels a lot more of that. This becomes a real crisis, as you imagine, when you're moving forward with a vaccination program, if people don't believe, don't trust the government, you have a legitimacy crisis, a credibility crisis. If you have less people participate, and this is true everywhere, we're going to have the same problem in the US. I've been seeing some reports, I guess, of some of the, you know, some places where you're seeing less participation in the programs, right? Then added to that, Mexico, just like every country has now suddenly gotten the reality that those doses of the virus are not coming in the quantities they had ordered. They've had to desperately live for others. You have a visit this past week of one of the deputy foreign ministers of Russia, they're trying to negotiate with Russia getting one of their viruses, I'm sorry, vaccines, concerns that those are not as effective, don't have the rigorous, you know, testing that's done in the US and Europe, let's say. And so a real challenge all along. But Mexico, again, right now confronting like many places this crisis with a leader suddenly infected with population beginning to doubt government credibility. So it's a recipe for, I guess, some tough times ahead. And like we hear again and again, it's likely to get worse in the near term before it gets any better. And then finally, I would just add to this, and this is true of Mexico, especially but also a lot of other developing countries where a high percentage of population work in the informal economy, that is, they don't have jobs that are normal with, you know, health benefits and the like, they don't have the luxury to stay home or over. So that even if the government tries to lock down, they simply can't control it in the same way that you might in, you know, a different country with a smaller informal sector. Add to that, the crisis has added more people into that informal economy as factories have closed, other businesses have closed. So it is a real challenge. Again, Mexico, not alone, this is true of a lot of developing countries where many people don't have the luxury to stay home and obviously protect themselves. So it's a tough, tough What about the variant? You know, if you have a lot of cases in a given country, the mutations increase, you can have homegrown variants. So certainly you can get imported variants. Have there been reports of variants in Mexico? I haven't seen much of that yet. I mean, we're hearing all that in just in the last days, of course, but I think what is interesting and another report I read just days ago, a very large number of American citizens who are choosing to head to Mexico, partly because of the more relaxed lockdown, partly the cost of living, but also again, places like California where right now the situation is so desperate. So that I think it was a New York Times article describing essentially a wave of Americans that are coming into Mexico. And that's a mixed blessing too, because on one hand, you know, these are people that themselves could be carrying more and so it's a trade off. And I have some figures that are quite dramatic in terms of the number of Americans. Let me just mention a few, for example, we've seen now in the last few months, a very large number of Americans who are going to Mexico. As many as I have some data here from a recent report as many as 50,000 arrived at the Mexico City Airport back in November, which is maybe less than half from the previous year, but a massive increase back in April of last year, there were 4,000. The point being, we have a lot of Americans now, many of them heading to places like Cancun and Los Cabos, traditional, you know, hotspots for vacationing. And, you know, it's one of these things where on one hand, it brings, you know, badly needed the income and money, but it also brings disease and uncertainty. And so this surge, this growth of movement has been driven by the fact that in the United States, the lockdown in many places has been so severe that people who have connections in Mexico or opportunities to go are using this opportunity to do that. And, you know, I'm speaking here mostly of people who have enough money to have, you know, a comfortable situation, they can, you know, stay at a Airbnb. And, you know, we're seeing a lot more data that's showing that increase in movement. So quite an interesting challenge. Well, the other thing I wanted to ask you about with respect to Amlo is he didn't recognize Joe Biden's election for a while. And he was the last foreign leader, quite literally. I think maybe, I'm not sure if Kim Jong-un might have been up there with him, but literally of all the major world leaders, he was the very last one, literally until the Electoral College finally certified. It's strange because the man is, you know, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that Biden will probably take office. You know, that was visible from November 3rd on. And so now he's insulting Biden, his neighbor, who could help him, who could reverse all the negative things that Trump did on Mexico. And he's distancing himself from Joe Biden. Was there a justification for that, or was that just bad policy? Probably bad politics, and obviously a bad policy. But for many, it was seen as Amlo had almost struck a Faustian bargain with Trump. He had made a deal where we will take care of those, you know, the dirty work, sealing that border in the South, you know, handling all these asylum seekers in exchange for don't bother us, you know, stay out of our domestic politics. And in effect, that had been the accommodation they made a little over a year and a half ago. It was the summer of 2019, when basically Trump pressured Mexico to take on the migration of these caravans, or else he threatened to increase tariffs on everything. And so it was the typical, you know, twisting of the arm. And so many people felt that they had made this deal, because in part also Amlo is not a particularly globally oriented person, not interested in international affairs at all, doesn't really speak English, a change from, you know, traditionally for the last 30 years, most Mexican presidents have, usually they have the requisite, you know, Harvard or Yale degree, but they have a working knowledge of English as global leaders. No, Amlo is definitely a, you know, more, I guess, domestic focus, more, whatever you want to call it, anti-global. Isolationist. Isolationist, absolutely. Now he would say, and certainly his supporters, that he's worried, you know, he's a Mexico first, or that's his agenda. But definitely, I think as we see the transition to Biden now, it's going to get a bit more complicated, because the Biden administration is likely to engage Mexico more on many things, on human rights, on environmental protection, on, you know, the plight of these migrants, but, you know, in a different way, less focus on just the security, more the human, the economic, and that's going to get a little more complicated. And so I think it's fair to say it's not going to be rosy or easy. Now, for many parts of Mexico, I think that's important. Mexico should be held accountable. Corruption should be, you know, spotlighted. Democratic norms should be supported, and the like. Of course, today the U.S. faces its own credibility crisis, given, you know, our own democracy in shambles. But nevertheless, the relationship between Mexico and the U.S. has always been very complex, interdependent, and we're going to go back to that. Under Trump, we had a brief period where they sort of relaxed and kind of each went their own way. That's changing, and it's going to be, I think, a bumpy road, I would say, along the way. Yeah, really, too bad. You know, one thing is, I don't know what the percentage of kids separated from their parents by the Trump administration was Mexican kids, or just, you know, south of the border into, you know, far, the far reaches of Latin America. But I wonder if MLO has ever weighed in on that. You know, we saw, for example, we saw Biden weighing in with Putin a couple of days ago, saying, you know, you're acting badly. Don't do that again. He may not go to war over it. He may not even do sanctions. But at least he made a moral statement. And I wonder if MLO ever made a statement to Trump about anything Trump was doing to abuse, you know, the migrants, the people who are coming over the border and the people who are being badly treated by the American immigration system and by separating children from their parents. Short answer, no. AMLO, almost like Trump, has made a deliver coin of minimizing any, you know, careful not to criticize, say anything that might, you know, rattle. And so basically, Mexico has a very strong doctrine in its foreign policy of non-interference in the affairs of others. You know, we hear it often from China, a version of that, non-interference. But for Mexico, it is a very important part. They do not want, and the leaders, for example, don't want to somehow pontificate or give commentary opinion analysis of what's happening. That's their business. Stay out of ours and, you know, we won't comment on yours. But it's just, so no, he has not said anything that would antagonize Trump. He has preferred to just keep mum. Now we, that's the short answer. Well, you know, with all of that now, all of what we've talked about, you know, his emergence of the political scene, his position on, you know, public policy issues in Mexico, his failure on dealing with COVID, his failure on establishing a good relationship with Joe Biden, you know, all that. How is he seen by the world outside of Mexico, the world outside of the U.S.? I mean, you know, does he have relations, or is he an isolationist about that too? Is he participating in anything, a multilateral, you know, engagements? No, he doesn't participate. In fact, he makes a point of not going to any of the regular meetings, you know, the G20, the APEC, the, you know, various others. So he will send his foreign minister. He has not attended a single one, quite dramatic. I will say however, Mexico does, in fact, and even with the crisis with the U.S. and Trump, it has in some ways reached out to other Latin Americans, Europe, even, you know, China and Russia. And even, for example, with the vaccine drama right now, it has reached out to Russia. It has also, I believe, maybe be a place where they're doing some of the testing and even for the Chinese viruses. So it does maintain, and I think as part of its strategy is to some diversify a bit, if you will. But in general, AMLO is not a particularly engaging global player, let's say. So how is he seen? I mean, you know, it depends around the world. I mean, he is a populist leader. So those who may support that will see him as reflecting that. Many who are more skeptical and critical of this will see him as reflecting this anti-liberal trend or illiberal democracies that we see. He just happens to be from the left, but it's very much a populist formula that erodes some of the democratic norms, let's say. Beyond that, because he has not had much of a present, has not traveled, has not received a lot of world leaders, he doesn't have a real personal relationship that he has developed with many of them at all. Even Latin American leaders, often Mexico is one of the key, you know, it's the largest Spanish speaking and the second largest after Brazil. But interestingly, under AMLO, it has taken a bit of a more, I wouldn't say relaxed, but maybe a more low-key role, not as a leader of the region on issues like Central America, the crisis in Venezuela, that's another example. You had South American leaders coming together address Venezuela more, Mexico trying to stay away and not have to engage, but at the end of the day, you can. It's a big country, it's a big player, it needs a seat at the table, and unfortunately right now it is not. It is not playing that role. Well, that reads me to one area, one final area I want to talk to you about. You mentioned early on that the people in Mexico, although his popularity has declined in the past two years, but he's still okay and a lot of people support him. That's the impression I have. And so, query, is this the best thing for Mexico? I mean, if you were John Q. Everyman voter and being fully informed or reasonably well informed, would you support it? I like this. It seems to me that what Trump has shown us is that our relationship, and you and I have talked about this a number of times, our relationship with Mexico is more important now than it was before. And our recognition, our awareness, our affinity for them as our neighbor to the South, at least with the people I know, has improved. We are more sympathetic, and we want to see them succeed. We want to have a good economic relationship, social relationship. We don't want to have that kind of wetback mentality where we just marginalize them and abandon them in the world stage. So, Mexico has so many attributes that we ought to relate to. I don't know if Biden feels this way. I assume as an enlightened person he does. But query, is Amalot the right person at the right time? What kind of profile would you like to see in there to develop Mexico as a player on the world stage, or at least the stage of the Americas? Well, that's a good question, a tough one. Let me quickly say this. On one hand, Mexico might take on it because of the social challenges and equality and justice. It does need a leader who can address those. I mean, Mexico has been a very, I guess, unequal society for a very long time. But having said that, I think what he lacks, unfortunately, is competence or maybe reliance on expertise that can look at the thing in the fuller picture. Instead, like so many places, it is deeply polarized. And so a lot of his agenda is driven more by opposing everything that was done before or blaming everything on what was done before. Rather than having a very concrete solution on the table, simply continue to say it's all about neoliberalism and it's all about those past leaders that were corrupt. And now we're no longer corrupt. Well, that's beginning to erode. And while he does continue to have popularity, I will say that again, it is among the larger population at large, not all of them particularly well informed or the social media ripe with its own disinformation. Among the intellectual and more educated elites, I mean, there will be some on the far left who certainly support him because the alternative is worse. But many others who are just disappointed because while he may say certain things, he doesn't deliver the goods at the end. And he just doesn't come across as being extremely competent at doing things. Instead, it's easy to criticize and critique as we all know of almost like with Trump, we saw it, a politician in campaign mode. It's one thing to do that. It's another thing to make the tough decisions. And I just, I'll finish with a quick anecdote. I mean, he, every single morning of his presidency, weekdays, he has a morning press conference for like an hour, hour and a half. And the morning news, and it's like, literally, it's almost like, you know, here we turn on the, in the US, you turn on the news and you got the local TV station. Well, here in Mexico, you got the president every single morning. Now, since he got infected a few days ago, he's had a substitute, one of his cabinet officials that does it. But what am I getting at? At some point, it gets a little bit old and people are tired of it. And, you know, once again, so we often hear a lot of cynicism now that the president spends all his time just rambling instead of doing the business of the state. He would argue, and maybe some support as well, he's the most transparent, the most, you know, open, you know, always there. But at the end of the day, you know, you're judged by your results and your outcomes and the policies that you choose. And if you don't have them or you can't deliver them, ultimately, all politicians end up losing some of their support. Mexico has a fixed six-year term, no reelection. And so typical of every administration, you know, they start off, they get going. But by the end, the last year or two, it's always, you know, both how to, what you can rob and steal or what you can get away with or how you can hopefully leave, you know, some kind of legacy, but it's not easy. So he's approaching the middle. This is now his third year. And interestingly, when he ran for office three years ago now, he promised the population that after three years at the midterm, he's going to have a referendum to judge his state. And if they don't want him, he'll go, well, we haven't seen details that that's going to happen. Probably not. But, you know, people will certainly hold him accountable to that and say, hey, here we are at the midterm, what's going on? So it's a tough dilemma. And again, Mexico is suffering from this pandemic it has suffered more than most places, a downturn of the economy, an economy that is already highly informal and now even more. And then the pandemic, it has not been managed well. There's a lot of concern that the government has not done well with the information, eroding confidence credibility. So it's a recipe for probably more tough times ahead. Beyond that, we'll have to see because the engagement we're going to see from the Biden administration is going to challenge him. Ultimately, I think it's important and necessary because the U.S. and Mexico have so much interdependence that it requires that engagement. And so I'm optimistic that that's going to be helpful over time. I'm not sure about the status of AMLO. How will he survive or come ahead out of this? Right now it looks tough. And the fact that he's been infected as another world leader leaves us all wondering, will he survive it? Or even if he does, will he use it as a chance to somehow come out like a Superman and maybe continue to neglect the pandemic? Or will he maybe like the Boris Johnson model where he, I'm not saying he was successful, but a little bit more learning lesson of sorts. I don't know. I'm inclined to think probably not. And in talking to a lot of people, reasonably educated people, I'm surprised at how high a percentage assumed that he's not probably infected, that he might just be pulling one on us. I don't know. Well, inherent in your remarks a little while ago is the notion that things are not with him, things are not likely to get better. And as he goes down the remainder of his term, things are likely to get worse. And maybe to some extent, the American president has a fair amount of influence over the president of Mexico. And I don't know if Biden takes on some kind of role there. And it says, Amla, let me show you the way. Let me give you some suggestions. I want to push you around, but here's some suggestions on how we can do better. That might have a salutary effect. So if Joe Biden were listening today, what advice would you give him about this? Well, I think we're going to see it. And it's basically to engage, because Mexico has such an important role for the US. They must, we must have a conversation. And it's always been there at many levels, not just the leaders. The leaders need that, and they do need to reach out and talk to each other. I don't see Amla being the one, but I do see Biden probably, and we should see in the next month or two, there will possibly, typically, there would be some kind of meeting, a reunion. It hasn't happened with Trump. It happened with Amla visiting Washington July of 2019 to sign the new revised free trade agreement. They did that actually last year, I'm sorry, last July, the only time they met. But I think with Biden, yeah, engage him as they will. And well, I think it has to be that way, because the alternative is not ideal to somehow stay disconnected. Okay, well, we'll have to follow it, won't we? Carlos Juarez, a regular correspondent dealing in all kinds of international issues. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Aloha and thank you, Jake. Aloha, Carlos.