Disenchanted young people may tip Mexican election to López Obrador
They came of age in Mexico’s young democracy but have grown up in the midst of unremitting drug violence. They are the most highly educated voting bloc in Mexico’s history but face stagnant wages.
Above all, they are fed up with corruption and politics as usual and are ready to put the nation on a new, better course.
As Mexico gears up for a watershed election July 1, with more than 3,000 positions at stake, one sector of the Mexican population could well determine the outcome: Mexico’s millennials and the subsequent Generation Z.
Nearly half of all eligible voters are younger than 39, and 1 of every 5 would be voting for the first time. It is an age group profoundly disenchanted with the political establishment and urgently seeking a moral leader to bring about real change.
“We keep thinking that an honest, heroic, caudillolike figure will arrive one day and change it all for us,” said María Montoya, 21, referring to the leaders who emerged in the tumult of Mexico’s drive for independence. “I don’t.”
“We have gone out to the streets to protest, to demand change and answers about the thousands of disappeared people, the violence, and nothing changes,” added Montoya, an economics student in Mexico City who grew up in the violence-ridden state of Sinaloa.
Although many young Mexicans say they have not found the perfect changemaker among the current crop of presidential candidates, one appears poised to reap the benefits of their discontent: Andrés Manuel López Obrador, commonly known by his initials, AMLO.
According to several major opinion polls, between 41 percent and 47 percent of Mexicans ages 18 to 29 intend to vote for López Obrador, 64, a former Mexico City mayor running for the presidency for the third time.
“We all badly need a new beginning, a moment of redemption, a feeling of change coming at last,” said Jorge Carlini, 34, a lawyer in Mexico City who said he planned to vote for López Obrador. “He won’t save us; he will probably not carry out major changes. But it is a blank slate — it means turning the page.”
Mexico’s youngest potential voters grew up during a seismic period in the nation’s political history, when the center-right National Action Party, or PAN, ended more than 70 years of one-party rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, with the election of Vicente Fox in 2000. This shift to a more pluralistic system has imbued them with a sense of democratic promise.
But the realities of Mexican politics have eroded this hope, as successive administrations have done little to curb rampant corruption, violence, impunity and inequality — and have often contributed to them.
The last six years under President Enrique Peña Nieto — a deeply unpopular leader whose term has been marked by corruption scandals, spiraling violence and human rights violations — have only hardened their anger with the political class and reaffirmed their desire for profound change. Mexican presidents are limited to one term.
Both younger voters and the broader electorate seem mostly concerned by rampant corruption and a general exhaustion with the political establishment, polls show.
Many young Mexicans are far from enamored with López Obrador and say they intend to hold their noses while voting for him. The candidate, many say, has not presented the kind of progressive agenda they are looking for: He has been weak on environmental issues and reluctant to speak on gay rights, and he represents an unusual leftright alliance — Juntos Haremos Historia — that includes his left-leaning Morena party and evangelical party critical of gays and abortion.
But for many young voters, López Obrador at least offers the best chance of an end to the status quo of the PRI and the PAN, which have alternated power for the past two decades.