Daily Times

Childhood friends, neighbors and early collaborators of Mexico’s president-elect, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, are celebrating their hometown hero’s victory, but urged him to remember his roots and bring badly needed jobs to the country’s impoverished south.

Mexicans voted overwhelmingly for anti-establishment outsider Lopez Obrador in Sunday’s presidential contest, veering Latin America’s second-largest economy leftward in a bid to stamp out the corruption and violence that has blighted the country.

Virtually the entire river-front hamlet of Tepetitan, birthplace to Lopez Obrador 64 years ago, took to the streets in jubilation.

“Happiness is in the air,” 32-year-old Isaac Cabrera Leon said.

Residents of Lopez Obrador’s home state of Tabasco, a verdant, sweltering expanse at the southern hook of the Gulf of Mexico, anticipate a long-awaited change after suffering from rising crime and job losses in the state’s key oil sector.

“There is no wellbeing for our children, for our people,” 52-year old Gloria Gonzalez said.

Home to Mexico’s first oil discovery, Tabasco is beset by grinding poverty and violence. Over half of the state’s 2.4 million people live on less than $92 a month. Criminal gangs that drove murders in Mexico to a record high last year have terrorized this once relatively quiet corner of the country.

A woman was murdered early Sunday morning in the nearby town of Cardenas inside a polling station just before voting was set to kick off. Authorities said they were investigating the crime.

Still, Tepetitan resident Gonzalez, a mother of four, was hopeful Lopez Obrador could tackle the issues.

“He has always fought for the little guy. He’s someone that knows about poverty.”

Pledging to eradicate corruption and subdue drug cartels with a less confrontational approach, Lopez Obrador said in his victory speech Sunday night that he would focus his efforts on helping Mexico’s least fortunate citizens. He has long contended that poverty and violence are inexorably linked.

“Instead of using force, we will tackle the causes of insecurity and violence. I am convinced that the most effective and most humane way of dealing with these evils necessarily requires combating inequality and poverty,” Lopez Obrador said.

Published in Daily Times, July 4^th 2018.