A Progressive Reformist Is Leading Mexico’s Presidential Polls—and Washington Is Freaking Out
The rise of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has sparked hysterical fears of anti-US populism and claims of Russian “interference.”
By John M. AckermanTwitter JANUARY 25, 2018

Is trouble brewing south of the Rio Grande? Have Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin gotten together to support the emergence of a “populist dictator” in the upcoming Mexican elections? Is the present front-runner for the presidency, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the Mexican equivalent of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez or Nicolás Maduro?

A series of articles and opinions published by the Council on Foreign Relations, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Politico, The Atlantic, and The Economist, among others, have pushed these ideas recently into the mainstream of international public opinion, creating a surprising bipartisan consensus in Washington. Both Clintonites, like Larry Summers, and top officials in the Trump administration, like H.R. McMaster, already have issued paranoid public warnings on the topic.

It is time to set the record straight. Analysts and politicians who compare López Obrador to Chávez or Trump demonstrate an extreme level of ignorance about Mexican history and politics. And those who worry about a possible intervention of Moscow need to get a serious reality check.

The first, and perhaps most important, step is to understand that López Obrador is not “anti-American” by any stretch of the imagination. Last year, immediately after Trump’s inauguration, the Mexican leader embarked on a tour of more than a dozen cities in the United States, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Washington, DC, to express his solidarity with the Mexican diaspora.

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https://www.thenation.com/article/a-progressive-reformist-is-leading-mexicos-presidential-polls-and-washington-is-freaking-out/

As you know, when U.S. corporate media sends correspondents to Latin America, they usually get their pointers from the elite, or their mouthpieces, first.

And unfortunately, Latin America's elite are people whose opinions tend to be somewhere between Torquemada and the Antebellum South.

When those people from the US go to other countries in the Americas, either temporarily, or based for a while in a country, they always seem to be meeting Latin American professionals around their hotels, other journalists from Latin American corporate media, or in their neighborhoods when they buy or rent homes, and, as you indicate, people who own businesses, or owned by the corporations in the first place.

They gravitate toward the same kind of people with whom they associate in their own country.

They are not likely to get too close to the heart of social upheaval, or suffering, not by a longshot, if they only deal with people who are financially secure, well-educated, etc.

Very glad to see your observations, sandensea. Thank you.

Thanks for the thread Judi Lynn