In the Covid-19 media battlefield, right-wingers have depicted inept federal officials as culpable for a colossal death toll. In reality, the calamity has less to do with the current president than with the 36 years of neoliberalism his election upended.

Confirmed coronavirus deaths in Mexico now total the third highest worldwide after the United States and Brazil. Yet both the World Health Organization and the Pan-American Health Organization have praised the government of López Obrador for its crisis response. In early January 2020 health officials started activating the country’s epidemiological monitoring system, including airport screeners for coronavirus. AMLO’s health department closed schools and non-essential activities much sooner than Italy, Spain, or the US.

The main catalyst for AMLO’s epic landslide in the July 2018 election was mass economic desperation, compounded by illness. He promised to end the nation’s pauperization that had been accelerating since the 1982 debt crisis. That year, eager young technocrats gained new sway over Mexico’s fiscal policies, quickly secured elite support, and then seized control of the ruling PRI. They proclaimed the nation a free market paradise. What they actually created: an unfettered kleptocracy, scrapping whatever remained of the PRI’s social principles and hastening the overconcentration of wealth and power.

Since the start of his single, sexennial term in December 2018, AMLO has grown social spending’s share of the federal budget to 24 percent. His administration’s biggest may be in healthcare. These include the hiring last year of 70,000 health personnel, a step toward solving a massive shortage. By last November, the government had also built out 130 hospitals out of 326 incomplete projects left over by past administrations.

The most promising change in health policy: the federalization of health services for the uninsured, the majority in Mexico. The overhaul has created a new Institute for Health and Wellness, an agency that will provide free, universal healthcare to anyone with a government-issued ID.

Previous administrations promoted Coca-Cola and processed foods, served junk food in schools, and loosened tobacco regulations. These policies effectively made their officials, notes consumer activist Alejandro Calvillo, the “cooks and waiters” that served up Mexico’s “obesity and diabetes epidemic” just in time for “la Pandemia.” Corporate media ignore this past in order to undermine the progressive administration in the present.