The National Regeneration Movement, Morena, was founded in 2014 as a social democratic political party with a leader — current Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador — who vowed to bring about a “transformation” by defending Mexican sovereignty, ending corruption, and improving the lives of the poor. Those goals hark back to the demands of the 1910 Revolution. Did that revolution succeed?

Tanalís Padilla: Like today’s neoliberalism, the liberal policies of dictator Porfirio Diaz in the late 19th century structured the economy to put it in the hands of a few, often foreign and predominantly US entities. Mining and railroad companies, industries, and plantations all usurped land from indigenous and peasants, who were then forced to work in slave-like conditions. Diaz even allowed the Arizona Rangers to come into México and put down a strike by mineworkers in the north!

Díaz eventually signaled he’d step down, then reneged and unleashed an armed insurrection that became a social, anti-imperialist revolution. The decade-long war broke the power of the oligarchy and produced a powerful and stable state that, unlike many of its southern neighbors, did not generate a military regime.

But didn't the liberal capitalist victors betray their allies, the indigenous people, peasants, and workers who fought with Zapata and Villa? Did the common people make any gains?

The new elites would not have been able to rule without implementing serious social reform. Thanks to the unrelenting resistance of villagers to a series of post-Diaz heads of state, the Constitution of 1917 addressed the most egregious social abuses.

Article 3, for instance, established the right to a free and secular education. Article 27 gave peasants the right to land, and to hold it collectively as they had done for centuries. President Salinas did away with this provision in 1992, in preparation for NAFTA, and that triggered the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas.

Another key provision of the 1917 Constitution, Article 123, guaranteed a minimum wage, the right to unionize and strike, and an eight-hour day. Article 123 also pledged México to equal pay regardless of gender, maternity leave, and an end to child labor. At the time, the article amounted to the most progressive call for labor rights in the world.

Good on paper. But were those provisions actually implemented?

Between 1934 and 1940, President Lázaro Cárdenas distributed millions of acres of land to small farmers, built schools, and trained teachers. Cárdenas also nationalized México’s oil industry, then owned by U.S. and British companies. These companies retaliated with sanctions, but their governments didn’t invade because the Great Depression had weakened the imperial powers, who also had their attention focused on the impending Second World War.

What happened then that made social movements rise again and result in AMLO’s election? Can he fulfill his promise to create the social transformation the Mexican people sought 100 years ago?

Forty years of neoliberal policies have seriously weakened the social provisions of Mexico’s constitution. AMLO ran on a campaign to make education widely accessible, reduce poverty, and address the nation’s extreme concentration of wealth. In terms of foreign policy, he has returned to Mexico’s support for self-determination, an important move in a Latin America where the U.S. has strong-armed — and even invaded — countries to impose its will. This quite mild defiance has AMLO portrayed negatively in the U.S. press.

But AMLO is no revolutionary. He comes from the reformist pre-neoliberal PRI tradition. He focuses primarily on corruption, as if corruption sits at the root of México’s problems!  AMLO has good social principles but operates within a capitalist agenda. He remains hounded by the right and has been hit with a health disaster. México will likely see progress under AMLO, but not a “fourth transformation.”