When: Friday, December 13, 2019, 2:00 – 3:30 p.m.
Where: The Brookings Institution, Saul/Zilkha Room, 1775 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC
What: Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) assumed office in December 2018, promising to bring a fourth revolution to Mexico and to reduce Mexico’s inequality, corruption, and violent crime. Yet a year into his administration, homicides and violent criminality in Mexico have not diminished. While the new government has undertaken new security initiatives and adopted new anti-crime priorities, the brazenness of organized crime has increased. Despite anti-corruption efforts, the country’s economy has stagnated. Various anti-corruption and redistribution measures of the new administration have proven controversial. The AMLO administration has worked hard to secure approval of the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), but much of the U.S.-Mexican agenda ended up consumed by migration issues. Nonetheless, AMLO managed to avert a set of crises with the Trump administration and has collaborated with the anti-immigration objectives of the Trump administration. And despite the various challenges, AMLO’s domestic popularity and that of his party MORENA remains high. .
To discuss the accomplishments and challenges of the first year of the AMLO administration, Mexico’s political, security, economic, and energy trends, and U.S.-Mexican relations, the Brookings Institution will host a panel conversation with Roberta Jacobson, former U.S. ambassador to Mexico and senior advisor to Albright Stonebridge Group; Earl Anthony Wayne, former U.S. ambassador to Mexico and public policy fellow and advisory board co-chair at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute; Brookings Fellow Samantha Gross, and Brookings Senior Fellow Vanda Felbab-Brown. Brooking Nonresident Senior Fellow Charles T. Call will moderate the discussion. After the introductory comments, panelists will take questions from the audience.