In over two centuries of nationhood, Mexico has never seen a presidential inauguration like that of December 1, 2018. From the pre-dawn indigenous ceremony to consecrate the bastón de mando  — a wooden staff symbolizing government — that representatives of Mexico’s indigenous peoples would later present to the new president, to the cultural festival that lasted into the night, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) broke down pomp and circumstance and promised a new form of government. His most oft-repeated phrase: “I will not let you down.”

AMLO began the day taking the oath of office in the Congress, as Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, president of the Congress, historic dissident politician and member of AMLO’s Morena Party (Movement for National Regeneration), handed him the presidential banner. Former president Enrique Peña Nieto sat sour-faced and clearly uncomfortable on the congressional podium as the new president thanked him for not interfering in the elections, referring to the multiple frauds committed by Peña’s long-time ruling party, the PRI, in previous elections.

The Left has been robbed of electoral victory in Mexico twice in recent history. Once in 1988, with the candidacy of PRI dissident Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, and again in 2006 when authorities recognized conservative Felipe Calderón by half a percentage point and refused the demand for a broad recount of the vote. Manipulation, fraud, vote-buying, and media favoritism has long been the formula for gaining the presidency in Mexico’s past, particularly during the seventy-one-year uninterrupted rule by the PRI. Inaugurations became formal acts that inspired real enthusiasm mainly among those who took power, in a system designed to transfer wealth and power to the wealthy and powerful.