On December 1, before a heaving crowd of supporters packed into the Zócalo in the heart of Mexico City, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) launched Mexico’s “Fourth Transformation” — an ambitious project of political, social, and ecological reform that aims “to purify public life.”

At the inauguration of this transformational project, a record number of women entered into political office, indigenous rites were incorporated into presidential ceremonies for the first time, and AMLO forfeited more than half of his presidential salary — as well as selling off his presidential plane. “We’re going to lower the salaries of those on the top because this way we can save in order to attend to the demands of justice,” he said.

But if millions of Mexicans were filled with hope for the AMLO presidency, international commentators were filled mostly with despair. They depict a “throwback to an age of caudillos, or populist strongmen that the region had seemingly left behind.” They claim AMLO is “indifferent to – if not contemptuous of – democratic process.” They warn that he is already “spooking foreign investors.”