On December 1, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) completed his first year as the president of Mexico where he started it: surrounded by a massive crowd in Mexico City’s main square, the Zócalo. In a speech lasting an hour and a half, the president listed his domestic and international achievements before recognizing that the nation remains in a process of transition.

How long, then, would it take to consolidate his Fourth Transformation? “I believe another year; that is, in December 2020 the foundations will be established for the building of a new homeland,” the president stated. “By then, under any circumstances, a return to the opprobrium of the neoliberal or neo-Porfirian period will be practically impossible,” the latter term a reference to the gilded-age dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. He continued:

I am certain that once we have completed two years of government, the conservatives will no longer be able to reverse our changes. Or, to be less categorical, they will have to work very hard and shame themselves greatly to return to the dark days of corruption, abusive contracts, tax condonation, electoral frauds, the abandonment of our young people, racism, disdain for the poor, and “Mátalos en caliente” [“Kill them on the spot”]. But what I desire with all my soul is for us to be living by then in a better society: freer, more just, prosperous, democratic, peaceful, and fraternal.