According to Enrique Krauze, Mexico's prominent classical-liberal intellectual, new "winds of authoritarianism" are sweeping across Latin America, characterized by all-mighty caudillos who ascend to political power via democratic means, but who then seek to concentrate control over a tightly knit polity of order and moral virtue. Mexico is beginning to stand out as a prospective victim of this rising tide of illiberal populism. Andrés Manuel López Obrador (popularly known by his initials, AMLO) won a landslide electoral victory on July 1, 2018, and assumed the presidency of Mexico on December 1, 2018. From the outset, while still president-elect, López Obrador launched a crusade against "the long neoliberal nightmare" that, by his account, had left the country in ruin. Instead, he has promised a "Fourth Transformation," (according to López Obrador, the first three transformations are the Independence of 1810; the Reform of 1861, which achieved the separation of church and state; and the Revolution of 1910), which he defines as a revolutionary movement to wipe out all corruption, erase income disparities, and secure national self-sufficiency. So far, López Obrador's own wind of authoritarianism reflects an adherence to toxic policy proposals, a disdain for independent checks and balances, and an intolerance to any view that is inconsistent with his preconceived notion of a virtuous society.

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