On December 1, Mexico will get a new president. Former mayor of Mexico City Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will take office. But his road to the presidency was anything but easy.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also known as AMLO, first had to prevail over the incumbent Mexican administration, run by the PRI, a political party that has governed Mexico for most of the last century. After numerous corruption scandals and a failed war on drugs that’s killed almost 200,000 people since 2006, AMLO was hoping the Mexican people were hungry for change.

The multitude of crises in Mexico seemingly confirmed issues that AMLO had been discussing for decades, vindicating his agenda and making him the clear frontrunner for the 2018 election.

Throughout the campaign, he built a broad coalition. His party MORENA, ran candidates who had formerly belonged to Mexico’s other, more dominant political parties. AMLO-mania was so strong during the campaign, that vendors began selling flags and masks with AMLO’s image on them.

But who is AMLO? And how exactly did Mexico’s long time political outsider finally rise to the highest office in Mexican politics? And what's his plan for Mexico?

This video, "The Rise of Mexico's Andrés Manuel López Obrador", first appeared on
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