Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) is a populist, anyone knows that. The question is what kind of populist. Contrary to the opinion of those who reduce him to a demagogue (which he is), AMLO is actually a plebeian leader in the republican tradition: a leader of a segment of the population that is, or feels, politically marginalized. He refers to this sector as “the people of Mexico,” clearly it is not all of it, but it is a part.
The definition of populism as plebeian politics is provided by Camila Vergara, Professor of Law at Columbia University, New York. In an article published on April of this year entitled “Populism as Plebeian Politics: Inequality, Domination, and Popular Empowerment,” she defines populism as “an electoral type of plebeian politics [that] springs from the politicization of wealth inequality in reaction to systemic corruption and the immiseration of the masses, an attempt to balance the scales of social and political power between the ruling elite and the popular sectors.”
Vergara traces the origins of plebeian populism to Ancient Rome, where the plebs constituted a differentiated group from the nobility and the caste of the patricians. Plebeian politics politicizes the social and economic differences between the haves and have nots. That is precisely what AMLO has done throughout his long political career. And he has plenty of material to work with: Mexico is one of the most unequal countries in Latin America.
