Mexicans mob ‘AMLO’ HQ seeking help for matters big or small
MEXICO CITY — Each morning hundreds of Mexicans crowd at the gates of 216 Chihuahua Street in the capital, home to the white, two-story building that served as President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s campaign headquarters.
They bear handwritten notes, medical records, retirement papers and other documents in the hope he will hear them out on requests ranging from bigger pensions for the elderly to private concerns that normally wouldn’t fall to a head of state: getting a loved one out of jail, help getting into a college course or assistance finding a job or a place to live.
“He has told us he is going to provide for us, help us and change the country,” said Jasmine Lopez Peralta, a 45-year-old nurse who has been without stable work for two years after her hospital said it could no longer pay her. “So that’s why we’re coming to him.”
This personalized, almost-religious faith in Lopez Obrador to help people is fed by his image as a fighter for the poor and his promises to end what he calls a corrupt “mafia of power” that has protected its own interests at the expense of those on society’s lower rungs.