During the campaign, corruption was a hallmark issue for Mr. López Obrador, a national scourge that he vowed to end. His government has not announced significant prosecutions on corruption allegations against public authorities or other prominent figures since he took office.
Beyond that, according to Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, an anti-corruption group — a sharp reversal of Mr. López Obrador's pledge to break with that tradition— his government granted more than 70 percent of its agreements directly, without competitive offers.
On safety, another critical problem for Mexico, he pledged to withdraw the army from the streets during the campaign, undoing a controversial crime-fighting approach that has led to extensive abuses of human rights.
Instead of continuing, however, Mr. López Obrador ended up guaranteeing the position of the military in national safety, while homicide rates in Mexico have continued to peak in more than two centuries.
Mr. López Obrador started his tenure on migration by opening his arms to migrants heading north, criticizing the previous government's enforcement strategy. Recently, however, his administration has also taken a more robust line, increasing the detention and deportation of Central American people and others entering Mexico.
Mr. López Obrador has often moved along with them, wary of a dust-up with his most significant trading partner, far from countering the rigid steps adopted by President Trump along the frontier.
However, Mr. López Obrador remains extremely popular in the nation: his approval rating is above 60 percent in the latest polling. This is primarily because he knows the actual distance between the leaders of the country and their people.
Obrador placed the presidential plane up for purchase and presently operates coach throughout the country. He became a government cultural center for the presidential palace. He cut federal workers' highest wages and raised the lowest, and his office says that all government officials are needed to declare their assets and potential conflicts of interest.
These activities reflect his common touch, a rarity among the rulers of the country whose traditions have long been excesses and indifference.
A spokesperson for the president said other modifications had also been made by the new government, including changing the constitution to trigger corruption, theft of fuel and severe felonies of electoral fraud. In fields such as labor law and education, more legislative changes are on the horizon, the president's office claims.
Mr. López Obrador declared a wide array of distinct programs for the poor, a central outlook of his campaign. If successful, he says, his plans might lift some 20 million individuals out of poverty during his six-year term — despite widespread issues about how he's going to pay them all.
Also in the legislature, the new president has a huge benefit: majorities in both houses. There are few controls on his authority, with the opposition mostly broken, which provides him great liberty to follow his agenda, but has also caused critics to be concerned about his confrontational behavior.
His political dominance was on display early in his reign when he canceled an airport project worth $13 billion, a decision that cost the country dearly because the bondholders behind it repaid it.
However, with his great accessibility, Mr. López Obrador has won over many Mexicans, especially the televised news conferences he holds at 7 a.m. each morning.
Mr. López Obrador claims his administration, including the country's widespread violence, is already taming up issues. Homicides, he said, have not increased. It was unclear whether he had distinctive data than the numbers issued by his government, which record murders in 2019 on step to exceed 2018, the bloodiest year since the government began delivering the statistics.
The strategy of Mr. López Obrador to fight violence resembles the policies he once denounced in the past.
The latter officials commissioned the military to commence the fight upon drug traffickers, which hindered neither trafficking nor violence. Mr. López Obrador — generally recognized through his initials, AMLO — pledged a distinct strategy during the campaign.
He then seemed to reverse himself soon before he took office, proposing a new safety force under military control made up of military staff and federal police to fight corruption.
Mr. López Obrador's government says it must act immediately to stem the violence. The government claims it has signed a training contract with the United Nations to protect human rights, a historically weak point for the army.
More generally, it argues that its investments in programs to address the root causes of the issue— poverty and absence of chance — are also part of the plan for domestic safety.
He intends to spend billions of dollars on a refinery on energy policy, betting on the financial solvency of his country in search of what Obredor describes as energy autonomy. Analysts conclude that he needs to revert to a point when governments recognized national energy firms as sources of state pride and motors for expansion. Now, to restore the dominance of Mexico's two state-owned energy giants, the oil business Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission, he is spending government cash. Energy analysts say the approach will prove expensive and unproductive, especially at Pemex, which struggles under more than $100 billion in debt while oil manufacturing hovers near its highest point in four centuries.
Migration was one region where the new president emerged swinging.
Mr. López Obrador promised a humanitarian approach to migrants after taking office in December, moving away from what he described as his predecessor's enforcement-first approach, Mr. Peña Nieto.
President López Obrador's administration states that it continues its commitment to treating migrants with importance and intends to fund billions of dollars in Southern Mexico and Central America to address the poverty that forces people to explore economic opportunity abroad.
