Hello, and welcome to the Latin America Weekly newsletter! In this issue: Who will succeed AMLO in Mexico? Paraguay’s reckoning. And Honduras’s rapprochement with China.
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Who will fill AMLO’s shoes in Mexico?
In a country where re-elections are seen as a big no-no, the presidential candidate of Mexico’s once-dominant PRI party used to be hand-picked by the incumbent, the so-called dedazo. But the PRI’s defeat last week in its State of Mexico stronghold confirmed that times have changed.
No dedazo. Now, President Andrés Manuel “AMLO” López Obrador’s left-wing Morena party will have to pick a successor. But the president’s whole political career has been based on representing renewal, with different methods and goals from the PRI era, leading to his promise not to interfere in the nomination despite being one of the most popular leaders in the region.
New method. With that in mind, AMLO announced that a series of opinion polls will be conducted to decide Morena’s presidential nominee. In an additional effort to not use “loaded dice,” the four...