This article originally appeared in the November 30, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.
Mexico City. In a public reappearance to announce his book Grandeza, former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador clarified that he will not tour the country to present it, because he is not a strongman and “we must not overshadow the President” Claudia Sheinbaum, whom he asked to support.
“I can’t present it in public squares. I would very much like to, but you know what? I’ve already retired from political activity and the president is the one leading and she’s doing a very good job, we mustn’t divide ourselves, we must be very close, united,” he said.
In an hour-long video released this morning, which he recorded at his ranch ‘La Chingada’ in Palenque, Chiapas, the former president (2018-2024) said he will not tour the country to present the book, “because I am going to remain retired.”
However, he stressed that he would only take to the streets for three reasons: “if democracy is threatened, to defend her (Sheinbaum); if there are attempts at a coup, if she is harassed, then yes, but I don’t think that will happen; and to defend the sovereignty of Mexico, because our country is free, independent, sovereign, we are not a colony of any foreign country.”
López Obrador – who said he gets his news two days late from messages he receives on a prepaid phone – noted that, after leaving the Presidency in October of last year, he closed a cycle with the satisfaction that it became a reality that poverty was reversed in Mexico.
“That’s why I decided to retire, not to feel irreplaceable. Because that’s the other problem: acting like a chieftain, a caudillo, the supreme leader, the power behind the throne. No, no, no.”
“We must uphold democracy and, in our movement, driven by millions of Mexicans, we were extremely fortunate that my successor as President is an exceptional woman who continues the transformation,” he said.
Former President Asks for Support for his Successor
“She is the best President in the world. We are incredibly fortunate. Look at the presidents and heads of state in other countries and compare. Furthermore, she is loyal to the people, to the principles of transformation, maintaining that only the people can save the people.”
“Or isn’t that true? Are those at the top, the ambitious, those sick with power and money, going to save the people? No, it is the people who save the people, and with the people everything, and without the people nothing. The people are the ones who rule in a democracy. And for the good of all, even the rich, the poor come first.”
If we don’t take care of the humble people, the poor people, we cannot achieve peace.”
And in Mexico, he added, “we have peace and political stability, but the sectarianism, dogmatism, and fanaticism of our adversaries prevail over common sense; they don’t internalize anything that has been done and will continue to be done. We must give the President our full support, because it’s still vulture season, and there are hawks and vultures.”
When elaborating on the reasons why he would travel the country, he stated that he would do so “if they attacked democracy, as they did before, when they committed major frauds, the oligarchs, the corrupt, so that the government would be at their service, and that can no longer be allowed in any way.”
Sheinbaum, he insisted, is the best president, and López Obrador pointed out that, “if a conservative” sees the video and hears her message, “he would say, ‘No, the best president in the world is the one with an iron fist. A mix of Franco with Pinochet, with Díaz Ordaz, with Salinas, who turns the country into a prison. That’s the one we need. Someone whose hand doesn’t tremble, an iron fist, a dictatorship.’”
Let Them Read it in Spain
The former President stated that the objective of his book, which is over 600 pages long, is “to vindicate the Indigenous peoples of ancient Mexico, the denied civilization, as Guillermo Bonfil Batalla would say, because thanks to that legacy of knowledge, values, customs, traditions and art, Mexico, despite everything, continues to be a cultural power in the world.”
From his garden, sitting in a rocking chair, he displayed a copy of the edition where the cover shows him in front of a monumental Olmec head, adding:
“I would like Spaniards to read this book, because here they will see how they branded, marked with the king’s iron on the face of the Indigenous people to enslave them and other horrors.”
On the farm, “which is not a large estate, it is 12,000 to 13,000 square meters,” he explained that for him it was not easy “to say ‘that’s it and I’m going to dedicate myself to something else,” after more than 50 years of political struggle, of being “a man of action in my political work” and he decided to move from practice to political theory.
He explained that the so-called Mexican Humanism has two pillars, one cultural and the other the political history of the country.
While Grandeza speaks of “deep Mexico, the forgotten civilizations denied… because the cultural history that has been told to us for centuries is a false, simulated history,” the next one – in development – will be called Gloria.
The former President also discussed his daily writing routine, mentioning that his wife Beatriz “is in Mexico. She comes or I go; I’ve been about five times. Of course, very discreetly, to avoid scandals, and she stayed there because Jesús Ernesto has already started university and she has to be there to keep an eye on things.”
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