Andrés Manuel López Obrador is not dead yet.

MEXICO CITY — As the year began, the dominant political figure of Mexico’s left appeared to be heading swiftly toward irrelevance.
by Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a former presidential candidate, attracted thousands of supporters to a Mexico City rally Jan. 25.

But Andrés Manuel López Obrador is not dead yet.

Only two years ago, Amlo, as he is known, was the driving force in Mexico’s polarized politics. After he narrowly lost the presidency and led months of street protests charging that it had been stolen from him, politics boiled down to one issue: who was for him and who was against.

Last year, his hold on public attention began to falter. The public, the news media and many of his supporters had simply moved on, letting the turmoil of the 2006 election fade into history.

But there are signs that the efforts of Mr. López Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor, to revive his political career may be gaining traction, as a deepening recession creates opportunities for his brand of economic populism. The question now is whether he can capitalize on that momentum to remake and expand the coalition that brought him to within a hair’s breadth of the presidency.

At a rally last week in Mexico City’s immense central square, the Zócalo, Mr. López Obrador, 55, drew tens of thousands of supporters. Though the crowd paled beside the hundreds of thousands who attended his rallies at the peak of the 2006 presidential campaign, it was significantly larger than that at any of his rallies in the previous year. To continue click here..