Mexicans celebrate new president: 'We've a chance to feel hope'

They poured on to the streets bearing banners and flags, united in joy and disbelief.

“I still can’t believe it,” said Victor Gómez, one of thousands of Andrés Manuel López Obrador supporters who had descended on downtown Mexico City on Sunday night to toast their leader’s historic election victory.

Gómez, a 47-year-old artist, had brought a date to the fast-growing fiesta on the Paseo de la Reforma, a wide avenue running through the Mexican capital: a papier-mache sculpture portraying the leftist president-elect as a caped superhero.

“We’ve seen too many years of cynicism; too many years of theft, of lies, of hypocrisy,” he complained. “I want to believe things can change.”

Gómez was not alone. Around him, at the foot of the Ángel de la Independencia monument, hundreds of other joyous lópezobradoristas hugged, cheered, cried, leaped into the air and waved their country’s green, white and red flag. “Presidente! Presidente! Presidente!” they chanted. “Obrador! Obrador! Obrador!”

Down the road, thousands more had packed into the capital’s main plaza, the Zócalo, to hear their leader give an exultant victory speech in which he vowed to transform Mexico and rule for the poor and forgotten.

“I’m happy, happy, happy – at last we got the guy we wanted,” beamed Antonio Hernández Vasquez, 63, a small-business owner who said he had been rooting for López Obrador, or Amlo as most Mexicans call him, since his first presidential run in 2006.

“It is the first time in many years that we will have an honest president, an upright president,” Vasquez said of Amlo, who made eradicating rampant corruption and political sleaze the backbone of his third bid to become commander-in-chief. “He will change Mexico for the better.”

As the scale of Amlo’s triumph became clear, the street party swelled and Mexico City’s historic centre erupted into a joyful cacophony of car horns and revving engines.

“This is a historic day for us,” said Luiz Gerardo, a 23-year-old English teacher. “Now we’ve a chance to feel hope.”

“I feel so emotional … Amlo offers the possibility of a better life for us all,” said Eckert Baca, a 33-year-old entrepreneur, who believed Amlo would come to the resucue of the 53 million Mexicans still stuck in poverty.

Baca had brought a pink highlighter pen and a pad of A4 paper to the party and was using them to make posters celebrating Amlo’s best-known catchphrases. One read: “Abrazos, no balazos” (“Hugs not gunfire”), a reference to Amlo’s pledge to de-escalate the calamitous 11-year war on drugs. Another said: “The change has already begun.”

But the ecstasy in central Mexico City on Sunday night was tempered with realism.

“We know it is just a small step. We know that even as president Amlo won’t magically end corruption,” said Javier Giménez, a 47-year-old actor. But his election was, he enthused, a step towards “profound change” in a country desperate for a new direction.

“He will start to transform the country,” Baca said. “He’s not a magician. It’s also about society and we must all take part.”

Such details, however, were for another day. For now, only one thing mattered. “López Obrador beat them!” said Vasquez, lifting his homemade banner into the night sky.

“Thank you for all these years of struggle!” it said.