If you read any corporate media you will see just how bad the center-left Mexican president has been.

Yet for some unknown reason he's extremely popular with poor Mexicans.

On August 10, Mexico’s National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL), an independent federal agency, released its much-awaited poverty measurements for 2022. Its findings outstripped the most optimistic forecasts: the multidimensional poverty rate in Mexico — a measurement of income plus a series of social rights such as food, housing, and education — fell 5.6 percent from 2018 to 2022, translating to some 5.1 million people. When compared to the height of the pandemic, the numbers are even more dramatic, with 8.9 million being lifted out of poverty over the last two years.

Other statistics from the report, together with findings from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), were equally promising. The income gap between the top and lowest 10 percent of incomes is down from twenty-one times (2016) to fifteen times (2022), while the Gini coefficient has dropped from 0.448 to 0.402 over the same period.

Reducing poverty and inequality can be considered a positive unless you read forbes and Barons.

According to the Associated Press, “It was unclear what was behind the reduction in poverty,” as if the case were simply too mysterious and inscrutable to be fathomed.

It is "mysterious" when you automatically exclude everything the government does. For instance, an annual 20 percent hikes in the minimum wage and labor reforms that pushed workers into unions and out of the "sharing economy", not to mention real universal health care.
So why does the ruling elite hate him so much, and how did he afford this? In a word, nationalization.

The Mexican government agreed to purchase 13 power plants from the Spanish energy company Iberdrola for $6 billion on Tuesday (April 4), giving its state-owned power company, Commission Federal de Electricidad (CFE), majority control over the country’s electricity market.

Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopes Obrador (AMLO) called the decision part of a “new nationalization” of some of the country’s major industries, including mineral and oil production, according to Reuters.
...The US and Canada have strongly opposed AMLO’s actions, and have threatened a trade war if Mexico continues to roll back access for international corporations in Mexico’s power and oil markets.

AMLO has had failures - namely his inability to tackle cartel violence.