Iván Evair Saldaña and Néstor Jiménez
La Jornada newspaper
Friday, August 15, 2025, p. 5
After becoming known that from 2018 to 2024, 13.4 million people in Mexico, President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo said that it is a “feat of the fourth transformation” and a sample that the Mexican humanism model that was created by its predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
From the National Palace Tribune, the federal president guaranteed that her government will seek a greater reduction in poverty, since she acknowledged that almost 30 percent of the population still lives without minimal income.
“What is this reduction? Obviously: to the increase in the minimum wage, to well -being and access programs,” he explained.
Last Wednesday, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) announced that poverty in Mexico had between 2018 and 2024 its greatest fall of the past five six-year period, going from 52.4 percent of the population in this condition that left the sexennium of Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994), to 29.6 percent.
“In the fourth transformation we fight, we work every day for the well -being of the people of Mexico. What does ‘well -being’ mean? That no Mexican live in poverty, after 36 years of neoliberalism, the period in which the only thing that were generated were poorer in the country,” he said.
He took the opportunity to contrast figures: 2008 and 2012, during the government “del Espurio” Felipe Calderón, the poverty population went from 49.5 million (44.4 percent) to 53.3 million (45.5 percent). In the six -year period of Enrique Peña Nieto, the figure ranged between 53.3 and 55.2 million, closing in 2018 with 51.9 million (41.9 percent).
In contrast, he said that with López Obrador, the Covid-19 pandemic caused an increase in 2020, but from 2018 to 2024 poverty fell from 51.9 to 38.5 million people, from 41.9 percent to 29.6 percent of the population, which means that more than 13 million came out of this condition. Extreme poverty was reduced from 12.3 million (11 percent) in 2008 to 7 million (5.3 percent) in 2024, despite population growth.
Right hypocrisy
Sheinbaum also lashed out at the right for his “hypocrisy” of criticizing the economic model of his government, and projected videos of past statements by Marko Cortés and businessman Claudio X. González.
In the first, the former PAN leader admitted that his party “fell into the trap” to compete in electoral campaigns with more social programs, endorsing – he said – a “clientelar” policy that keeps poor people.
In the second, the businessman called “criminals” to the teachers who rejected educational reform and asked to “intervene” against them, justifying it as a rule of law. Sheinbaum contrasted these positions with their current criticisms of electoral reform and the reduction of resources to parties, pointing out that they only see “authoritarianism” when it is convenient for them.
To contribute to the reduction of poverty, the president of Mexico announced that next week the Lázaro Cárdenas Plan for Michoacán, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Morelos, Puebla and State of Mexico will present in the Mixteca, with a priority polygon in the Mixteca Oaxaca.
