Concerns As Mexican President Readies To Inaugurate New, Distant Airport

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is inaugurating one of his hallmark building projects on Monday, a new Mexico City airport that reflects the contrasts and contradictions of his administration.

There is government austerity — his main campaign promise is fully on display in the rather bare-bones terminal — as well as his customary outsized reliance on the Mexican army.

But there are also widely ridiculed government claims about how long it will take passengers to get to the new terminal, located 27 miles (43 kilometers) from the city center, and repeated complaints by the president that there is a conspiracy in the press to besmirch his new airport, which is named, of course, after an army general, Felipe Angeles.

“It is such an important project that our adversaries want to sling mud at it,” López Obrador said Thursday of the army-built terminal constructed at a military base. “There is a whole campaign refusing to recognize that was a very good decision.”

The president sees the new airport as a symbol of his twilight battle against privilege, conservativism and ostentation, things he despises. He reviles more than anything — expect perhaps foreign advice — the idea of “a rich government in a poor country.”