Cómo te voy a olvidar. Political memories, identities and representations of Spain in López Obrador’s discourse

Abstract

This article studies the representations of Spain in the discourse of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The paper starts from a theoretical discussion on the formation of memories and political identities, and proposes a frame analysis of the president’s discursive production during his first four years in office (from December 2018 to December 2022). To this end, a unit of analysis of 321 speeches, selected from among his daily conferences —known as «mañaneras»— has been constructed, and three dominant frames have been identified: the colonial, the neoliberal and the republican. The conclusions point to the conflictive nature of Spain in López Obrador’s discourse, insofar as he proposes a re-reading of the historical relations between the two countries as part of a substantive revision of Mexican political identity.