Aerial view of the complete project for the new Felipe Ángeles airport in Mexico City on February 8, 2022Hector Guerrero
At a forced march and in record time - less than three years since the works began - Andrés Manuel López Obrador will inaugurate his Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA) next Monday.
A project that synthesizes like few others the spirit of the Morena government: symbolism, obstinacy, budget adjustments and the omnipresence of the Army in civil tasks as a firewall against corruption.
Just three months after winning the 2018 elections, López Obrador decided to cancel the works on a second airport for Mexico City.
It was one of the first moves of the still president-elect and marked the path to follow.
It did not matter that in the citizen consultation convened to legitimize the swerve, barely 1% of the population participated.
Nor that the works were already advanced and that the builders had to be compensated with 1,800 million dollars.
The important thing was to send a signal of change of time.
An end to the megaprojects of the PRI government of Enrique Peña Nieto.
The era of republican austerity was beginning.
Carpetazo to the design of the Pritzker Norman Foster.
Welcome to a mock airport on an Army air base, four times cheaper, built and run by the military itself.
Monday's appointment also marks the start of a hot calendar in Mexican politics.
In less than a month -on April 10- the consultation will be held to ratify or revoke the López Obrador mandate, one of his most personal campaign promises, which has required a reform of the Constitution and has caused harsh clashes with the Institute National Electoral Commission (INE), in charge of organizing the plebiscite.
Two months later - June 15 - he plays the relay in six states of the country.
Morena aspires to continue expanding her territorial power after already controlling 16 of the 32 governorships.
The inauguration of the AIFA, at half gas for at least the first year, fulfills a double function: it serves as a promise fulfilled and at the same time relaunches the Government's project facing the final stretch of the six-year term.
In the middle of the electoral ban due to the plebiscite appointment and overlapping the set-up for the state ones, the new airport is a new electoral campaign substitute, the president's favorite habitat, where he feels more comfortable and on which he bases a large part of his political strategy.
López Obrador himself asked to accelerate the works and advance the inauguration to balance the calendar and, in addition, to make the event coincide with the anniversary of Benito Juarez, one of its historical references.
The president's latest attacks on the European Parliament are also framed in the context of the imminent electoral cycle.
More confrontation to seek greater mobilization at the polls.
From the military facilities, López Obrador will hold his daily morning press conference on Monday.
Due to the electoral ban there will be no opening speech, but the event will serve as a staging with the Army's staff and more than 1,000 guests.
The banner of public works
Despite the strict policy of spending control, one of the banners of the Morenista government, infrastructure projects are the section where López Obrador has focused the most.
Public works as an engine of social development is one of his hallmarks, taking up the ideology of the old PRI and the nostalgia of the Mexican Miracle, the time of strong industrialization of the country during the decades of the fifties to the seventies.
Faced with the commitment to debt and the concessions to private companies that the canceled airport meant, the AIFA feeds only on the public budget.
So far, 2.6 billion dollars, less than a quarter of the lower estimates of the first frustrated project.
The financing model of the airport is similar to the rest of the large infrastructures announced for the six-year term, such as the Dos Bocas refinery or the Mayan train, which will connect strategic points in the southeast of the country.
Some plans described as anachronistic and inefficient by the market, but which have the support of the majority of the population, in line with the popularity ratings of the president himself, as indicated by the recent SIMO survey carried out for EL PAÍS.
The need for a second airport for the capital, the second Latin American megalopolis, with more than 9 million inhabitants without counting outskirts, is a historical demand.
The International Airport of Mexico City (AICM) has accumulated an unsustainable saturation for almost two decades.
In 2019, the airport authorities warned that the situation exceeded the air safety minimums.
The new plan is to integrate the AIFA, located about 45 kilometers from Mexico City, within a metropolitan airport network that adds the AICM and an existing third base in Toluca, State of Mexico.
The main unknowns of the project have focused on connectivity and shared airspace.
The US research center MITRE, for example, points out that simultaneous operations at the three airports could lead to more congestion, flight delays and operational problems.
On the other hand, the analysis service of the Swiss bank Credit Suisse trusts the projections of the Government, which estimates that when the conglomerate is at full capacity it will reach 159 million passengers a year, more than the 140 forecast made for the canceled airport.
The total delivery of the projects to the military has been another criticism.
The Army will not only build the terminal, but will operate civil and commercial operations through a company whose management will be occupied by high-ranking Army officers.
The increase in military power during López Obrador's term has overwhelmed the security sphere.
Throughout the three years of the six-year term, the military have assumed assignments as diverse as the distribution of medicines, the surveillance of Pemex pipelines and fuels, the control of the customs service, the construction of public banks, the distribution of textbooks , the fight against sargassum in the Caribbean or the transfer of money from social programs.
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