The streets of Matamoros’s Ciudad Industrial were alive with activity. The northeastern border city sits on the banks of the Rio Grande, directly across from Brownsville, Texas. Outside the gates of dozens of maquiladora factories arranged in grid-like fashion in this industrial zone, workers crowded in front of white banners with the numbers “20/32” scrawled in black marker, representing the strikers’ demands for a 20% pay hike and an annual $32,000 peso (about $1,578 USD) bonus. Their bodies blocked would-be strikebreakers from entering the factory. Nearby, workers took shelter from the cold, huddling over wood fires beneath tarps rigged to form temporary encampments. Many leaders I spoke with when I visited on February 14 said they hadn’t been home since the work stoppage began a week earlier. Often, they’d slept in their cars.

After the preliminary results were announced showing a clear and dominant victory, and both major challengers Ricardo Anaya Cortés and José Antonio Meade accepted defeat, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the president-elect of Mexico, gave a press conference Sunday night to address the people of the nation. From the Hilton Hotel in the center of Mexico City, López Obrador echoed his campaign slogan, declaring that with this win Mexico indeed was making history. Continuing with his populist rhetoric appealing to the widespread distrust of the government by the Mexican people, he reinforced his commitment to stamp out corruption and end the impunity that is rampant in the Mexican Republic.