When George W. Grayson, Professor of Government at the College of William & Mary, uses the term ‘messiah’ to describe the centre-left Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) leader, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, he really means messiah. The reader may come to this study of the former mayor of Mexico City and 2006 presidential candidate thinking that the title is a broad metaphor, or that the author is referencing Eric Hobsbawm's Primitive Rebels on the phenomenon of messianic movements. But the reader will find no mention of Hobsbawm. Instead, with the kind of quirkiness that we might associate with self-published work rather than a book produced by a university press, Grayson presents a twelve point comparison that poses what he asserts are striking similarities between López Obrador and Jesus Christ.

In a biography that takes us from López Obrador's birth in 1953 in an impoverished village in south-eastern Tabasco, through his years of political and social engagement in his home state, to his rise in the PRD and his presidential campaign and contested defeat, Grayson acknowledges that López Obrador shares some of the characteristics of ‘populists’ like Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales. However, Grayson's central contention is that the term populism is inadequate to capture the relationship between López Obrador and the masses, and that while ‘others claim to “represent” the downtrodden, [López Obrador] “incarnates” their struggle.’ Indeed, Grayson argues that unlike mere populists who only gain the support of the poor, López Obrador actually ‘embodies the project of redemption’ (p. 2). Moreover, López Obrador, whose birthplace in Tabasco – Grayson notes – lies near a town called Bethlehem ‘employs strategies that are surprisingly similar to those used by Jesus of Nazareth two thousand years ago. … ’ (p. 3).

In this remarkable formulation, Grayson proposes that, like the ‘founder of Christianity’ who was a ‘spiritual liberator’, López Obrador takes the role of political redeemer (p. 4). Like Christ, López Obrador lives frugally and he confronts the beneficiaries of neoliberalism ‘in a manner that parallels Christ's challenge to the Jewish establishment and their Roman Protectors.’ Moreover, Grayson asserts that it is because López Obrador sees himself as a saviour that he believes he stands above the law ‘just as Christ stood guiltless before Pontius Pilate’ (p. 5).

Grayson underpins his argument that López Obrador is more appropriately compared to Jesus Christ than to any contemporary politician by emphasising that like Jesus, López Obrador ‘relies on his own judgment and seldom follows the counsel of others’, and ‘has also taken a page from Jesus by welcoming into his entourage devoted female’ (p. 7). Yet, while Grayson sees these traits as Christ-like, the first characteristic is one we might well associate with the Hugo Chávez and the second is an achievement that even President George Bush could claim. Indeed, Grayson's notion that López Obrador resembles no one more than Jesus Christ becomes even harder to accept when he argues that López Obrador ‘emulates Jesus's habit of speaking in parables, like a messiah’, and is ‘influenced by political icons in much the same way that Old Testament prophets motivated Jesus’ (p. 4). Evidently Grayson has not noticed that López Obrador is hardly alone among Mexican politicians in invoking the names of Benito Juárez, Francisco Madero or Lázaro Cárdenas, while Grayson's description of López Obrador's reputation for honesty and personal austerity hardly differs from that of other commentators and observers.

Grayson relents a bit on his ninth point of comparison when he allows that López Obrador was ‘unable to perform miracles like those attributed to Christ [although] the Tabascan magically revitalised his PRD, renovated the Historic Centre, and provided monthly payments to the needy – his rendition of distributing “loaves and fishes”’ (p. 6). Thus, policy outputs of a municipal government that promised far more than it was able to deliver are reconfigured by Grayson as a series of miracles. The jaw-dropping effect of these assertions in the introduction of a book from the pen of a highly respected observer of Mexican politics is somewhat attenuated when, after listing his twelve points of similarity between Jesus and Andres Manuel, Grayson admits that López Obrador himself rejects the notion that he is a messianic leader. Here Grayson quotes López Obrador as saying, ‘No. There have been such interpretations but what I have said [is that] when one has principles, when one has ideals, he is less vulnerable and can confront whatever adversary’ (p. 7). Grayson would have done well to heed his research subject on this point, but just when the reader begins to hope that Grayson will settle into a less fraught form of analysis, he reprises his theme with a crowd of supporters packed into the Zócalo opening a path for López Obrador in a manner ‘reminiscent’ of the parting of the Red Sea for Moses. And next we know, the death of Herod, the priests in the temple, the dominance of the Roman Legions are all invoked as a parallel for the Institutional Revolutionary Party's 71 years of oppressive rule.

Following this bizarre introduction, Grayson carries his theme forward with chapter titles like: ‘A Child is born in Tabasco’, ‘The New Jerusalem’, ‘Apostles, Disciples, and Magdalenas’, ‘Challenging the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes’ and ‘A Second Coming?’ Fortunately, in these substantive chapters, the Jesus theme is largely abandoned for a more persuasive discussion of the issues, players and policies that one might hope to find in a lengthy study of one of the most compelling contemporary political figures in Mexico. The early chapters cover politics, society and the economy of Tabasco and the oil-producing Gulf states. The middle chapters provide an instructive look at the rise of the PRD and López Obrador's role in that process. In the final chapters we gain some insight into how López Obrador emerged as the odds-on favourite to win the presidency in 2006, and how his political enemies and his own miscalculations led to his defeat by the tiniest of margins, if, indeed, he was defeated and not simply robbed of a hairs-breath victory as was Al Gore. In these chapters the scholarship is very thorough, the writing often lively, and the degree of detail on every aspect of López Obrador's life and the people who influenced and quarrelled with him along the way is impressive, if sometimes overwhelming. In this biography readers will learn all they might wish to know – and much more – about the trajectory of this key figure in Mexican political history, even if they remain unconvinced that López Obrador is best understood as a messianic figure.