Criticism towards Krauze has its origin in different aspects of his work. One of them is a reproach to the Academy for its theory of history, exacerbation, self-referential quotes, the majestic “us”, and his elaborate style (as seen in “UNAM and Bicentenary. Historic Delirium”,
Letras Libres 108, December 2007).) Similarly, his interest in historic essays and divulgation of history through more accessible formats, like illustrated books and television documentaries. Another is his liberal conviction, which he tackled since the 1980s not only with the PRI regime’s officialdom but with ample left-wing sectors that didn’t commune with his vision of democracy. About the subject,
Gabriel Zaid wrote: About Krauze’s popularity, literary critic Christopher Domínguez Michael has written: Historian
Claudio Lomnitz has pointed out his biographic inclination: "The biographies of power written by Enrique Krauze argue that in Mexico, psychology and the president’s personality have determined the course of history”. Krauze on the other hand, has pointed out that it is undoubtedly “impossible to reduce history to a biography”, but “without biography, there is no history”, and that “his attention to the individual does not come from a cultist reverence to heroes, but from a conviction that people in history matter just as much or more than the vast impersonal forces and collective entities”. In recent decades, his portrayal of
Andrés Manuel López Obrador as a
populist has generated a strong reaction among his supporters. As a defender of the process of democratization that Mexico started to live at the end of the 1980s (which had its most important milestones in 1997 with the first Congress election dominated by the opposition, and candidate
Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano elected as mayor of Mexico City (Distrito Federal), as well as with the election of the first president in 71 years in the year 2000 not from the official party,
Vicente Fox Quesada), shortly before the
2006 Mexican general election, Krauze published the essay “The Tropical Messiah” (
Letras Libres 57, June 2006), where he criticized López Obrador’s attitudes as “popular and populist, charismatic leader, messianic, provincialist, authoritative, with little regard for the law", which he perceived as an autocratic temptation to dissolve Mexican democratic institutions, including non-reelection. The essay elicited controversy, and Krauze was accused as part of the “
Dirty War” against the presidential candidate from Tabasco. In an interview after the elections, López Obrador called Krauze a “reactionary lump totally devoted to the right-wing”. Some of the historian’s critics, like Víctor M. Toledo, rated the essay as an “ideological montage made to generate fear” with racial prejudice: In response, Krauze pointed out that Toledo’s interpretation left out “any reference to the medullar subject of the essay, AMLO’s messianism”, pointing out that the “tropical” adjective and the aspects of Tabascan temperamental characterization came from López Obrador’s books. Toledo retorted that it was questionable that Krauze decided to draw a “psychological and biographical portrait” of the candidate “instead of writing a convincing review of his ideas and political proposals”, asking himself if that hadn’t been “another piece of the politically immoral war of personal disqualification”. In 2007, historian Lorenzo Meyer accused him in
Proceso of being one of the intellectuals that spread fear among the citizens during the electoral process of the year before. Krauze answered that the electorate had responded by itself only punishing López Obrador. In his book
La mafia nos robó la presidencia (The Mob Stole our Presidency) (Grijalbo, 2007), Andrés Manuel López Obrador referred once again to the historian: Nevertheless, in March 2012, during his second campaign for the presidency (that set out with a more moderate and less randy profile than the 2006 campaign), López Obrador met up with Krauze at a private dinner, where he told him: Remembering the encounter during his third and final campaign, in May 2018, Krauze sentenced: "to my regret, I feel that the portrait I painted of him in ‘The Tropical Messiah’ has only been confirmed over time”. After López Obrador's victory in the
2018 general election, Enrique Krauze was the target of criticism from some government officials. The first was the accusation from
Tatiana Clouthier Carrillo, López Obrador's campaign coordinator, in her book
Juntos hicimos historia (Together, we made History) (Penguin Random House, 2019), of a campaign led by business interest groups and intellectuals to avoid López Obrador's rise to power through
social media manipulation, in which Krauze should have been included. The story was told with more detail in the newspaper
Eje Central on March 14, 2019, which named the campaign Berlin Operation. Krauze denied all allegations in the
Reforma newspaper where he demonstrated that he was not in Mexico City at the time the anonymous source (later identified as Ricardo Sevilla) told of a personal encounter with the historian. President López Obrador seemed to stop this affair when he expressed: Later, in May 2019, the Republic's Presidential Social Communication Administration published a partial list of payments made by the Federal Government between 2013 and 2018 to "media and journalists" (in which, for example, were missing the payments made to broadcasters), which included information on Krauze, Clío, and
Letras Libres, to point them out as beneficiaries of less than transparent contributions from previous administrations. Clío and Letras Libres published clarifications that marked the reason for said payments, the publicity services, and production services made, and the lack of representation of those amounts compared to the total amount the government spent on official publicity. On June 4, 2020, the government of the state of
Jalisco battled strong protests in the city of Guadalajara. The complaint was due to the assassination of Giovanni López in the previous month, after being detained and beaten by the municipal police of
Ixtlahuacán de los Membrillos, for allegedly not wearing a facemask during the
COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. After separating himself from the crime (arguing that the municipal police was not under his control), governor
Enrique Alfaro Ramírez accused president Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his party,
Morena, of being behind the protests. The next day, Enrique Krauze wrote a tweet defending Alfaro's denouncement of intromission from the federal government in the protests: Before that, on June 6, during a tour through
Minatitlán, López Obrador expressed, mixing Krauze's name with 19th Century conservative writer, historian and politician,
Lucas Alamán: Hours later, Krauze twitted: == Awards, recognitions and distinctions ==