Mexico

3 Dec 2018; AFP: Anti-establishment leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador vowed a "deep and radical" change in Mexico as he assumed the country's presidency Saturday, five months after winning a landslide election victory.

The leader, widely known by his initials as "AMLO," took the oath of office and donned the presidential sash before Congress -- where the coalition led by the upstart party he founded four years ago, Morena, now has strong majorities in both houses.

2 Dec 2018; DW: Mexico's new president has agreed with Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to reduce large-scale emigration. Pressure on the region has intensified after a 6,000-strong migrant caravan made a beeline for the US border

Minutes after Mexico's new president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was sworn in on Saturday, he and the leaders of three Central American states signed a declaration to cut the number of people fleeing their countries for a better life abroad.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexicans are getting more than just a new president Saturday. The inauguration of leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will mark a turning point in one of the world’s most radical experiments in opening markets and privatization.

Mexico long had a closed, state-dominated economy, but since entering the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs in 1986, it has signed more free trade agreements than almost any other country, and privatized almost every corner of the economy except oil and electricity.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s incoming president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is folksy, plain-spoken, and spontaneous — perhaps too much so for financial markets, which have been roiled in advance of his inauguration Saturday.

Lopez Obrador is the first president since the Mexican Revolution to rise to prominence as a protest leader, and he sees his inauguration as a historic “fourth transformation” of Mexico, following independence from Spain, the liberal reforms that broke the church’s dominance in the 1850s and the 1910-1917 revolution.

27 Nov 2018; AFP: Mexico deported scores of Central American migrants arrested after hundreds forced their way through a Mexican police blockade and headed for the United States but were met with tear gas and rubber bullets.

Around 500 men, women and children, part of a caravan of roughly 5,000 mainly Hondurans who have been trekking toward the US for weeks, scrambled over a rusted metal fence and surged into a concrete riverbed toward San Diego on Sunday.

26 Nov 2018; AFP: Central American migrants who traveled to far northern Mexico hoping to seek asylum in the United States returned disheartened to a nearby camp Monday after US border police drove them off with tear gas and rubber bullets.

Migrants who were driven back when they tried to rush the border flocked back to the camp where some 5,000, mostly from Honduras, were staying in hope of eventually becoming US residents.

Some 500 migrants stumbled back into camp, dirty, scared and with ripped clothes.

25 Nov 2018; AFP: Asylum seekers hoping to enter the US via its southern border will have to wait in Mexico while they are assessed, President Donald Trump announced Saturday, appearing to confirm a report about a bilateral deal published by The Washington Post.

The move was cautiously welcomed by some refugees currently at the border, even as Mexico's incoming interior minister Olga Sanchez Cordero, who was quoted by the Post as confirming the agreement, later issued a denial.

TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — The United States closed off northbound traffic for several hours at the busiest border crossing with Mexico to install new security barriers on Monday, a day after hundreds of Tijuana residents protested against the presence of thousands of Central American migrants.

The U.S. also closed one of two pedestrian crossings at the San Ysidro crossing in a move apparently aimed at preventing any mass rush of migrants across the border.

TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — Many of the nearly 3,000 Central American migrants who have reached the Mexican border with California via caravan said Saturday they do not feel welcome in the city of Tijuana, where hundreds more migrants are headed after more than a month on the road.

15 Nov 2018; AFP: The Central American migrant caravan trekking toward the United States converged on the US-Mexican border Thursday after more than a month on the road, undeterred by President Donald Trump's deployment of thousands of American troops near the border.