Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office Saturday, vowing to transform the nation after winning 53 percent of the vote in a July election.
“Starting from now, we will carry out a peaceful, steady political transformation. But it will also be profound and radical,” the socialist leader said in Spanish during a speech in Mexico City.
Vice President Mike Pence, first daughter Ivanka Trump, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen represented the Trump administration.
Shortly before the ceremony, presidential son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner on Friday was presented Mexico’s top honor by outgoing President Enrique Pena Nieto.
Although starkly divergent in ideology, Lopez Obrador takes office with the promise of potentially warm relations with President Trump, with reports of cooperation on matters including trade and immigration.
Lopez Obrador, also known as AMLO, has sought to reassure constituents that he will not move Mexico toward dictatorship, as have other socialist leaders in Latin America, including in Venezuela and Nicaragua.
“We’re not planning to create a dictatorship, neither open nor disguised,” he said during a victory speech in July.
Still, the three-time presidential candidate has historically mobilized his large poor and working-class support base for disruptive public demonstrations, most notably following Mexico’s 2006 election, when thousands of supporters camped out in the capital city, declared defeated Lopez Obrador the rightful president, and sought to create a shadow government.
More recent developments, however, hint at a smooth transition from the outgoing centrist president to the left-wing leader sometimes compared to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a fellow white-haired socialist.
The former Mexican administration negotiated the just-signed U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade pact with the consent of Lopez Obrador, and the incoming interior minister said last week the government is close to a deal on keeping Central American asylum-seekers in Mexico as U.S. courts adjudicate their claims.
