Ex-Labor Leader Is Mexico City’s Second Consecutive Leftist Mayor
Mexico’s capital got its second leftist mayor in a row Tuesday when former labor leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office, pledging to fight crime by fighting poverty.
Lopez Obrador, 46, who ran on a campaign slogan of “valiant honesty,” is the second democratically elected leader of Mexico City, which was governed by a regent named by the president until 1997. Mexico’s business and cultural center, the capital is notorious for its pollution and crime.
“The solution to the crime problem comes through putting the brakes on poverty, not only for humanitarian reasons but also to turn around social decay,” said Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD.
He follows Rosario Robles, the acting mayor. She took over from PRD icon Cuauhtemoc Cardenas in September 1999, when he began an unsuccessful run for president.
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