• Mexico's new president takes office -- 'establishment guy' returns PRI to power

    As protesters clashed, incoming Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said he aims to reduce drug-related violence, which has killed more than 60,000 people in the last six years. NBC's Lester Holt has more.

    By Dave Graham, Reuters

    MEXICO CITY -- Enrique Pena Nieto took over as Mexican president on Saturday, offering a shot at redemption for the party that shaped modern Mexico if he can bring about an end to years of violence and economic underperformance.


    Returning the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, to power after a 12-year hiatus, the 46-year-old Pena Nieto aims to use a recent improvement in the economy's fortunes to spark faster growth.

    Shortly after midnight at the national palace, outgoing President Felipe Calderon formally transferred power to his successor, handing over a red, white and green national flag to Pena Nieto and saluting him.

    "Today I begin to exercise the honorable office of president," said Pena Nieto, who then swore in his top security ministers.

    Several thousand protesters, mainly from leftist groups that supported Pena Nieto's main rival and oppose his reform plans, massed outside Congress.

    Police fired tear gas to try to disperse the protesters, who rattled metal barriers and ended up causing the swearing-in ceremony to be delayed Saturday morning. Elsewhere small groups of protesters threw Molotov cocktails.

    "They have imposed an illegitimate president. There's lots of us here, this struggle is just beginning," said Frida, a 16-year-old student, her eyes stinging from the tear gas beneath a face mask and wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the image of a guerrilla leader.

    The Daily Rundown's Chuck Todd takes a Deep Dive into the relationship between U.S. and Mexico, and talks to Mexico's Former Foreign Minister and NYU Professor Jorge Castaneda about how the newly elected Mexican President Nieto's relationship will be with the United States going forward.

    A former governor, Pena Nieto won the July 1 election with about 38 percent of the vote, more than 6 points ahead of second-placed leftist rival Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

    Telegenic and married to a popular actress, Pena Nieto promises to restore calm after more than 60,000 people were killed in violence between drug gangs and security forces during the six-year term of his conservative predecessor.

    "Unfortunately, this has been something which has made or formed the image of Mexico in the world," Pena Nieto said during a trip to Europe in October. "That's why there's no doubt dealing with lawlessness more effectively is a priority."

    He says he is committed to the fight against organized crime, which dominated Calderon's presidency, but has also stressed his main goal is to reduce the violence.

    The new president's right-hand man, Luis Videgaray, and close political ally Miguel Angel Osorio Chong will be the two key figures in his cabinet, running the finance and interior ministries respectively.

    Analysis: Pena Nieto seeks new start in ties to US

    Having helped shepherd a labor reform through Congress since his election victory, Pena Nieto now wants to pass legislation to strengthen Mexico's tax base and allow more private investment in lumbering state oil giant Pemex.

    If he is successful, the reforms could help spur stronger growth and create jobs, blunting the allure of organized crime.

    Like many of Mexico's best-known institutions, Pemex was a creation of the PRI, which ruled for 71 uninterrupted years until it was voted out in 2000. By then, the party had become a byword for corruption, cronyism and vote-rigging.

    Annual economic growth averaged less than 2 percent under the National Action Party, or PAN, over the past 12 years. That record and growing worries over the drug war violence opened the door for a PRI comeback under Pena Nieto. 

    Still, inflation has been kept in check, debt levels are low and growth picked up toward the end of Calderon's term, with the economy outperforming Brazil's in the past two years.

    "Maintaining that stability is going to be one of the biggest challenges of the next government," said Phillip Hendrix, 44, a Mexican businessman.

    Pena Nieto's inner circle features several ambitious young economists and financial experts eager to prove the PRI can do a better job of managing Latin America's second-biggest economy.

    For much of the PRI's reign, Mexico enjoyed stronger growth than the PAN mustered, but memories linger of default on the country's debts in 1982 and a financial crash in 1994 and 1995.

    "It's very hard to believe in the PRI. They bankrupted Mexico," said construction worker Jose Luis Mendoza.

    Supporting a family of four on 1,300 pesos ($100) a week, Mendoza, 29, said he was worse off now than when Calderon took office, and doubted his life would improve under Pena Nieto. "The cost of everything has gone up - but my wage hasn't," he said.

    Pena Nieto has pledged to put more money in Mexicans' pockets and shake up competition in a country where large swaths of the economy are concentrated in the hands of a few, like telecom billionaire Carlos Slim, the world's richest man.

    But Pena Nieto has been vague so far about how he plans to create a more level playing field, and pollster Jorge Buendia said it would be foolish to expect radical change.

    "Pena Nieto's not a reformist guy. He never has been," Buendia said. "He's an establishment guy and I don't think he's going to rock the establishment that much."

    More world stories from NBC News:

    Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

    Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

  • Mexico seeks to pivot relationship with US as new president takes office

    Jacquelyn Martin / AP

    President Barack Obama shakes hands with Mexico's President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto prior to their meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2012.

    Maria Camila Bernal, Telemundo

    News analysis

    Mexico's new president Enrique Peña Nieto is surely hoping his inauguration on Saturday will help his country turn a new page in the relationship with its huge northern neighbor.

    After all, Mexico is dogged by a six-year drug war that has claimed about 60,000 lives, pervasive corruption and an image problem around the world. So Peña Nieto will want to emphasize what the violence and the negative headlines obscure: Mexico's growing economy, swelling middle class and deepening economic and social ties with the U.S.

    A recent editorial by Peña Nieto, who is returning to power the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional), the authoritarian party that ruled Mexico for more than 70 years, shed light on the new president's pivot.

    "It is a mistake to limit our bilateral relationship to drugs and security concerns," he wrote in The Washington Post ahead of Tuesday's meeting with President Barack Obama. "Our mutual interests are too vast and complex to be restricted in this short-sighted way."

    Peña Nieto hopes to reframe US-Mexico relations in meeting with Obama

    Indeed, the fact that Peña Nieto was the first foreign leader to visit the White House since Obama's reelection highlights the importance both countries place on their ties.

    "This is a longstanding tradition where … we meet early with the president-elect of Mexico because it symbolizes the extraordinary relationship between the two countries," Obama told reporters at a joint press conference.

    De-emphasize drug war?
    Peña Nieto's predecessor Felipe Calderon made the war on drugs his most important domestic issue, former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castañeda told NBC Latino.

    "What I think Peña Nieto wants to do is emphasize reducing violence and violent crime in Mexico -- kidnapping, extortion, homicide, holdups -- and not so much the drug trade," he said.

    Latin America expert: US-Mexico relations to focus on trade, not drug war


    While Mexico's new president has promised to expand the federal police by at least 35,000 in order to deal with crime, Peña Nieto and the PRI will have a brief period to show the United States and the world that they are truly tackling lawlessness and corruption.

    "The honeymoon will end when the United States realizes that he will continue to allow corruption," Mexican economist Rogelio Ramirez de la O, who advised left-wing challenger in the presidential race, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

    But there is no denying that significant ties bind the two countries. Already, Mexico and the United States are part of NAFTA, the world's biggest trading bloc, with Canada.

    Mexico's president wants to change country's name to the one 'we sing'

    "Perhaps the most important issue is finding new ways to bolster our economic and trade relationship to attain common prosperity in our nations," Peña Nieto wrote in the Washington Post article.

    Mexico markets itself as a manufacturing base for foreign companies, and already Coca-Cola, GM, DuPont and Nissan, among others, have operations in the country. Peña Nieto has also promised to open the country's sizable energy sector to private investment, although he has said that energy resources and the country's state-run oil company PEMEX will not be privatized.

    The country's economy is also expected to continue growing faster than the United States. Mexico's GPD is projected to have grown by 3.9 percent in 2012, compared to 2.1 percent in the United States during the same period, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit.

    Slideshow: Narco culture permeates Mexico, leaks across border

    Mexico's drug war is also part of a drug culture with roots in music, movies and even religion.

    Launch slideshow

    Immigration reform
    Both presidents acknowledged another major issue facing both countries during Tuesday's meeting: immigration.

    Despite constant bloodshed, Mexico is ignored during White House race

    "I know (Peña Nieto is) interested in what we do as well on issues like comprehensive immigration reform," Obama said.

    At an estimated 12 million, Mexicans are by far the largest immigrant group in the United States. And around 7 million, or 59 percent of undocumented immigrants, are thought to have come from Mexico.

    While Obama decreed earlier this year that hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants who went to the United States illegally as young children would be entitled to remain, the promise he made in 2008 to reform immigration has not been fulfilled. On the flip side of the migration coin are the estimated 1 million Americans living in Mexico, and the estimated 10 million who visit every year.

    Read more on NBCLatino.com

    Barbara Franco, executive director of The American Benevolent Society, a 140-year-old aid organization for Americans living in Mexico, acknowledged the many issues facing the new president, and said solutions did not lie only with Peña Nieto or the PRI alone.

    "There is an economic concern, the need of transparency and the overall legal system in the application of law starting form traffic violation to everything else," said Franco. "But the problems are so huge that it's not about political party or a specific person, it's about a general attitude in solving these problems."

    More world stories from NBC News:

    Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

     

  • 132 inmates tunnel out of Mexico prison near US border

    Adriana Alvarado / AP

    A group of Mexican federal police stand in front of the prison in Piedras Negras, Mexico, late Monday.

    By NBC News staff and wire reports

    MEXICO CITY -- More than 130 inmates escaped through a tunnel from a Mexican prison on the border with the United States in one of the biggest jailbreaks the country's beleaguered penal system has suffered in recent years.

    Homero Ramos, attorney general of the northern state of Coahuila, said 132 inmates of the Cereso prison in the city of Piedras Negras had escaped through the tunnel in an old carpentry workshop, then cut the wire surrounding the complex.

    Corrupt prison officials may have helped the inmates escape, said Jorge Luis Moran, chief of public security in Coahuila, adding that U.S. authorities had been alerted to help capture the fugitives if they try to cross the border.

    Eighty-six of the escaped prisoners were serving sentences or pending trials for federal crimes, including drug trafficking, the Zocala newspaper reported. The rest faced state charges, it said.

    Many challenges for incoming president
    The jailbreak is a reminder of the challenges that await Enrique Pena Nieto, the incoming president, who has pledged to reduce crime in the country after six years of increased gang-related violence under President Felipe Calderon.


    Many of Mexico's prisons are overcrowded and struggle to counter the influence of criminal gangs that can use their financial muscle to corrupt those in charge.

    Ramos said that the state government of Coahuila was offering a reward of $15,700 for information leading to the capture of each fugitive.

    Mexico's drug war: No end in sight

    The Piedras Negras complex housed a total of 734 inmates, and the tunnel through which the prisoners escaped was about four feet wide, 9 1/2 feet deep and 23 feet long, Ramos said.

    Piedras Negras is about 150 miles southewest of San Antonio, Texas.

    Money, drugs, guns and gangs: Child actors shame Mexico politicians with mockumentary

    Mass breakouts
    There have been numerous mass breakouts in the last few years from Mexico's penal system, and prison officials are frequently accused of complicity with drug cartels.

    A video "mockumentary" that shows children as kidnappers, corrupt cops and drug traffickers sparked a fierce debate in violence-torn Mexico. Msnbc.com's Dara Brown reports.

    At the end of 2010, more than 140 inmates escaped a prison in the border city of Nuevo Laredo. This February, at least 44 people died in a fight between rival gangs at an overcrowded prison in northern Mexico.

    More on this story from NBC's San Antonio affiliate WOAI.com

    Pena Nieto has pledged to reform the prisons, though experts say he will struggle to make an impact unless he combines this with root-and-branch reform of the justice system.

    Pena Nieto, 46, of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, will take office in December. The party was widely accused of corruption during its long rule between 1929 and 2000, and he has promised to break with that checkered past.

    More Americas coverage on NBCNews.com

    Gang violence
    Northern Mexico has been hit particularly hard by violence stemming from brutal turf wars between drug gangs that have overshadowed Calderon's conservative administration.

    Calderon has used the military to try and crack down on the gangs, and has captured or killed many of the top drug lords.

    President: Mexico gang-related deaths fall by 15 percent in 2012

    But his efforts have come at a price.

    Slideshow: Narco culture permeates Mexico, leaks across border

    Mexico's drug war is also part of a drug culture with roots in music, movies and even religion

    Launch slideshow

    Gang-related violence has surged on Calderon's watch, and fighting between cartels and their clashes with security forces have claimed more than 55,000 lives over the past six years.

    Last week the Mexican Navy captured one of the biggest kingpins active near the U.S.-Mexican border, the leader of the Gulf Cartel, Jorge Costilla, known as "El Coss."

    Complete World coverage on NBCNews.com

    Analysts forecast this would lead to an increase in criminal activity in northern Mexico as rival gangs fought for control of lucrative smuggling routes in the area.

    Reuters and WOAI.com contributed to this report.

    More world stories from NBC News:

    Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

     

  • 'Another chance': Mexico's old rulers claim presidential election victory

    The 45-year-old former governor of the state of Mexico and husband of a soap opera star is earning rock-star levels of attention, despite concerns that he is affiliated with a political party voted out over a decade ago amid allegations of corruption. NBC's Mark Potter reports.

    By msnbc.com staff and news services

    MEXICO CITY, Mexico -- Mexico's old rulers claimed victory in a presidential election on Sunday, ending 12 years in opposition after a campaign dominated by a sputtering economy and rampant drug violence.

    After pledging to restore order and ramp up economic growth, Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) had a clear lead over his rivals in exit polls and a "quick count" conducted by electoral authorities.

    Although his main rival said it was too early to concede defeat, the 45-year-old Pena Nieto delivered a late-night victory speech to cheering supporters, and a senior electoral official said the PRI candidate's lead was "irreversible."

    "Mexicans have given our party another chance. We are going to honor it with results," a visibly moved Pena Nieto told followers packed inside the PRI headquarters in Mexico City.

    Tomas Bravo / Reuters

    Enrique Pena Nieto claps alongside his wife Angelica Rivera after exit polls showed him in first place in Mexico City on Sunday.

    Dramatic comeback
    Jubilant supporters waved banners sporting caricatures of their candidate and his trademark quiff, and confetti in the red, green and white of the Mexican flag -- and the PRI's colors -- rained down inside the hall.

    Outgoing President Felipe Calderon congratulated Pena Nieto on his triumph, which completed a dramatic comeback for the PRI.

    With returns in from more two-thirds of polling booths, Pena Nieto had 37 percent of the vote, more than four percentage points clear of leftist rival Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. His lead was slowly widening as the night drew on. 

    Mexico's new president: A heart-throb, a leftist or country's first female leader?

    Outgoing President Felipe Calderon congratulated Pena Nieto on his triumph, which completed a dramatic comeback for the PRI. 

    With returns in from more two-thirds of polling booths, Pena Nieto had 37 percent of the vote, more than four percentage points clear of leftist rival Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. 

    Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP - Getty Images

    Leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador did not concede defeat on Sunday.

    Only about 700 gathered at Lopez Obrador's campaign rally, he said he would wait for the official results before conceding defeat and canceled plans to proceed to the Zocalo, the main square he filled as recently as Wednesday.

    "We have information that indicates something different from what they're saying officially," he said. "We're not going to act in an irresponsible manner." (Link to statement in Spanish-language newspaper El Universal)

    Lopez Obrador could choose to challenge the election, as he did six years ago when he narrowly lost to Calderon and launched months of protests against alleged fraud. After his 2006 loss, his supporters closed down Mexico City's main boulevard for a month and a half to try to force a recall. When that failed, he declared himself  the country's president before thousands of supporters massed in the Zocalo, the capital's central plaza.  

    Initial projections by Milenio television suggested the PRI had not won enough votes for an absolute majority in either the Senate or the lower house of Congress. 

    And Pena Nieto's advantage was much less convincing than the PRI had hoped for, with most polls in the immediate run-up to the election showing he would win by 10 to 15 percentage points. 

    Josefina Vazquez Mota of the ruling National Action Party, or PAN, trailed with less than 26 percent of the vote in Sunday's election. It was a humiliating defeat for conservative Calderon's party, worn out after a dozen years in power. 

    Inspiring high hopes when it was elected in 2000, the party has failed to ignite stronger economic growth and Calderon has had no answer to the rampant violence of Mexico's drug war. 

    Johan Ordonez / AFP - Getty Images

    Josefina Vazquez Mota, from the right-wing PAN, accepted her defeat on Sunday.

    "Nothing has improved since the PAN got in," said Mexico City plumber Raimundo Salazar, 44. "The PRI understands how things work here. And it knows how to manage the drug gangs." 

    Pena Nieto's plans include raising tax revenues, a business-friendly overhaul of labor laws and steps to open the struggling state-owned oil giant Pemex to more private investment. 

    Coercion, corruption
    The planned reforms were also pushed by the PAN under Calderon, only to be stalled by the PRI in Congress. Indeed, with its close ties to the oil workers' union, the PRI could prove a bigger obstacle to revamping Pemex than the PAN.

    The PRI for 71 years ruled as a single party known for coercion and corruption, but also for building Mexico's institutions and social services. It was often accused of stealing elections, most infamously the 1988 presidential vote. But PRI governments were also known for keeping a lid on organized crime, whose battles with government and each other under Calderon have taken more than 50,000 lives and the traumatized the country.

    Mexico's drug war: No sign of 'light at the end of the tunnel'

    Repeating a popular belief of many Pena Nieto supporters, Martha Trejo, 37, of Tampico said, "He'll stabilize the cartels. He'll negotiate so they don't hurt innocents."

    Travelers run for cover as federal officers are killed by cops suspected of drug trafficking. Msnbc.com's Dara Brown reports.

    In his victory speech, Pena Nieto vowed that he wouldn't make pacts with organized crime. However, he said he would focus on curbing violence.

    Mexican presidential candidate becomes poster boy for infidelity

    He built his reputation as governor of the State of Mexico in 2005-2011, where he oversaw solid economic growth and brought down the state government's debt. 

    "He did a really good job ... building lots of hospitals, roads and schools," said Lino Posadas, 30, a parking attendant from the town of San Jose del Rincon in the state. 

    But to many critics, though, Pena Nieto is a product created by Mexico's main television companies to serve as a proxy for the country's biggest businesses and the ruling elites in the PRI. 

    "He's been imposed on us by powerful interests like the TV stations and old presidents," said Javier Aguilar, a 62-year-old biochemist. "How can it be that a country this miserable is home to the world's richest man?" he said, referring to tycoon Carlos Slim. 

    Msnbc.com staff, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

    Follow World News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook