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The Times, Gainesville, Georgia | gainesvilletimes.com
Sunday, December 2, 2018 5C
MARCO UGARTE I Associated Press
Mexico’s new President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and outgoing President Enrique
Pena Nieto embrace at the end of the swearing-in ceremony, Saturday, Dec. 1, in the lower
house chambers of the National Congress, in Mexico City.
Mexico gets leftist leader
after decades of technocrats
EDUARDO VERDUGO I Associated Press
Opposition lawmakers hold signs that read in Spanish “False
promises no, Jobs yes” during the inauguration of Mexico’s
new President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Dec. 1.
BY CHRISTOPHER
SHERMAN AND
MARIA VERZA
Associated Press
MEXICO CITY — Andres
Manuel Lopez Obrador took
the oath of office Saturday
as Mexico’s first leftist presi
dent in over 70 years, mark
ing a turning point in one
of the world’s most radical
experiments in opening mar
kets and privatization.
In his first speech to
Congress, Lopez Obrador
pledged “a peaceful and
orderly transition, but one
that is deep and radical ...
because we will end the cor
ruption and impunity that
prevent Mexico’s rebirth.”
Mexico long had a closed,
state-dominated economy,
but since entering the Gen
eral Agreement on Trade
and Tariffs in 1986, it has
signed more free trade
agreements than almost any
other country, and privatized
every corner of the economy
except oil and electricity.
Now, Lopez Obrador
talks a talk not
heard in Mex
ico since the
1960s: He wants
to build more
state-owned oil
refineries and
encourages Mex
icans to “not to
buy abroad, but
to produce in
Mexico what we
consume.”
Even so,
Lopez Obrador
has tried to send
conciliatory
financial mar
kets, which have
been roiled in the
weeks before he
took office.
“I promise, and I’m a man
of my word, that the invest
ments of foreign and interna
tional investors will be safe,
and we will even create con
ditions that will allow them
to get good returns,” he said,
“because in Mexico there
will be honesty, rule of law,
clear rules, economic growth
and confidence.”
But he also harkened back
to his hero, ex-president Laz-
aro Cardenas, who nation
alized the oil industry and
redistributed land during his
1934-40 administration.
“We are going to govern
for everyone, but we are
going to give preference to
the most impoverished and
vulnerable,” Lopez Obrador
said. “For the good of all, the
poor come first.’”
The first foreign dignitar
ies Lopez Obrador met were
U.S. Vice President Mike
Pence and Ivanka Trump.
“I want to say that since
July 1, the day I was elected,
I have received respectful
treatment from President
Donald Trump”, Lopez Obra
dor said.
But he faces a challenge
with a caravan of thou
sands of Central Ameri
can migrants
camped out
on the border,
which Trump
had threatened
to close to keep
them out.
Lopez Obrador
said he wanted to
reach an agree
ment with the
governments and
companies in the
U.S. and Canada
to develop Cen
tral America and
southern Mex
ico, so people
wouldn’t have to
migrate — “to
address in that
way, and not
with coercive measures, the
migration phenomenon.”
That appeared to be an
acknowledgment that Mex
ico is prepared to house
migrants waiting to make
asylum claims in the United
States in exchange for U.S.
development aid.
“The only person he
(Lopez Obrador) can’t afford
to get in a fight with is Trump,
because he knows he could
derail his plan,” said author
and Raymundo Riva Palacio.
“He is willing to do the dirty
work for them.”
Lopez Obrador was clear
in blaming market-oriented
policies he calls neoliberal
ism for Mexico’s problems.
“Mexico’s crisis originated
not only with the failure
of the neoliberal policies
applied over the last 36
years,” he said in his inau
gural speech, “but also in the
prevalence of the filthiest
corruption.”
Mexico’s richest man,
telecom magnate Carlos
Slim, appeared to welcome
the new president’s pledge
to rein in wasteful spending
and fight corruption, saying:
“Everybody wants spending
to be efficiently managed.”
The rowdiest response
from Congress came when
Lopez Obrador pledged “not
to persecute officials of past
administrations,” saying
“revenge is not my strong
suit.”
Legislators responded by
counting loudly to 43 — the
number of students kid
napped and disappeared
in September 2014 — to
remind Lopez Obrador of his
promise to establish a truth
commission to find out what
happened to the students — a
pledge he repeated Saturday.
Prosecutors said they
were kidnapped by corrupt
police and turned over to a
gang that killed them and
burned their bodies.
Combined with a deep
sense of nationalism and his
own place in history, Lopez
Obrador’s inauguration is the
most populist handover of
power in decades.
As to underscore the tran
sition, British Labour Party
leaders Jeremy Corbyn
showed up for inauguration
after visiting Lopez Obrador
a day earlier at his house in
southern Mexico.
“At a time when the fake
populists of the far right are
gaining ground internation
ally — including in Latin
America,” according to a
Labour Party statement
issued in London, Lopez
Obrador “has shown that
a progressive agenda for
change can win power and
take on the status quo.”
‘In Mexico
there will
be honesty,
rule of law,
clear rules,
economic
growth and
confidence.’
Andres Manuel
Lopez Obrador
Mexican president
Pope: No place for gays in clergy
Associated Press
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has
been quoted in a soon-to-be published book
as saying that having gays in the clergy “is
something that worries me” and remark
ing that some societies are considering
homosexuality a “fashionable”
lifestyle.
Italian daily Corriere della
Sera’s website Saturday ran
excerpts of the book in the form
of an interview that Francis gave
about religious vocations. Fran
cis was quoted as describing
homosexuality within the walls of
seminaries, convents and other
religious places where clergy live
as “a very serious question.”
“In our societies, it even seems homo
sexuality is fashionable. And this mental
ity, in some way, also influences the life of
the church,” Francis was quoted as telling
his interviewer, a Spanish-born missionary
priest, Fernando Prado.
The book, based on four hours of conver
sations the two had in August at the Vati
can, will be published in 10 languages next
week. Its Spanish title is “La Fuerza de la
vocation,” (“The Strength of Vocation”).
Francis reiterated past Vatican pro
nouncements about the attention that must
be given to selecting men for admission to
seminaries, saying “we must very much
take care of human and sentimental matu
rity” when training future priests.
Separately, the Italian news agency
ANSA quoted Francis in the book as com
menting on a clergyman who had told him
that having gays in Catholic religious hous
ing “isn’t so grave” because it’s
“only an expression of affection.”
That reasoning “is in error,”
Francis said. “In consecrated life
and priestly life, there is no place
for this kind of affection.”
He said candidates with “neuro
ses or strong unbalances” should
not be accepted “to the priesthood
nor to consecrated life.”
Still, Francis, as he has in the
past, stressed that gay Catholics contrib
ute to the life of the church. He said the
church must always remember that “they
are persons who will live in the service of
the church, of the Christian community, of
the people of God. Let’s never forget this
perspective.”
Francis in his papacy has sought to stress
that while obeying church teachings, the
faithful must also be compassionate and
open to others with different views.
Catholic teaching considers homosexual
activity sinful, and that everyone, except
married heterosexual couples, should
abstain from sex.
Francis
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