The transition of power in Mexico was not peaceful. On Dec. 1, Enrique Peña Nieto took over as president while in the streets of the capital, thousands protested.
By Dec. 3, 69 arrests and nine wounded were reported after protests. It was estimated that the damage to shops and public buildings exceeded $500,000.
The protests led to the deployment of 5,000 police and of these, 1,400 surrounded the headquarters of the Congress where the outgoing president, Felipe Calderón, and Peña Nieto represented the formal ceremony of transfer of power.
Peña Nieto will run the country for six years. His victory, which opponents argue was fraudulent, brings back the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that for more than 70 years ruled Mexico without interruption, through a state-party model that the writer Mario Vargas Llosa, in the early nineties, described as the “perfect dictatorship.”
In Hermosillo, Sonora, and Saltillo, Coahuila—two entities that border the United States— PRI headquarters were attacked with molotov cocktails. No one was injured.
In San Francisco, about 30 people protested the arrival of Peña Nieto to the presidency of Mexico. Supporters of the movement “Yo Soy 132” demonstrated on the Golden Gate Bridge and, for a few minutes, put a banner on Civic Center Plaza, across from City Hall, that read “Peña Nieto not wanted.”
—Translation Alfonso Aguirre