Murders in Mexico rose by 33 percent in 2018, shattering the previous record for the second year in a row, according to an official tally released last month. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, or AMLO as he is known in Mexico, campaigned on a new approach to the country’s spiraling security crisis, promising to de-militarize law enforcement efforts and address the social issues that he says are the root causes of violence. But in an interview with WPR, Eric Olson, a global fellow and security expert with the Mexico Institute at The Wilson Center in Washington, says a closer look [...]
Only six weeks into his presidency, Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador already faces his first major crisis. In part self-inflicted, in part a consequence of the corrupt and weak institutions he inherited from his predecessors, it is nevertheless a sign that governing Mexico will be a formidable challenge for the man who promised nothing less than a fundamental transformation of the country and on whom millions of Mexicans are resting their hopes. Citizens across western and central Mexico, which includes the 25 million people living in Mexico City and the surrounding State of Mexico, have been waiting in line for [...]
Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about education policy in various countries around the world. Last month, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador began the process of canceling his predecessor’s controversial education reform initiative. The move follows through on one of Lopez Obrador’s key campaign promises and is widely seen as a gift to the country’s powerful teachers’ unions, which supported his presidential run. Enacted in 2013 by then-President Enrique Pena Nieto, the reforms established an evaluation and review system for the hiring and promotion of teachers in Mexico’s underperforming public education system. Previously, those processes [...]
