As he is sworn into office as Mexico's new president today, Enrique Peña Nieto may privately wonder if his campaign promises to slash the death toll from his country's ferocious drug conflict can ever be fulfilled.
Despair at the bloodbath is what drove millions of Mexicans to vote for Mr Peña Nieto and his reviled Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, whose previous corruption-riddled, 71-year rule ended in 2000 after it was finally forced to stop rigging elections.
The telegenic 46-year-old former state governor has vowed not to enter unwritten deals with the cartels – as the PRI is widely thought to have done in the 1990s – and to carry on the pursuit of the drug barons. "We will continue working strongly to combat drugs and insecurity with innovative policies so that consumption [within Mexico] falls," said Emilio Lozoya, widely tipped for a cabinet post.
Mr Peña Nieto's proposed reforms include the creation of a new 40,000-strong paramilitary police force, a major increase in the numbers of the existing federal police, and centralising security decision-making in the hands of his interior minister.
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