Mexico’s president-elect to seek vote on national guard

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s Presidentelect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Wednesday he will put the question of creating a national guard to a referendum conducted by the National Flectoral Institute.

The proposal aimed at confronting the country’s violence would require a constitutional reform, meaning that it would need congressional approval and a green light from state legislatures.

“We’re going to do both things,” Lopez Obrador said, referring to the referendum and constitutional reform.

The president-elect made the announcement to radio journalist Carmen Aristegui during a wide-ranging interview 10 days before he takes office. took after entering Mexico starting Oct. 19.

Also Wednesday, prosecutors in the northern state of Baja California — where the first caravan is now camped out — confirmed that a migrant was run over and killed by an unidentified vehicle on a highway between the border cities of Mexicali and Tijuana.

The state prosecutor’s office said Oscar Baudiel Cruz Alcerro, 17, of Honduras was found dead on the roadside with fractures and a dented skull, with parts from a white car scattered nearby.

Migrants stranded in Mexicali have been walking and hitching rides to join with the main part of the caravan in Tijuana, about 110 miles to the west.

At least one other migrant was killed early in the caravan when he fell off a truck on a highway in the southern state of Chiapas.