SAN SALVADOR AND MEXICO CITY — Mauricio Funes, a television journalist whose party once fought a bloody guerrilla war in El Salvador, on Monday became the country's first leftist president amid emotional symbols of landmark change.
Funes, a 49-year-old moderate elected under the banner of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, cast himself as a motor of change for El Salvador, in the mold of President Obama and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil.
"The Salvadoran people asked for a change," Funes said in his inaugural speech, wearing the blue-and-white presidential sash. "Change starts now."
He said it was time to "reinvent" the country to overcome poverty, social inequities and technological backwardness.
The new president faces a pile of problems, topped by an economic crisis and runaway street crime that has resulted in one of the world's highest homicide rates. Funes will have to navigate between a right-wing opposition that controls Congress and leftist hard-liners within his own party, the FMLN.
"He's in for a bit of a rough ride," said Kevin Casas-Zamora, a former vice president of Costa Rica who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Funes has assembled a moderate-looking Cabinet drawn from Salvadoran intellectuals and allies within the FMLN whose views have mellowed since the conflict ended with the signing of peace accords in 1992.
Funes' economic team will be led by Alex Segovia, an Oxford-trained economist, and Finance Minister Carlos Caceres, a businessman who formerly headed the country's banking association. Hector Dada, a leftist lawmaker, will be economy minister.
Salvadorans worry most about economic troubles: a growing deficit, shrinking growth and rising prices for staple goods.
"The new government is receiving an unfinanced state, basically a government in bankruptcy, with the highest level of indebtedness in the last decades," said Jeannette Aguilar, who runs a polling institute at the Jesuit-run University of Central America in San Salvador, the capital.
El Salvador's history hung over the ceremonies, which came 2 1/2 months after Funes defeated Rodrigo Avila and his rightist Arena, the ruling party for 20 years.
Attending were former fighters of the FMLN, which joined the political system after the peace accords. Funes was met by cheers and a chant long familiar among the Latin American left: "The people, united, will never be defeated."
