Mexico’s Election

For Mexico, the challenges mount. Poverty is rife. Corruption is the norm in daily life. Drug gangs have murdered more than 100,000 people in the last decade. And U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to rip up the free trade agreement that’s shaped the country’s modern economy. Frustration over the state of affairs has led to growing signs that Mexicans are ready for change, a spirit that’s shaped the 2018 presidential election campaign.

Polls indicate that the likely winner of the July 1 presidential election will be Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the populist founder of the Morena party who’s run for president twice before. The 64-year-old former Mexico City mayor, widely known as AMLO, calls the political establishment a “mafia of power” and vows to use money lost to corruption to boost social welfare spending. Voters overwhelmingly disapprove of the current president, Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, who’s barred by the constitution from running again. At least eight former PRI governors are being investigated or are in jail and Peña Nieto has been dogged by corruption charges and allegations of human rights violations by his government. And he’s struggled to deal with Trump, who’s stepped up efforts to deport unauthorized Mexican immigrants and launched a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta. But a bigger concern for voters is escalating violence. Mexico’s homicide rate reached a record monthly high in May — 2,890 killed — and total homicides in the first five months of 2018 were 21 percent higher than the same period in 2017. Since September 2017, more than 100 politicians have been assassinated. And drug violence has spread into tourist spots like Cancun and Los Cabos.