Colombia and Mexico push for drugs debate. Mexico's drug war visualised. Vázquez Mota and the 2012 Mexican Election. Last Sunday, Mexico's incumbent National Action Party (PAN) chose its presidential candidate: Josefina Vázquez Mota, who won the party's primary to become the first female presidential candidate from a major political party in Mexican history.
But Vázquez Mota's triumph was not a coup just because of her gender. She got the PAN nod (only party members actually vote in Mexican primaries), over President Felipe Calderón's handpicked candidate, Ernesto Cordero. And Vázquez Mota's victory was decisive -- she took 55 percent of the vote to Cordero's 38 percent. Despite their differences, President Calderón, her recent rivals, and the party quickly rallied behind her.
The Monster and Monterrey: The Politics and Cartels of Mexico's Drug War. The first one appeared on February 3, 2010, before sunrise. It hung from the statue of José María Morelos that faces the colonial statehouse at the center of Monterrey. Morelos was a priest turned revolutionary leader in Mexico’s war of independence, and the large white sheet bearing a message from a drug cartel spanned the entire length of the hero’s bronze horse.