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Mexico goes into Sunday\u2019s election<\/a><\/span> deeply divided: friends and relatives no longer talk politics for fear of worsening unbridgeable divides, while drug cartels have split the country into a patchwork quilt of warring fiefdoms<\/a><\/span>. The atmosphere is literally heating up, amid a wave of unusual heat, drought, pollution and political violence.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear whether Mexico\u2019s next president will be able to rein in the underlying violence and polarization.<\/p>\n Soledad Echagoyen, a Mexico City doctor who supports President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s Morena party, says she can no longer talk about politics with her colleagues.<\/p>\n \u201cIn order to not lose friendships, we decided not to bring up politics starting six years ago, because we were arguing, and the attacks started to get personal,\u201d said Dr. Echagoyen.<\/p>\n Being a critic of the current administration does not appear to be easier.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s too much hate,\u201d said Mexico City student Luis \u00c1valos, 21. He said some of his friends accuse him of \u201cbetraying the country\u201d for not supporting L\u00f3pez Obrador<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n Opposition presidential candidate X\u00f3chitl G\u00e1lvez<\/a><\/span> has focused her ire on L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s \u201chugs not bullets\u201d policy of not confronting the drug cartels.<\/p>\n She faces former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum<\/a><\/span>, who is running for L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s Morena party. Sheinbaum, who leads in the race, has promised to continue all of L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n L\u00f3pez Obrador himself likes to depict every issue as a struggle between the forces of the \u201cgood people\u201d and shadowy conservative conspiracies, and he has done a lot to stoke the flames of division and anger.<\/p>\n \u201cMore than an election, this is a referendum to choose the kind of country we want,\u201d L\u00f3pez Obrador said recently. And it really is a referendum on him: he \u2014 much like Donald Trump in the United States \u2014 is the central figure in the campaign.<\/p>\n In Mexico, just as across the globe, forces of angry, charismatic populism are fighting it out with an income-polarized liberal democracy. Issues of national identity, the influence of foreigners and economic exclusion have divided the country into warring camps.<\/p>\n \u201cIn this country, what\u2019s being built isn\u2019t a sense of citizenship, but rather of voter bases,\u201d said Gloria Alcocer, the director of the civic-minded magazine Voz y Voto, roughly \u201cVoice and Vote.\u201d L\u00f3pez Obrador is prohibited by law from running for reelection to another six-year term.<\/p>\n The battle lines are drawn: the ruling Morena Party already holds the governorships of 23 of the country\u2019s 32 states, and is going for them all. It already has a simple majority in both houses of Congress, and wants a two-thirds majority so it can amend the Constitution at will.<\/p>\n It is hard to describe how chilling that is for some Mexicans who spent more than four decades trying to build a formal democracy, with checks and balances<\/a><\/span>, watchdog agencies<\/a><\/span> and strict electoral rules<\/a><\/span>, almost all of which Morena has said it would like to defund or eliminate if it gets the chance.<\/p>\n Like the old ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party \u2014 which held Mexico\u2019s presidency without interruption for a record 70 years \u2014 Morena hasn\u2019t hesitated to use the government\u2019s power to influence elections, hand out money or embark on big building schemes that may never be truly finished<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s also hard to describe how attractive L\u00f3pez Obrador policies have been for many Mexicans who have felt excluded<\/a><\/span> under 40 years of what he calls \u201cneo-liberal,\u201d market-oriented administrations.<\/p>\n Under L\u00f3pez Obrador, Mexico has more than doubled its still-tragically low minimum wage (now about $15 per day, or about $2 per hour). While that\u2019s not going to change anybody\u2019s life \u2014 a Big Mac now costs about $5.19 in Mexico, compared to an average of $5.69 in the U.S. \u2014 it is the underlying appeal of Morena\u2019s platform that draws many voters.<\/p>\n The implicit message for many Mexicans during market-oriented governments over the decades was that they were somehow wrong for not learning more English, working in manual labor and not in the tech economy, receiving government subsidies and living in a traditional, family-dominated culture.<\/p>\n L\u00f3pez Obrador turned this narrative on its head: he intentionally mispronounces English phrases, glorifies manual labor, says subsidies are good, favors state-run companies and says Mexico is strong precisely because of its family values and Indigenous culture: he has even claimed those same values make Mexicans immune to drug addiction.<\/p>\n L\u00f3pez Obrador says fighting the drug cartels \u2014 which have taken over large swaths of Mexico, extorting protection money from all walks of life \u2014 is a foreign idea, one imposed on Mexico by the United States. He has opted instead for a \u201chugs not bullets\u201d approach and limiting cooperation with U.S. authorities in fighting the gangs.<\/p>\n Sheinbaum<\/a><\/span> is an academic who lacks L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s charisma, folksy style and mass appeal. She says her administration will follow the outgoing president\u2019s policies, but with more data to back up her decisions.<\/p>\n G\u00e1lvez, a woman who went from a poor Indigenous town to starting her own tech firm<\/a><\/span>, has been the wild card in the race: her plain-spoken, folksy approach has produced both punchy phrases and monumental gaffes. Both women are 61. A third little-known male candidate from a small party has trailed far behind both women.<\/p>\n Sunday\u2019s elections \u2014 which will also decide congressional seats and thousands of local posts \u2014 are different from those of the past in other ways.<\/p>\n About 27 candidates \u2014 mostly running for mayor or town councils \u2014 have been killed so far this year. While that number is not much higher than in some past elections, what is unprecedented is the mass shootings: candidates used to be murdered in direct attacks that killed only them, but now criminals have taken to spraying whole campaign events with gunfire.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n And, as international studies professor Carlos A. P\u00e9rez Ricart notes, \u201cwhere there are no shootings, it\u2019s because (local government) institutions have already been taken over\u201d by the cartels.<\/p>\n\n\n