Mexicans choose between continuity and change in election overshadowed by violence

When Mexicans go to the polls on June 2, they will do so in an increasingly polarized country that continues to struggle with staggering levels of violence across large swathes of territory.

Dozens of organized crime gangs now control towns, neighborhoods and rural hamlets. Mexico’s largest cartels have opened up new violent fronts in far-flung corners like the jungle-clad stretches of the Mexico-Guatemala border. They not only fight amongst themselves, but extort even the lowest on the economic ladder to fuel their illicit enterprise.

Even the Catholic church has been compelled to intervene, attempting to negotiate peace in conflict zones, but seeing its own priests kidnapped and killed.

Mexico’s next president will almost certainly be a woman. Both the leading candidates are women and the third, a man from a smaller party, trails. That prospect has raised hope among some in Mexico’s most marginalized sectors, including Indigenous women and the country’s 2.5 million domestic…