MEXICO: Mexico's presidential campaign has officially begun, with the left-wing former mayor of Mexico City, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the frontrunner, according to opinion polls.
The five registered candidates fanned out this week to remote villages and crowded urban neighbourhoods. And, most importantly, their faces began to appear on broadcasts.
Two other major candidates are expected to join Mr López Obrador in a tight, three-way fight.
Roberto Madrazo leads the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known by its Spanish initials, PRI, which ruled Mexico for seven decades until the last presidential election, in 2000. Felipe Calderón represents the centre-right National Action Party of outgoing president Vicente Fox.
Mr López Obrador (52) spoke to residents in the central plaza of the most impoverished municipality in Mexico, Metlatonoc, in the mountains of the southern state of Guerrero.
The location focused attention on what is expected to be the central message of the López Obrador campaign: that Mexico's "economic model", founded on liberalised trade with the United States and Canada, has excluded its impoverished majority.
Mr López Obrador sought to assuage the fears of those who say he is too radical to manage the Mexican economy.
"I want this to be heard near and far - we will have a market economy," Mr López Obrador said. "But the state will promote development and fight inequality."
Mr Calderón, a 43-year-old former energy minister and Harvard graduate, has fashioned himself as an able technocrat best suited to continuing the economic reforms launched by Mr Fox, who is prohibited by law from seeking re-election.
Mr Calderón opened his campaign before an estimated 700 people in the Iztapalapa district of the capital city, a dense warren ravaged by crime.
"I might have a lot of defects; I am just your average sinner," Mr Calderón told the crowd. "But I have a strong character and I am resolved to work to . . . keep crime in check in the federal district and the entire country."
Polls this week showed Mr Calderón running second, between six and eight percentage points behind Mr López Obrador. Third in the polls is Mr Madrazo, the 53-year-old former governor of the Gulf Coast state of Tabasco.
"My hand will not tremble to bring the order and security that our country needs," he said in Ecatepac, a suburb of Mexico City.