Welcome to Mexico’s surreal elections

Enrique Peña Nieto, who has the lowest approval rating of any president in the past two decades, still has three years left in office, but there are more than 1,200 positions at stake in the mayoral and congressional contests to be decided on 7 June.

This is the first time independent candidates have been allowed to participate in Mexico, an unwelcome development for the three major parties that have been tarred by years of bloodshed. An estimated 100,000 people have been killed since 2006 and at least 23,000 have disappeared, including 43 students who were infamously abducted in southern Mexico last September.

The government says the students were massacred by a drug gang, but their parents continue to search tirelessly for them. They are calling for a nationwide boycott of the elections, arguing that a vote for any politician is a vote for corruption and impunity…

Click here to read this feature in full at The Independent on Sunday.