Mexicans gear up to vote in presidential elections on Sunday

By James Blears - Mexico City

The two main presidential candidates in Mexico's election are the former Mayor of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, and ex-Senator and technology entrepreneur, Xochitl Galvez.

Ms. Sheinbaum is a protégée of current President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and is the candidate of the Morena Party, which he founded in 2011 and which is allied with the Green Party. 

Ms. Galvez is the candidate of the Revolutionary Institutional Party, the National Action Party, and the Party of Democratic Revolution.

Ideologically, they have nothing in common, apart from their desire to win the presidential election.

The third candidate is Jorge Alvarez Maynez of the Citizens Movement.

Ms. Sheinbaum is a physicist with a doctorate in environmental engineering, while Ms. Galvez founded a company that focuses on energy savings, high-tech construction and security. 

There are also simultaneous elections for 128 Senators, 500 members of Congress, and 20,000 local government jobs, including mayors. 

Women won the right to vote seventy years ago, but the political stranglehold of machismo which is infamous in Mexico, prevailed via the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) until the year 2000.

There followed four more male president. It's taken this long for two leading female candidates to emerge, one of whom is likely to become the next President of Mexico.