alternatehistory.com

...President Creel had begun with high hopes for continuing Vincente Fox's reforms, but was again and again halted by disagreements with PAN and PRD deputies in Congress, who had formed an informal coalition to prevent Creel from passing what they considered to be unwise reforms. Despite this, Creel was able to pass reforms that enacted pay caps on civil servant positions, and negotiated several favorable trade deals with neighboring nations as well as expanded Mexico's image by getting Mexico included with other similarly industrializing nations like India, China, Brazil and South Africa.

This, however, was in the backdrop of increasingly aggressive drug cartels taking effective control over towns and areas that were used on the route to smuggle drugs into the United States. Creel sent the Mexican Army in, and aid came from the United States (especially along the shared border between the two countries), but corruption within the underfunded Mexican military, the brutality of the cartels and the luxuriousness of the drug trade meant that by the time Creel left office, only the cartel heads had changed- old heads, either killed by Army forces, taken to jail or offed by their own replaced by younger, even more ruthless replacements.

Former Secretary of Finance Ernesto Cordero became the PAN nominee with little difficulty and had an uphill struggle against him, with Creel having public disagreements with his US counterpart Bob Riley over Riley's refusal to impose stricter gun control laws or ease American laws on marijuana that Creel felt would weaken the power of the cartels in Mexico. The PRI nominated former Sonora Governor and senator Manlio Fabio Beltrones, who campaigned on a strong "law and order" platform and harked back to the PRI days when Mexicans would not have to worry about drug gangs controlling swathes of their country. The PRD chose former Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard as their nominee.

Ebrard chose to make his stand on issues instead of posturing like Beltrones, but initially this seemed foolhardy as Beltrones opened up a large lead ahead of him and Cordero. Then, Ebrard slowly chipped away at Beltrones' lead as voters began to recall (with help from the PRD and PAN campaigns) the rampant corruption of the PRI years and troublesome questions began to emerge about Beltrones' connections with drug gangs as well during his stint as governor of the border state of Sonora.



Ebrard walked away with a six-point victory as a result, becoming the first PRD president of Mexico and marked a big shift away from the center-right policies of the Fox and Creel administration. President Ebrard has continued the fight against the cartels with his US allies, but his policy of drug liberalization, replacement of military attacks with police strikes against all but the biggest cartel hideouts, and frequent overtures to the United States to reform its drug policies have proven controversial in Washington. It is unknown if Ebrard's reforms, which have made some progress, will be enough to give his party a second term in 2018...