Mexico: at the crossroads: Canning Papers

Executive Summary

In part, this is a good time to re- view where the country is heading simply because in early December Presi- dent Enrique Peña Nieto of the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) will mark his first two full years in office. Mexican federal governments serve six-year terms known as sexenios, so at the two-year point the president has completed one-third of his expected time in office (unlike many other Latin American countries, Mexico retains a long-standing constitutional ban on consecutive presidential re-election). But this is not just a question of con- venient timing: as anyone who has been following Mexico in the international press will know, the country is currently in the middle of a major political crisis: how it deals with it may be decisive for the next four years.