Enrique Peña Nieto

Enrique Peña Nieto (born 20 July 1966) is the 57th and current President of Mexico. He is a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the former governor of the State of Mexico from 2005 to 2011. Peña Nieto was declared President-elect after the Mexican general election was declared valid by the Federal Electoral Tribunal. He assumed the office on 1 December 2012, succeeding Felipe Calderón as President of Mexico, thereby marking the return to power of the party that ruled Mexican politics for 71 consecutive years.

 

Peña Nieto had announced his presidential candidacy in September 2011, four days after leaving office as governor, formally registering in November of the same year. With only 38% of the votes and without a legislative majority, Peña Nieto marked the return of the PRI after a twelve-year hiatus on 2 July 2012, a party that had governed Mexico uninterrupted for 71 years until it was defeated by the National Action Party (PAN) in the year 2000.

The return of the PRI was not welcomed by everyone. Marches against Peña Nieto drew thousands of people across Mexico, particularly from the Yo Soy 132 student movement, who protested supposed voting irregularities and alleged media bias. Others protested that during its time in power, the PRI became a symbol of corruption, repression, economic mismanagement, and electoral fraud, and many Mexicans and urban dwellers are worried that its return may signify a return to Mexico's past. Nonetheless, Peña Nieto has denied such accusations, and promised that his government will be much more democratic, modern, and open to criticism. He also pledged that he will continue to fight organized crime and that there will be no pacts with the criminals. 

The rule of the PAN, which was unable to pass reforms because it lacked a congressional majority, along with the idea that the PRI "knows how to govern" and how to manage the drug cartels, was compelling enough for many voters to cast their vote for Peña Nieto. Throughout the election, he maintained a wide lead in the polls. Peña Nieto proposed that he will reinvigorate Mexico's economy, permit the national oil company, Pemex, to compete in the private sector, and reduce drug violence that has left more than 55,000 dead in six years.

From: www.wikipedia.org

Felipe Calderón

Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa (born August 18, 1962) is the current President of Mexico. He assumed office on December 1, 2006, and was elected for a single six-year term through 2012. He is a member of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), one of the three major Mexican political parties.

Prior to the presidency, Calderón received two masters degrees and went on to work within the PAN while it was still an important opposition party. Calderón served as National President of the party, Federal Deputy, and Secretary of Energy in Vicente Fox's cabinet.

He served in the cabinet of the previous administration up until he resigned to run for the Presidency and secured his party's nomination. The Federal Electoral Institute's official electoral results gave Felipe Calderón the largest vote total and the presidency but the decision was contested by Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Calderón's victory was confirmed on September 5, 2006 by the Federal Electoral Tribunal.

Felipe Calderón passed several reforms during his presidency, breaking through some of the gridlock faced since Mexico's transition to democracy. He would like to be remembered for building hospitals, fortifying education and legal institutions, and his environmental initiatives, but would likely and unjustly be remembered for the drug war.

Background and Family Life

Felipe Calderón was born in Michoacán. He is the youngest of five brothers and son of Carmen Hinojosa Calderón and the late Luis Calderón Vega.

His father was a co-founder of the National Action Party and an important political figure. He occupied state posts and served a term as federal deputy. Calderón spent most of his life working within the party and spent most of his free time promoting the PAN. The young Calderon was active in his father's campaigns. As a boy he distributed party pamphlets and flyers, rode PAN campaign vehicles and chanted slogans at rallies.

After growing up in Morelia, Calderón moved to Mexico City, where he received a bachelor's degree in law from the Escuela Libre de Derecho. Later, he received a master's degree in economics from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) and a Master of Public Administration degree in 2000 from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Following his father's example, he joined the PAN. It was in the National Action Party where Calderón met his wife, Margarita Zavala, who served in Congress as a federal deputy. They have three children, María, Luis Felipe and Juan Pablo. Calderon is Roman Catholic.

From : www.wikipedia.org

Joaquín Guzmán Loera

Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera (born April 4, 1957), nicknamed El Chapo ("Shorty") for his 1.68 m (5 ft 6 in) stature, is a Mexican drug lord who heads Mexico's and the world's largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization, the Sinaloa Cartel, named after the Mexican Pacific coast state of Sinaloa where it was initially formed. He became Mexico's top drug kingpin in 2003 after the arrest of his rival Osiel Cárdenas of the Gulf Cartel, and is now considered, "The most powerful drug trafficker in the world," by the United States Department of the Treasury. Guzmán has been ranked by Forbes magazine as one of the most powerful people in the world every year since 2009; ranking 41st, 60th and 55th respectively. He was also listed by Forbes as the 10th richest man in Mexico (1,140th in the world) in 2011.

Guzman Loera's Sinaloa Cartel smuggles multi-ton cocaine shipments from Colombia through Mexico to the United States, and has distribution cells throughout the U.S. The organization has also been involved in the production, smuggling and distribution of Mexican methamphetamine, marijuana, and heroin.

In addition, Forbes considers Guzmán the "biggest druglord of all time" and the DEA strongly believes he has surpassed the influence and reach of Pablo Escobar, and now considers him "the godfather of the drug world." The U.S. offers a $5 million USD reward for information leading to his capture. The Government of Mexico offers a reward of $30 million pesos for such information.

Biography

Guzmán was born on April 4, 1957 to a poor family in the rancho of La Tuna near Badiraguato, where he sold oranges as a child. He had two sisters: Armida and Bernarda; and had 4 brothers: Miguel Ángel, Aureliano, Arturo and Emilio. Little is known about Guzmán's early years. His father was supposedly a cattle rancher, as were most in the area; it is believed, however, that he also grew opium poppy. Guzmán's father had connections to higher-ups in the Sinaloan capital of Culiacán through Pedro Avilés Pérez. Avilés was a key player in the Sinaloa drug business, seen as a pioneer for finding new methods of transporting the rural produce to urban areas for shipment by way of airplanes. He is reportedly the first to use airplanes to smuggle cocaine to the United States. By the time Guzmán was in his 20s, his connection to Avilés would be his window of opportunity to start in the drug business and make his fortune. In the late 1970s, Héctor "El Güero" Luis Palma Salazar gave Guzmán his first big break. El Güero placed him in charge of transporting drugs from the Sierra to the cities and border and overseeing shipments. He was ambitious and pressed his bosses to increase the quantities of drugs being moved north.

In the early 1980s, Guzmán was introduced to Miguel "El Padrino" Ángel Félix Gallardo. Gallardo put him in charge of logistics – effectively coordinating airplane flights, boat arrivals and trucks coming from Colombia into Mexico. El Güero still controlled deliveries to clients in the United States, but Guzmán would soon work directly for El Padrino himself. Although early on Guzmán lived in Guadalajara, as did Gallardo, his command and control center was actually located in Agua Prieta, Sonora. After Félix Gallardo's capture, Guzmán took control of the entire Sinaloa Cartel. Guzmán is wanted by the governments of Mexico and the United States and by INTERPOL; so far he has evaded operations to capture him.

From : www.wikipedia.org