For the 41 million Mexican voters who went to the polls on July 2, the major decision was whether they were going to continue to follow the same free-market model with limited spending and greater foreign investment that the country has had for the past six years, or opt for change. Felipe Calderón, the political heir apparent of Vicente Fox, represented the conservative National Action Party (PAN). Calderón was the candidate of continuity and free markets, while Andrés Manuel López Obrador — of the Party of the Democratic Revolution — was the candidate of change. Enrique de la Garza Toledo, coordinator of social sciences at the graduate school of Mexico’s Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM), says that Lopez Obrador “rejects the logic of leaving things entirely to the free market. He thinks that the State is important. He criticizes the model and the way it has functioned until now, because stable growth has not been achieved. Nor has there been an appreciable decline in poverty.…