• What’s happening in Mexico?

On Sunday, 41 million voters cast their choice for the country’s next president. By week’s end, election officials said Felipe Calderon had polled 2,43,000 more votes than his nearest rival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. That amounts to a victory margin of less than 1 per cent, giving Obrador hope enough to call his supporters on to the streets and plan a legal challenge.

• Calderon is a conservative. So does this mark a reversal of the current trend of left-wing candidates assuming power in Latin America?

Calderon, a 43-yr-old lawyer, is indeed committed to free market. He has countered the former Mexico City mayor, Obrador’s populist campaign by promising to draw foreign investment, to consolidate free trade—especially with the US. But even for the left spectrum of Mexico’s politics, a Hugo Chavez sort of anti-America plank is not possible. Just too many Mexicans count on remittances from family members working across the border. In fact, they account for the largest chunk of foreign exchange after revenue from oil exports.

• What about this grandiose talk of 12 elections that could change Latin America?

As Jorge Castaneda, who served as Mexico’s foreign minister between 2000 and 2003, has argued, the greater battle being fought in Latin American politics is not between right and left, but between “national interests and ideology”. Between November 2005 and December 2006, 12 countries in the region elect a government, and Castaneda’s thesis unlocks the message in the vote. (See map.) That battle is being waged within the left: and the poster boys of the two directions are Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Both their countries, interestingly, go to polls this year.

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