• Mexico security forces accused of abducting, murdering civilians

    Yuri Cortez / AFP - Getty Images file

    Relatives and human rights activists show a banner with pictures of missing people while marching during a protest marking the "International Week of the Detained-Disappeared" in May in Mexico City.

    By Gabriel Stargardter, Reuters

    IGUALA, Mexico - Dozens of people were abducted and murdered by Mexican security forces over the past six years during a gruesome war with drug cartels, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday, urging President Enrique Pena Nieto to overhaul the military justice system. 

    The rights group said that since 2007 it has documented 149 cases of people who were never seen again after falling into the hands of security forces, and that the government failed to properly investigate the "disappearances." 

    "The result was the most severe crisis of enforced disappearances in Latin America in decades," the U.S.-based group said. (Link: Human Rights Watch's full report).

    The report was a grim reminder of the dark side of the war on drug cartels that killed an estimated 70,000 people during former President Felipe Calderon's six-year presidency. 

    Human Rights Watch recommended reforming Mexico's military justice system and creating a national database to link the missing with the thousands of unidentified bodies that piled up during the military-led crackdown on drug cartels. 

    The report also illustrates the obstacles that President Pena Nieto, who took office in December, faces in trying to stem the violence, restore order over areas of the country controlled by the drug cartels and end abuses by security forces. 

    For nearly three years, 56-year-old shopkeeper Maria Orozco has sought to discover the fate of her son. She says he was abducted along with five colleagues by soldiers from the nightclub where they worked in Iguala, a parched town south of the Mexican capital. 

    She says a grainy security video, submitted anonymously, shows the moment in 2010 when local soldiers rounded up the men. 

    "We used to see the military like Superman or Batman or Robin. Super heroes," said Orozco. "Now the spirit of the whole country has turned against them." 

    Hers was one of the cases illustrated in the Human Rights Watch report. 

    27,000 disappeared?
    Pena Nieto has vowed to take a different tack to his predecessor Calderon and focus on reducing violent crime and extortion rather than on going head to head with drug cartels. 

    The government last month introduced a long-delayed law to trace victims of the drug war and compensate the families. It says it is moving ahead with plans to roll out a genetic database to track victims and help families locate the disappeared. 

    "There exists, in theory, a database with more than 27,000 people on it," said Lia Limon, deputy secretary of human rights at Mexico's interior ministry. "It's a job that's beginning." 

    Daniel Becerril / Reuters

    Mexican soldiers take part in an operation to locate members of the music group Kombo Kolombia near Mina township in the state of Nuevo Leon on Jan. 27. Sixteen members of the band and other staff members was reported missing by their relatives, according to local media.

    Still, impunity remains rife. The armed forces opened nearly 5,000 investigations into criminal wrongdoing between 2007 and 2012, but only 38 ended in sentencing, according to Human Rights Watch. 

    In its report it describes the impact of the disappearances on victims' families, a daily reality for Ixchel Mireles, a 50-year-old librarian from the northern city of Torreon, whose husband Hector Tapia was abducted by men in federal police uniforms. 

    Neither Mireles nor her daughter has heard from Tapia since that night in June 2010. 

    "I want him to be alive, but the reality just destroys me," said Mireles. "I just want them to give him back, even if he is dead." 

    'Bulletproof'
    Since her husband's disappearance, Mireles has struggled financially, having lost his 40,000 pesos ($3,143) a month salary. She has moved her daughter to a cheaper university and can barely keep up payments on her house. 

    "I now travel by foot," she said, noting that Mexico's social security system does not recognize the disappeared. 

    Some family members of the disappeared have asked for soldiers guilty of rights abuses to be judged like civilians, a move Mexico's Supreme Court has approved. 

    "To us it just seems that the military is untouchable," said Laura Orozco, 36, who says she witnessed her brother's military-led abduction. "They're bulletproof."

    Related:

    Church bricks up windows amid Mexico violence

    Mexicans form vigilante patrols against drug gangs

    From May 2012: Mexico's drug war -- No sign of 'light at the end of the tunnel'

     

     

    Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

  • Despite constant bloodshed, Mexico is ignored during White House race

    Adriana Alvarado / AP

    Rapid response Coahuila state police stand at a checkpoint iin Piedras Negras, Mexico, after a prison break on Sept. 18. Security is among the challenges facing the country.

    By Maria Camila Bernal, Telemundo

    News analysis

    Where is home to the largest number of Americans living abroad, as well as the world's richest man?

    Which country is the United States' third-largest foreign supplier of oil?

    Which nation did President George W. Bush call the U.S.' most important bilateral partner?

    Which close American ally has lost some 60,000 lives in a U.S.-backed effort to combat violent crime?

    The answer to all of the above is Mexico.

    But despite the many ties that bind the two countries, the United States' southern neighbor barely warranted a mention during the presidential campaign, and didn't come up once during the third "foreign policy" debate between Gov. Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama.

    President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney discuss foreign policy in the third and final presidential debate.

    This omission is not lost on many in Mexico.

    "At times the United States sees Mexico as an unconditional ally and they see us with the stigma of an undeveloped nation," said Eduardo Rosales, director of the United States-Mexico relations master's program at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). "But the United States needs to put their eyes south. It is the most important bilateral relationship in the world."

    Some Mexico-related news is grimly familiar to most Americans -- tens of thousands have died in violence since outgoing President Felipe Calderon declared war on the country's drug cartels at the end of 2006.

    Mexico's drug war: No sign of 'light at the end of the tunnel'

    Mexican cartels funnel between $19 and $39 billion worth of illegal drugs to the United States every year, according to the State Department. The United States, in turn, is a major source of weapons for the cartels.

    Mexico's death toll remains stubbornly high and swathes of the country virtually ungovernable despite the Merida Initiative, a $1.9-billion U.S.-funded program aimed at fighting trafficking, organized crime and money laundering.

    A vivid example of the shared security challenges came in August when Mexican police officers thought to be working in cahoots with the cartels ambushed and wounded two U.S. agents.

    Violence, including the discovery of 49 mutilated bodies near the U.S. border, is reaching new levels in the ongoing drug war in Mexico. NBC's Mark Potter reports.

    Oscar Alvarez, a college student in the northern state of Coahuila, alleged that much of the blame for the violence and crime lies with the United States, the world's largest consumer of illegal drugs.

    "The demand on drugs is not being controlled ... and Mexico will always be affected," said Alvarez, 22, who has a small printing business to help cover the costs of school. "Whoever wins (the U.S. election) needs to act. I've heard a lot of talk but I haven't seen anything get done."

    Full coverage: NBCNews.com's The World is Watching series

    More election news at Telemundo

    That the drugs trade and the hyper-violent crime that surrounds it is a shared problem has not been widely accepted in the United States, according to UNAM's Rosales.

    "The problem is the consumption and the things that surround it such as violence and money laundering," he said. "It's a reality that is neglected by the United Sates. But our bloodshed continues to grow."

    Cross-border methamphetamine trade booms amid Mexico's 'war on drugs'

    It isn't clear how incoming President Enrique Pena Nieto of Institutional Revolutionary Party, which governed Mexico for about 70 years, will deal with the cartels, but indications are that many in country are losing patience with the drug war.

    "I'm against the war," former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castañeda told NBC News in May. "At six years on, it is beginning to look more difficult to see any kind of light at the end of the tunnel."

    Jorge Castaneda, former Mexican foreign minister and NBC News Latin America policy expert, talks about the latest developments in Mexico's drug war where this week 49 mutilated bodies were found near the U.S. border.

    Crime and cartels do not define Mexico.

    It is one of the United States' most important trading partners. Its economy, the world's 14th largest, grew at 5.5 percent in 2010 and 3.8 percent in 2011, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, despite the global economic downturn. Trade between the United States, Mexico and Canada -- members of the North American Free Trade Agreement -- is worth more than trade within the eurozone. 

    Also in this series: Iran, Israel name checks illustrate America's twin obsessions

    A symbol of Mexico's growing international economic prominence is Carlos Slim Helu– a telecoms tycoon with wide-ranging investments including a sizable stake in The New York Times – who topped Forbes' list of the world's richest people in 2012.


    But despite billionaire tycoons and high growth rates, the anemic economy north of the border is hurting Mexico.

    Mexico leader's message to US: 'No more weapons!'

    Isidoro Peyron, owner of a family-run tile-making business in Pachuca, central Mexico, says the United States' slowdown has hit him directly. Whoever wins Tuesday's election must kickstart the economy for the sakes of both the U.S. and Mexico, he says.

    "The next president of the United States needs to reactivate the American economy," said Peyron, 63, who has stopped exporting to the United States. "They are (Mexico's) main commercial partner."

    Nevertheless, U.S. trade with Mexico totaled about $500 billion in 2011. 

    Also in this series: Suspicion of US rife as Obama, Romney jab China

    The 2,000-mile border between the two countries makes this trade easier, but the easy access also fuels another issue that both unifies and divides the U.S. and Mexico: immigration.

    At an estimated 12 million, Mexicans are by far the largest immigrant group in the United States. And around 7 million, or 59 percent of undocumented immigrants, are thought to have come from Mexico.

    The Justice Department inspector general found no evidence that Atty. Gen. Eric Holder even knew about the operation that brought more than 2000 guns into Mexico. Fourteen federal law enforcement officials, however, are connected to the botched gun trafficking operation. NBC's Pete Williams reports.

    While Obama decreed earlier this year that hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants who went to the United States illegally as young children would be entitled to remain, the promise he made in 2008 to reform immigration has not been fulfilled.

    Meanwhile, there have been more deportations under the Obama administration than during any other presidency in modern times.

    Also in this series: Should next US president treat Russia as friend or foe?

    But even though Obama has disappointed many for not delivering on immigration reform, the UNAM's Rosales did not hold out hope that Romney will resolve the problems.

    "If Romney got to power, there would be zero chances of an immigration reform," Rosales said. "If Obama is elected a second term, it's still hard, but the chances increase."

    In his public life, Mitt Romney has said and written little about his ancestors' history in Mexico. It's a little-known fact that there's a whole branch of Mitt Romney's family living south of the border, including his second cousin Leighton Romney, and about 40 other relatives descended from religious pioneers who first traveled to Mexico 125 years ago. NBC's Mike Taibbi reports.

    Romney favors a U.S.-Mexico border fence and opposes education benefits to illegal immigrants, as well as offering legal status to illegal immigrants who attend college, although he would support doing so for those who serve in the armed forces.

    More Mexico coverage from NBC News

    Mike Reyes, who currently resides in Mexico City, lived in Arizona for eight years as an illegal immigrant. He feels the U.S. fails to appreciate what immigrants like himself contributed to the country.

    "We hope the situation with Hispanics can be resolved in this election," said Reyes, 45, who works as a driver for the public transportation system despite having a degree in business.

    Net Mexican immigration to the United States has stopped growing and may even have declined in recent years, according to a recent study. But with about half of Mexico's population classified as poor, economic realities are likely to continue propelling many Mexicans north for years to come. 

    So immigration policies pursued by the winner of the 2012 presidential race will have an impact not only on the United States but Mexico.

    More world stories from NBC News:

    Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

     

  • Mexico's president-elect shrugs off claims of vast vote-buying, coercion in election

    Claudia Daut / Reuters

    An electoral worker carries a sealed ballot box for a recount of votes at a district office of the Federal Electoral Institute in Mexico City on Wednesday.

    By msnbc.com's F. Brinley Bruton and news services

    MEXICO CITY - Mexico's next president denied that his party had been involved in any form of intimidation during his party's campaign, in the wake of allegations by at least one observer that Sunday's elections were "perhaps the biggest operation of vote-buying and coercion in the country's history."

    "I am totally, totally certain that the party acted within the law," Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, told a journalist from BBC News on Wednesday.

    Leftist runner-up Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has refused to concede and demanded a new tally, alleging vote-buying and coercion by the PRI, whose seven decades of rule until it lost power in 2000 were marked by widespread allegations of vote-rigging.

    Preliminary results of the presidential vote showed Pena Nieto had officially won more than 38 percent of the vote, 6.5 points clear of Lopez Obrador.

    NBC Latino: Meet Mexico's new President Enrique Pena Nieto

    Mexico's election officials on Wednesday recounted votes from more than half the polling booths in the presidential and congressional elections. 

    While the PRI declared the vote had been fair, some observers said it most definitely had not been. 

    In a dramatic comeback for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, Enrique Pena Nieto claimed victory in Sunday's presidential election in Mexico. NBC's Mark Potter reports.

    "It was neither a clean nor fair election," Eduardo Huchim of the Civic Alliance, a group funded by the United Nations Development Program, told The Washington Post.

    The vote-buying was bribery on a vast scale, Huchim, a former Mexican elections official, told the newspaper. "It was perhaps the biggest operation of vote-buying and coercion in the country's history," he said.

    'Another chance': Mexico's old rulers claim presidential election victory

    Huchim said that the coercion his group alleged would not change the election's outcome.

    Rush to grocery stores
    Feeding suspicion of large-scale vote-buying were scenes of thousands of people rushing to grocery stores this week to redeem pre-paid gift cards they said the PRI had given them ahead of the election. Several told reporters they had been told to turn in a photocopy of their voter ID card in order to get the gift cards. 

    "If they're giving me money, then who isn't going to love them?" an unnamed woman said in one video. "Five hundred pesos is a lot of money!”

    (500 pesos = $37.50)

    YouTube video allegedly showing women discussing having received supermarket cards from PRI

    Under Mexican election law, giving voters gifts is not a crime unless the gift is conditioned on a certain vote or is meant to influence a vote. However, the cost of such gifts must be reported, and cannot exceed campaign spending limits. Violations are usually punished with fines, but generally aren't considered grounds for annulling an election. 

    Shoppers nearly stripped some shelves at a Soriana store in the poor district of Iztapalapa and officials in Mexico City, which is governed by Lopez Obrador's Democratic Revolution, ordered at least one branch of the chain closed for alleged violation of safety codes.

    Marco Ugarte / AP

    A woman shows her pre-paid gift card while waiting in line at a Soriana supermarket in Mexico City on Tuesday. Many of the people at the supermarket say they went to redeem pre-paid gift cards they said were given them by the party that won Mexico's presidency and at least a few cardholders were angry, complaining they didn't get as much as promised, or that their cards weren't working. The incidents are inflaming accusations that the election was marred by massive vote-buying.

    Both the PRI and the supermarket company denied any irregularities. 

    PRI spokesman Eduardo Sanchez said that "Neither the PRI's executive committee, nor Enrique Pena Nieto's campaign has contracted any service from the Soriana grocery store chain.

    Asked if some other local or congressional PRI candidate could have done it on behalf of Pena Nieto, he said "I don't know."

    Watch World News videos on msnbc.com

    Humberto Fayad, a spokesman for the Soriana chain, denied the company had sold huge amounts of gift cards to the PRI.


    "There is no agreement between the PRI and Soriana, or Soriana and any other political party. Soriana is a non-political company," Fayad said.

    The PRI, too, accused rivals in many parts of the country of handing out groceries or using government programs to influence voters. 

    The governing National Action Party accused Pena Nieto's campaign of acquiring about 9,500 prepaid gift cards worth nearly $5.2 million (71 million pesos) to give away for votes. Authorities said a business had bought that number of cards, but that they had found no direct evidence of vote-buying. That investigation continues. 

    Party's checkered past challenges Mexico's president-elect 

    Lopez Obrador had asked for a recount of every vote, but the electoral institute said that just over half the polling booths for the presidential race met the necessary conditions set out by a 2007 electoral law.

    That law stipulates that a recount can only be requested at a polling station where there is a gap of less than 1 percentage point between the two leading candidates, or for other "inconsistencies" that could include hard-to-read ballots.

    The final presidential numbers were due on Thursday.

    In 2006, Lopez Obrador demanded a recount after losing to President Felipe Calderon by slightly more than half a percentage point, or some 250,000 votes. This time he finished more than 3 million votes behind Pena Nieto.

    In an interview with NBC's Spanish language network Telemundo, the apparent winner of Mexico's presidential election, Enrique Pena Nieto, spoke out about the challenges he faces. NBC's Kate Snow reports.

    Electoral law did not permit a full recount in 2006 and his request was refused. Lopez Obrador then called out his supporters who launched street protests that choked Mexico City for weeks.

    Msnbc.com staff, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

    More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

    Follow World News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook

  • Party's notorious past, weak mandate challenge Mexico's president-elect

    In a dramatic comeback for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, Enrique Pena Nieto claimed victory in Sunday's presidential election in Mexico. NBC's Mark Potter reports.

    By msnbc.com news services

    The apparent winner of Mexico's presidential race, Enrique Pena Nieto, struggled Monday with the sticky bonds of his party's notorious past, the limitation of his mandate and an opponent who has yet to concede defeat. 

    His long-ruling and now-returned Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI, won only about 38 percent of the vote and is unlikely to get a majority in Congress. In fact, it may lose seats.

    He faces an old guard in the PRI that still exercises considerable power, an ongoing war against fierce drug cartels and a still sluggish economy. His closest rival, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who polled a higher-than-expected vote of about 32 percent, has refused to accept the loss, and many of his militant followers are suspicious of the results.

    President Barack Obama called Pena Nieto on Monday to congratulate him. The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City said Obama told him the United States "looks forward to advancing common goals, including promoting democracy, economic prosperity, and security in the region and around the globe, in the coming years."

    Mexico's old rulers claim presidential triumph

    Pena Nieto's account of the talk suggested his party has left behind the touchy nationalism of the past. He expressed interest in cooperation in security, commerce and infrastructure, but didn't bring up the traditional Mexican issue of U.S. immigration reform to help the 12 million Mexicans who live in the United States.

    'Productive integration of North America'
    Pena Nieto said he wanted "a relationship that will allow the productive integration of North America."

    In Sunday's elections, Mexicans voted above all for a known quantity, the camera-friendly candidate of the party that ruled Mexico without interruption from 1929 to 2000.

    But the PRI returns to power in unknown political terrain, where Mexico is more divided, more violent and less tightly controlled, raising the potential for political disputes on top of the drug war. The battle against drug cartels has already cost more than 47,500 lives and may have contributed to the decline of President Felipe Calderon's conservative National Action Party, whose candidate dropped to third place with about 25 percent of the preliminary vote count.

    Pena Nieto pledged to continue that anti-drug offensive, but "with a new strategy to reduce violence and protect, above all, the lives of Mexicans." He promised there would be "no pact or truce" with drug cartels, but clearly some supporters expected the PRI to establish some sort of modus vivendi with the gangs, something party leaders were accused of doing in the past.

    "He'll stabilize the cartels. He'll negotiate so they don't hurt innocents," Martha Trejo, 37, a PRI supporter from the Gulf coast city of Tampico, said at Sunday's victory rally.

    Pena Nieto said Monday he will favor "well-aimed, precision strikes" against the cartels, and more cooperation with U.S. authorities, something that Calderon has already developed far beyond his predecessors.

    Hope for new faces
    The biggest immediate task facing Pena Nieto is to convince the 62 percent of voters who didn't vote for him that he is not planning a return to the corrupt, authoritarian and free-spending ways of the PRI of the past. Even some of Pena Nieto's supporters, such as school teacher Maria Santillan, 51, expressed hope he would surround himself "with new faces, people who aren't so corrupted."

    All the potential conflicts were apparent at the victory rally just after midnight at the PRI's cavernous compound in Mexico City, where Pena Nieto was surrounded by graying holdovers from the PRI's glory days and a raucous crowd of supporters expecting jobs, hand-out programs and a quick reduction in drug violence.

    "The PRI have learned to listen to the people, they have learned they are not kings ... to engage with people, understand them, and rule in a coalition with the people," said 20-year-old student Hector Perez.

    "There is no return to the past," Pena Nieto said. "I am going to be a democratic president, who understands the changes the country has undergone in recent decades," he said in an apparent reference to reforms that created a more-level political playing field with energized civic organizations putting pressure on governments.

    Pena Nieto promised a government "of national unity," but hasn't yet named any Cabinet choices, though he has said his campaign chief, Luis Videgaray, 43, would form part of his government team. Videgaray is well regarded by investors and seen as a possible choice for finance minister.

    Nieto also suggested he would seek further internal reforms of his party, which for most of its history followed presidential dictates unquestioningly and rigged votes if it could not win elections that were already tilted sharply in its favor. The party liberalized in its final two decades, but it remained steadfast in protecting its leaders and stonewalling on probes of corruption.

    Calderon was quick to recognize the PRI victory, and his party may serve as an ally in Congress in voting through some measures, such as Pena Nieto's call to open the state-owned oil sector to private investment. Pena Nieto told reporters Monday he would start working immediately on tax, energy and labor reforms, and would "sit down with the president (Calderon) ... to talk about what can be put forward before I take office" on Dec. 1.

    But those very proposals, especially on the oil industry, have drawn the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, the PRD, into the streets for angry protests in the past.

    Rival won't concede
    PRD candidate Lopez Obrador has not conceded Sunday's elections, telling his supporters late Sunday, "You know these elections were not equitable," a reference to his allegations that Pena Nieto exceeded campaign spending limits and benefited from favorable coverage in Mexico's semi-monopolized television industry. Lopez Obrador has not said if he will challenge Sunday's vote results, but he led nearly two months of street blockades in Mexico City in 2006 to protest a narrow loss he attributed to fraud.

    "We have information that indicates something different from what they're saying officially," Lopez Obrador said of the vote results, but added "We're not going to act in an irresponsible manner."

    Lopez Obrador's party actually did better than pre-election polls had projected, winning apparent victories in three of the seven state elections on Sunday. The PRD was on track to win an overwhelming victory in Mexico City, the nation's capital and largest city, as well as taking the governorships of Morelos state to the south and the Gulf coast state of Tabasco, both of which were held by other parties. The PRI seemed to have taken the governorship of the western state of Jalisco from National Action.

    Despite winning the presidency, the PRI may actually lose seats in Congress. The PRI-led coalition with the Green Party had about 38 percent of the congressional vote, with 95 percent of ballots counted on Monday. The coalition won about 46 percent in the last legislative vote three years ago.

    Many Mexicans questioned why most pre-election polls underestimated support for Lopez Obrador by five or six percentage points, well outside those polls' margin of error. Lopez Obrador had claimed the polls were being manipulated, an accusation that accompanied frequent complaints that Pena Nieto was running a far more expensive campaign than his rivals.

    Jorge Buendia of the polling firm Buendia and Laredo said some people who said they would vote for Pena Nieto appear to have changed their minds. There was also a surge in support for Lopez Obrador in the final days that couldn't be fully measured because electoral law effectively prohibits polling in the last week before the elections.

    The PRI's victory appeared to be, above all, a triumph of pragmatism and power-broker politics. Few of those at his victory rally Sunday expressed the high-flown rhetoric about democratic transition and reform that were popular when National Action won the 2000 and 2006 elections. For its decades in power, the party excelled at handing out patronage jobs as well as work and business permits in exchange for votes.

    Jaime Bernal, 48, who works as an aide to a PRI congressman, said at the rally the secret to the party's comeback was recognizing "the important thing for people is that they have something to eat, a job to support themselves."

    But he also praised Pena Nieto's ease at working crowds, shaking hands and hugging people, a talent the party had lost during two decades of PRI presidents known as market-oriented "technocrats."

    The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

    More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

    Follow World News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook


  • Mexican presidential candidate becomes poster boy for infidelity

    Alexandre Meneghini / AP

    Cars pass by a billboard of Mexican presidential candidate Enrique Pena Nieto of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) in Mexico City, Wednesday, June 6, 2012.

    By Reuters

    Mexican presidential front-runner Enrique Pena Nieto has become the unwitting poster boy for a website promoting adultery after he admitted cheating on his first wife.

    A new Mexican billboard by ashleymadison.com, a site that helps married people arrange affairs, shows Pena Nieto with an index finger over his lips in a hushing gesture.

    Next to him are the words: "Unfaithful to his family. Faithful and committed to his country."

    Pena Nieto, candidate of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), has said he fathered two children out of wedlock by different women while married to his first wife.

    Henry Romero / Reuters

    Enrique Pena Nieto, presidential candidate of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), arrives to attend "10 questions on education", as part of a civic meeting with the presidential candidates in Mexico City June 4, 2012.

    The billboard, mounted above a busy avenue in Mexico City, shows the 45-year-old with bright red lipstick on his collar. His campaign had no immediate comment on the advertisement.

    Ricardo Castaneda, Ashley Madison's representative in Mexico, said the billboard was put in the capital this week and that others are planned for the cities of Monterrey and Guadalajara.

    Castaneda told Mexican media no one would have found out about Pena Nieto's extramarital affair, if the presidential hopeful had employed Ashely Madison's services.


    The masthead on the company's website reads "Life is short. Have an affair," and Castaneda said the service has acquired 300,000 users since opening for business in Mexico in November, making it Ashley Madison's fastest growing market.

    Pena Nieto's looks have made him popular among women, who make up a majority of eligible voters in Mexico. He is often mobbed by screaming female followers on campaign.

    Pena Nieto's first wife, who died in 2007, bore him three children. He is now married to a popular soap opera star and is favorite to win the July 1 presidential election.

    More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

    Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world

    Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.