Julia Fuertes digs into her handbag to retrieve a pair of earrings she has made at home. Simple circles of coloured card, they are adorned with photographs of a dashing man cut from celebrity magazines. He looks like a Mexican soap star, except that one day soon he might be running this country.

We are at a rally in a cavernous convention centre in the Santa Fe district of Mexico City for Enrique Peña Nieto, the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI, in Sunday’s presidential election. He has just ended a speech filled with pledges for a better future and has descended into the crowd of about 5,000 supporters. Young women and girls press against the barriers wailing his name, desperate to get close. A disco chorus is pumped from loud speakers, “Peña, Peña, Ooh-Ah-Ah”. Somewhere at the back a brass band is striking up.

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