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This story was originally published before Mexican election results were announced. Last night, July 1, election authorities announced that the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s Enrique Peña Nieto won with 38 percent of the vote.

Mexico City — On Sunday July 1, most of Mexico’s 79 million voters will go to the polls and cast votes for one of four leading presidential candidates. For the overwhelming majority of the campaign, the dashing and young Enrique Pena Nieto, who hailed from the party that ruled Mexico with an iron fist for 71 years, has led the race by wide margins, according to polls.

But on May 11, in an instant as quick as a smartphone-posted tweet, everything changed–and not only for Pena Nieto. Some argue that the emergence of a burgeoning and nationwide student-led social movement has changed the very future of Mexican democracy itself.

At first, everything went as planned. Pena Nieto had successfully negotiated a stage-managed appearance at the Iberoamericana, a prestigious university based in a well-to-do suburb of Mexico City.

“EPN [Pena Nieto] had turned down two prior invitations to come to the Ibero, due to concerns of student opposition and lack of control. Finally, the third time, he agreed to come when stage-managed conditions were set,” said an insider who works for the school administration and agreed to speak anonymously to AlterNet.