Mexico City, April 06 (teleSUR-RHC) Mexican political parties are ready to begin the first official day of legislative and local elections campaign.

The elections will be held on June 7. Mexicans will elect 500 federal deputies, nine governors and 900 mayors. This electoral process takes place amid a social and political crisis in the country, especially in the southern state of Guerrero, where 43 students were forcibly disappeared.

The parents of the students have held protests demanding that midterm elections be canceled, arguing that candidates have ignored the issue in their campaigns.

President Enrique Peña Nieto has called on citizens to vote in the upcoming elections, arguing that Mexico is a “democracy”. But the president is facing widespread social unrest caused by accusations of corruption, as well as high levels of insecurity and decreasing social freedoms in the country. He has passed 11 neoliberal structural reforms during his first 20 months of government.