MEXICO CITY, July 2: Mexicans voted for a new president on Sunday, torn between joining a resurgent left-wing camp in Latin America or sticking to pro-business policies and a close alliance with the United States.

In a country crucial to US interests in border security, trade and immigration, polls show an extremely close race between leftist anti-poverty crusader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, and conservative Felipe Calderon from the ruling party.

Lopez Obrador, 52, headed opinion polls by about only two points after almost six months of bruising campaigning that split a country still finding its feet with full democracy after seven decades of one-party rule ended in 2000.

The leftist, who rejects comparisons to US foe Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, promises to slash bureaucracy to pay for welfare programmes he says will lift millions out of poverty.

“Lopez Obrador is the only one who can bring a new Mexican revolution where the poor are the ones who win,” said student Amalia Rodriguez, 19.

In the border city of Nuevo Laredo, scores of Mexicans streamed over the Rio Grande from Texas to vote, many seeking a crackdown on drug gang violence that has killed some 1,000 people throughout the country this year.

Former energy minister Calderon, 43, says Lopez Obrador would overspend on ambitious social programmes and huge projects like a bullet train from the capital to the US border.

“I’m afraid of the unknown with Lopez Obrador,” housewife Enriqueta Navarro, 66, said in the capital’s middle-class Satelite district.

“I think he is going to be like a Chavez or a (Cuban President Fidel) Castro,” she said.

Turnout was expected to be reasonably high, at about two-thirds of Mexico’s 71 million voters. Voting ends at 8pm (0100 GMT on Monday).

Lopez Obrador supporters complain that President Vicente Fox’s National Action Party failed to live up to promises to create jobs and alleviate poverty, even though Mexico has one of the region’s most stable economies.

Lines of voters in the Zapotec Indian town of San Bartolome Quialana were made up mostly of women in long skirts and bright tops as many men have emigrated to the United States.—Reuters