TWO of Latin America's three biggest economies, Brazil and Argentina, are headed by women (see article and article). Might Mexico make it a clean feminist sweep next year? The ruling National Action Party (PAN) has been struggling to find a popular candidate for the presidential election in 2012 (the constitution bars the president, Felipe Calderón, from seeking a second term). The opposition has mocked the PAN's hopefuls as the “seven dwarves”. The American ambassador privately described them as “grey”. (He was withdrawn soon after the offending cable was leaked.) But polls suggest that Josefina Vázquez Mota, the PAN's leader in the Chamber of Deputies, is emerging as a possible technicolour candidate.

Ms Vázquez has almost doubled her support among PAN sympathisers since January (although a poll this month suggests it has now plateaued). This surge followed a whirlwind national tour of characteristic hyperactivity. One opposition senator compares her to rising damp: “everywhere and impossible to tackle”. She does not have Mr Calderón's endorsement, but since he is increasingly unpopular that may actually help her.

As social-development minister under Mr Calderón's predecessor, Vicente Fox, Ms Vázquez cleared out incompetent officials. As education minister under Mr Calderón she clashed with Elba Esther Gordillo, the intransigent boss-for-life of the powerful teachers' union. Mr Calderón, who made an electoral pact with Ms Gordillo in 2006, eventually sacked Ms Vázquez—a sign of her failure, say detractors, or of the president's lack of backbone, according to her boosters.

Ms Vázquez says that as president education would be her priority, with wider access to secondary school and university, and better teacher-training. She talks of a more efficient justice system (with a focus on everyday impunity and corruption, rather than the drug war), but is so far short on specifics. Like most in the conservative PAN she is against abortion; on gay marriage, recently legalised in Mexico City, she equivocates. She talks of the need to strengthen Mexico's weak governmental institutions to match the country's achievement of full democracy in 2000. “The new hasn't yet been born and the old hasn't yet died,” she says.

That will be one line of attack against the PAN's principal rival, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ran Mexico with an iron fist for 71 years. Reminding people of the faults of that era, without boring younger Mexicans by banging on about a past they don't remember, will be key to preventing the PRI from returning next year, she says.

It will be an uphill battle. The PRI's most likely candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, is 30 or 40 points ahead of Ms Vázquez in most polls. After a decade of sluggish economic growth and five years of drug-war violence, voters are fed up with the PAN. Some surveys predict that the party will come third, behind a left-wing party. Ms Vázquez's biggest weakness is that she is less well-known than Mr Peña or the left's contenders. But those who know her like her. If she wins the nomination, she will automatically gain recognition. The race remains the PRI's to lose, but if Ms Vázquez's support keeps growing, next July's contest might be less grey for the PAN than it has looked until now.