by Carina Lopez

MEXICO CITY, April 23 (Xinhua) -- Mexico's presidential race has given a new boost to a cottage industry of making masks imitating political figures, especially presidential candidates.

For the first time ever, independent candidates have been allowed to throw their hats in the ring, bringing the total number of presidential hopefuls to five and providing mask makers with more characters than before.

In Cuernavaca, a town located south of the Mexico City, some 300 employees at Grupo RV, a company that makes Halloween masks, are currently manufacturing handmade latex masks of the candidates.

With some 80 days to go before the July 1 elections, the company is turning out 1,000 masks of nearly all the promising candidates, including front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, second-placed rival Ricardo Anaya, Jose Antonio Meade from the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and independent candidate Jaime Rodriguez, the cowboy hat-wearing former governor of northern Nuevo Leon state who goes by the nickname "El Bronco."

These masks are sold at an average price of 300 pesos (about 16 U.S. dollars).

The company decided not to make masks of former first lady and independent candidate Margarita Zavala, wife of ex-president Felipe Calderon, as they were not expected to be money makers, said Juarez.

"Masks of women are very tough to sell, because a very small segment of the male population would like to dress up like women, and women don't like to wear masks," Juarez said.

Founded in 1948, the company began to include political figures in its collection of masks starting from 2000, when a former Coca Cola executive-turned-politician named Vicente Fox shook up the presidential race by taking on the PRI. Fox won, breaking the PRI's 70-year winning streak.

"We began our politician face mask production line with Fox," and the tradition continues till now, Neri Juarez, the company's head of innovation, told Xinhua.

Before producing a new mask, a creative department will carry out a market research to find the most hated and beloved personalities, Juarez added.

In 2017, Grupo RV manufactured a total of 1.2 million masks, most of which were exported to the United States, Spain, France, Denmark, Kuwait, Japan and Australia.

The company expects sales of its masks of politicians to rise as the race heats up, after the first of three scheduled debates among presidential candidates took place Sunday night.