But as national and international attention focuses on the ongoing presidential campaign, much of local election campaigns have descended into extreme violence where the lives of candidates are threatened.
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The capital affected
Mexico City, the country’s capital and a relative haven of peace where the cartels are usually forced to keep a low profile, also ended up being overtaken by this wave of political-electoral violence which has already left thirty people dead, leading to hundreds of candidates withdrawing in 13 of the country’s 32 states.
The car of the opposition candidate for district mayor of Cuauhtémoc, Alessandra Rojo de la Vega, suffered six bullet holes on Saturday evening, none of which fortunately hit the mark. The candidate “only” had the fear of her life. At a press conference, Rojo de la Vega, combative, announced that she will continue to “walk the streets of the Cuauhtémoc district day and night, from six in the morning to ten in the evening”.
“We will not surrender and we will end up winning, our union will be stronger than the one who wants to silence us”, she added, using a play on words which seemed to target the criminal group of theUnion Tepito, enemy number 1 of the authorities of the capital during the past mandate of presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum. The influence of this cartel over this key district located in the center of the capital remains thanks to the windfall of extortion.
A phenomenon that extends geographically
When we talk about political-electoral violence in Mexico, we generally place ourselves in a fringe that runs along the Pacific coast, from the state of Jalisco in the center-north of the country to that of Guerrero in the center-south. But today, these attacks are also hitting previously relatively untouched states, such as Oaxaca and Chiapas in the far south.
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“Attacks on candidates have increased in number and intensity during every massive election campaign from the mid-2000s to the present.”, summarizes Arturo Espinosa Silis, director of the “Laboratorio Electoral” think tank. Three states, according to him, must however be monitored much more closely than the others to observe this phenomenon: Guerrero, Michoacan and, more recently, Chiapas, a state bordering Guatemala known for its vast population from multiple indigenous ethnic groups.
Polling stations that will remain closed?
Rodrigo Aguilar Martinez, bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas, for his part denounced at a press conference a situation where “the conditions for voting safely are not currently met in several localities in Chiapas”, before focusing on the case of the municipality of Pantelho, scene of a deadly conflict between “indigenous self-defense groups” sponsored by two cartels that are enemies of each other. Violence which led to the displacement of more than a thousand indigenous people, mainly Tzotzils, at the turn of the last decade.
“We no longer exclude a scenario in which all or part of the polling stations could not open in Pantelho on June 2”, recognizes Claudia Rodriguez, delegate of the National Electoral Institute (INE) for Chiapas, in an interview with Milenio TV. The climate, according to her, was “much more peaceful” in his state during the previous 2018 election campaign.
“We observe a situation in which states that were already dangerous for candidates in 2018 remain as, or even more, deadly; while new states in the south of the country in turn join the wave of violence”, observes Mr. Espinosa Silis, while emphasizing that the sharp increase in irregular migratory flows has disrupted the existing balance between criminal forces in this region close to the southern border of the country.
