Elections in Mexico: Bullets and Votes

The murder of a local candidate in Mexico rattled the country and managed to bring 27 murdered contenders out of anonymity as the election approaches. In the meantime, the government continues minimizing the situation. Who’s behind it and what do they seek with this seemingly random wave of political violence?

México - Elecciones - Violencia política

By Fabiola Chambi*

Gisela Gaytan had just presented her safety plan for the mayor’s office of Celaya, in the state of Guanajuato, on Monday, April 1. It was her first day on the campaign trail and also her last day alive. The videos that captured the brutal shoot-out that ended the life of the candidate of Morena have thousands of views, and her name has been added to the list of 27 murdered contenders.

Precisely, the 2023-2024 electoral process is considered the most violent in the country’s history. Not only due to the murders, but because of a series of concerning claims that remain unanswered or have the worst outcomes. Laboratorio Electoral has recorded 157 assaults on candidates and people involved in the electoral process, with the following aftermath: 51 murders, 9 kidnappings, 22 attacks and 75 threats. 

However, these alarming numbers are not taken from official figures or public records, they are collected thanks to the effort of organizations that for years have been following-up on political violence. This has also caused denunciations to be recorded by the media and not filed with competent authorities, which gives way to impunity.

Daniela Arias, coordinator at Laboratorio Electoral regrets the lack of transparency of the judicial system and the slow pace of investigations. “It is a phenomenon that was ignored for a long time and that is not new. We reported it back in 2018, our report that year was considered by the OAS as an early warning in 2021, yet nothing happened.”

Threats have soared as the elections draw near, and no party is immune to them. According to the records of Laboratorio Electoral, ten candidates of Morena (Movimiento de Regeneracion Nacional) have been murdered, followed by five of PAN (Partido de Accion Nacional). But the PRD (Partido de Revolucion Democratica) and PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) have also made denunciations. “In most of the cases of threats and intimidation, the names or positions of victims remain concealed  out of fear, and in almost no case have the electoral authorities been informed of these situations,” the report details.

The tally exceeds the 43 murders that took place in the 2018 election. And it is feared that in the remainder of the campaign, the number may surpass the 88 murders recorded in 2021, out of which 30 were candidates or pre-candidates.

Following the death of Gaytan, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador urged local authorities to coordinate candidates’ protection with the government, and he asserted that not only the Executive branch is liable for their safety. But true to his style, he announced in his morning show that a report is coming out after the election period proving that more journalists and candidates were murdered in Felipe Calderon’s six-year term.

However, for Saul Arellano, researcher at UNAM’s (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico) Development Studies Program, there are clear indications about who’s responsible for protecting candidates. Moreover, in a conversation with CONNECTAS he stated that “it is not true that there has been a downward trend in the last two years compared with the country’s most violent years. There is a rhetorical exaggeration when we claim that things are going well because murders decreased compared with 2020 and 2021, which were record years.”  

Despite the escalation of violence, the Mexican president prefers to look away and guarantee that the transition will be calm, smooth and seamless. Confidently, he says: “We will move forward.”

On a wider account, the project Votar entre balas of the organization Data Civica in alliance with the CIDE (Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas) reports that from 2018 to these months of 2024, 1,755 assaults have taken place, including: murders, attacks and threats against people in the political and governmental sector or against government or party facilities. 

Mexico has a harrowing history of violence, and the chilling figures suggest reality could fade between oblivion and normalization. Is there a way out? The mitigation of electoral violence should derive from State policy, says professor Cristian Castaño, Director of the Department of criminology and law of Universidad Metropolitana de Monterrey. “A dislocated State with more than 2,000 law enforcement agencies in which its high commands are often part of the criminal phenomenon (…) stating that we could build a State policy, it comes a little too late. We would have to visualize what we could do after the elections and activate protocols to inhibit or decrease fatalities, although oftentimes those are overlooked.”

Who is Murdering the Candidates?

In an era of ever-present technology, verification tools and users driving immediacy, it is hard to believe that facts of violence, even when documented, remain unsolved. According to the organization Impunidad Cero, 94% of the crimes are not denounced in Mexico and authorities solve less than 1%, in other words, citizens don’t believe in the judicial system and have stopped seeking for the truth.

Necessary questions arise: Who is behind these attacks? Who gains from them?  What is the reach of narco politics? Professor Arellano is adamant: “Mexico faces a real threat from organized crime in what we could consider an informal veto. Narcos are vetoing democracy, taking over electoral processes and not only through corruption in the traditional sense. There are indications that show that people who get elected work for cartels directly.”

Each case is singular and the characteristics of states might determine the conditions in which these events of violence take place. But it is undeniable that Mexican politics are intertwined with organized crime, and that its structures are difficult to take apart.

“We have been facing this since the six-year term of Felipe Calderon, it continued in the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto, and of course, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s policy of ‘abrazos y no balazos’ hasn’t stopped it.  It is a problem that has spanned administrations. And now, organized crime is learning how to participate in politics, in their own way… with threats and killings. What are they looking for? Criminal governance,” says the seasoned journalist Arturo Espinosa.

However, as professor Castaño explains “there are many players involved, and they are strategic (…) we have to remember that organized crime is color-blind, meaning that it doesn’t distinguish parties for alliances, connections or suppression of officials, they aim for whoever is in power.”

Castaño adds that organized crime engages in illegal and legal businesses. “For instance, in a mayor’s office, they attempt to subdue the municipal president to gain control over the public works contracts or show business guidelines, to fill their quota, thus, the money that is meant to enter the public treasury ends up in the hands of criminal organizations,” he said to CONNECTAS.

Mexico leads (with an alarming upward trend) a recent global study of “criminal markets” published by The Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime for 193 countries. As Espinosa says, “Drug trafficking has permeated. There are populations that are completely (and kindly) taken over by organized crime, it is part of their lives, they are friends, relatives, they work with them and for them, impunity is embedded and it is going to be difficult to uproot that issue.”

A Mirror to Look Back at All of Us  

On June 2, 97 million Mexicans are set to vote and elect over 20,000 positions of popular election, including the president, and two women are at the forefront of the race to occupy the position, pro-government Claudia Sheinbaum, and Xochitl Galvez, of the opposition. Nine state governments, 128 seats in the senate and the 500 representatives will also be elected. This election will define the future of the country for the next six years, and somehow it has been compromised by the advancement of criminal organizations.

Not just violence, multiple violations of electoral law put its legitimacy at risk, explains Daniela Arias, from Laboratorio Electoral. “In Mexico timeframes are rigid and there are dates set in the Federal and local Constitutions that are hard to change, many local electoral authorities don’t even have the money to pull off the electoral process in its most basic version, let alone to deal with extraordinary situations.” And the truth is that these elections are such.

In a year in which half of the global population will conduct electoral processes, it is unavoidable to focus on Mexico and on its reality – itself a mirror of Latin America. It is not a secret that several countries in the region are experiencing similar processes, for example Colombia and Ecuador, to name the most obvious. Weariness is steering citizens’ decisions in the ballot box, and levels of violence are cornering real democracy. 

*Member of the editorial board of CONNECTAS.

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