Mexico’s drug cartels and gangs appear to be playing a broader role in Sunday’s elections for the president, nine state governors, about 19,000 mayors and other local offices.
The country’s powerful drug cartels have long waged targeted assassinations against mayors and other local candidates they see as a threat to their rule. Mexican gangs thrive on their control of local police chiefs and cuts of municipal budgets, and don’t seem to have much interest in national politics.
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But as the Sunday polls approach, gangs have taken to firing guns at entire election rallies, burning ballots, disrupting the setting up of polling stations and even displaying banners trying to influence voters.
Mexico’s drug cartels and gangs appear to be playing a broader role in Sunday’s elections for the president, nine state governors, about 19,000 mayors and other local offices. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
Security analyst David Saucedo said it was likely some drug cartels would try to force voters to vote for candidates they favor.
“It is reasonable to assume that the drug cartels will mobilize their support base in Sunday’s elections,” Saucedo said. “They have loyal voters that they have acquired through the distribution of food packages, cash, medicines and infrastructure projects. They will use them to support drug candidates.”
In some areas, gangs appear to be encouraging people to vote, while preventing it in areas controlled by rivals.
Election officials reported Friday that assailants set fire to a house storing ballots ahead of Sunday’s vote in the violence-hit town of Chicomcero in the southern state of Chiapas. It has not been revealed who was behind the attack, but the town is fully controlled by the two warring drug cartels, Jalisco and Sinaloa.
On May 14, gunmen suspected to be linked to a drug cartel shot and killed 11 people in one day in Chicomcero. On May 17, gunmen opened fire on a crowd in the town of La Concordia, Chiapas, about 45 miles (75 kilometers) east of Chicomcero, killing five people, including a mayoral candidate.
The tide of assassinations targeting local candidates continued: on Wednesday, a shocking video showed a mayoral candidate in the southern state of Guerrero being shot at close range in the head with a handgun in a fit of rage.
And mob attacks on election rallies, once extremely rare in Mexico, are becoming more common.
Also on Wednesday, the official last day of the campaign, an unidentified gunman opened fire just blocks from a final rally for a mayoral candidate in the western state of Michoacan, forcing hundreds of people to flee.
“It seemed like a normal night, like any other candidate’s closing night of the campaign,” said Angelica Chavez, a housewife at the Cotija rally. “Then we heard gunshots, several shots at close range, and people started running, getting on the ground, crouching.”
President Chavez was injured in the stampede and had to seek refuge in a local church.
In April, armed men opened fire during an election campaign in the city of Celaya, Guanajuato, killing a mayoral candidate and wounding three of his supporters.
Analyst Saucedo sees the shooting as a sign that drug cartels are no longer willing to stand by and watch their chosen candidate lose.
“Rather than allow a candidate to win who doesn’t align with their criminal interests or who has ties to a rival drug cartel, they use this tactic,” Saucedo said. “What we’re seeing in the final stages is a pretty desperate strategy on the part of drug trafficking organizations.”
Saucedo said such attempts by drug cartels to control local politics have been seen before, in particularly violent states such as Tamaulipas. “What was once limited is now spreading across the whole country,” he said.
The National Electoral Commission said it had been forced to cancel plans for 170 polling stations, mainly in the states of Chiapas and Michoacan, mainly due to security concerns, with some locations in Chiapas even being inaccessible to the commission.
In the northern border city of Nuevo Laredo, a shadowy group that local media has reported has ties to a powerful drug cartel in the northeast, put up posters alleging that one of the mayoral candidates has ties to the rival Gulf drug cartel.
Authorities have not confirmed the origin of the crude posters, which contain Photoshopped images of candidates brandishing assault rifles and wearing bulletproof vests bearing the insignia of the Gulf Cartel.
In the state of Morelos, just south of Mexico City, residents woke up this week to find banners plastered across the road alleging that a gubernatorial candidate had ties to a rival drug cartel, signed by an unnamed local drug boss known as the “Three Letter Commander.”
One apparently gang-related banner threatened that anyone trying to buy votes would be “severely punished” and was signed by “those who have always held real power here.”
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These events seem to suggest that the cartel’s past calculations — remove the most promising candidate you don’t like and the remaining major party candidate will win by default — are becoming more complicated.
In the town of Marabatio in Michoacan state, gangs killed three mayoral candidates they disliked, apparently trying to erase any doubt about who would win this year’s elections.
