Violence mars Mexico midterms

PRESIDENT Andrés Manuel López Obrador came to power in Mexico in 2018 on a radical socialist agenda, which included offering criminal cartels “hugs not bullets” in an effort to end the country’s war on drugs.

But as the country goes to the polls today in the largest midterm elections in its history, cartels have embarked on a ruthless killing spree, assassinating politicians and killing many more.

In one of the more chilling assaults of recent weeks, Alma Barragan, running to become mayor of Moroleon near the colonial city of Guanajuato, used a Facebook live stream to invite supporters to meet to discuss policies. Gang members turned up and shot her dead.

In Taxco, a silver-mining city 100 miles south of Mexico City, three of the nine candidates for municipal president have bodyguards. A tenth dropped out after being kidnapped and beaten up.

Mario Figueroa, running for the small party of Fuerza por México, was shot in the chest in December while getting out of an SUV near his home, the bullet piercing his lung. “We have to be ready for whatever happens,” the 53-year-old said after recovering. “We are in the hands of God.”

The city, with its baroque cathedral and cobbled streets, was once popular with tourists. But the war between the Familia Michoacana and Jalisco New Generation cartels has intensified, and the murder rate has shot up.

Mr López Obrador, a long-time friend of Jeremy Corbyn, former leader of the Labour Party, is not on the ballot today. But he remains hugely popular after 77 years of rule by the centre-Right Institutional Revolutionary Party in the past 91 years. His hands-off approach to violent crime has logic, analysts argue.

“He wants to avoid the high political costs past governments have suffered after they declared war against organised crime,” said Salvador Maldonado, an anthropologist specialising in security in Michoacán. “The president’s view of organised crime is one that focuses on [helping] young people without work, but he completely ignores the enormous institutional corruption and state capture at the local level,” he added.

His National Regeneration Movement looks poised to win 239 seats in the 500-seat lower house, according to the latest Parametria poll.

Along with their political allies, Mr Obrador should defend his political majority, and Mexico’s “hugs not bullets” approach will continue.