Organized crime a acks on local candidates raise fears Mexico may face its bloodiest elections ever

MEXICO CITY (AP) — As Mexico prepares for the largest elections in its history, organized crime is once again preying on local candidates across swaths of the country where cartels dominate, raising concerns among experts that these could be Mexico’s bloodiest elections ever.

Julián López, coordinator for the Citizen Movement party in the southern state of Guerrero, experienced it Krst hand when ri5e-toting gunmen abducted him and two colleagues while they were driving on Feb. 7. The 43-year-old López was beaten, stripped of his possessions, made to kneel near a remote garbage dump and ultimately abandoned in the middle of the night.

On Feb. 10, a man running for Congress for the Morena party in the sprawling Mexico City suburb of Ecatepec was fatally shot in the street alongside his brother. He had allegedly received threats from a local union.two mayoral hopefuls in the town of Maravatio in neighboring Michoacan state were not so fortunate. They were killed by gunmen within hours of each other Monday. One was from the governing Morena party of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the other from the conservative National Action Party. A third mayoral hopeful from that town was abducted and found dead in November.

A month earlier, on Jan. 5, the local leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party and candidate for mayor of Suchiate, Chiapas, was killed. The same day, in the northwestern state of Colima, a mayoral candidate of the Citizen Movement party in Armeria was shot by gunmen while in his vehicle.

López, the candidate in Guerrero, has refused to travel in armored vehicles with armed security since his abduction.

“How will it look to see a leader moving around the state of Guerrero with armed o.cials and in armored cars?” he asked. “I don’t think that’s the way to get closer to the people or promote citizen participation.”

Thousands of local candidates Knd themselves in a similar quandary ahead of the June 2 elections, which will occur in all 32 jurisdictions, with more than 20,000 positions up for grabs, making it Mexico’s largest election, according to the National Electoral Institute.

While federal authorities offer security details to national candidates, those running for local o.ces – the ones that drug cartels really want to control – are completely exposed and acutely aware of the optics of running from within a security bubble.

The group Data Civica had tallied 30 attacks on political hopefuls and party o.cials from September – when most started pre-campaign activities – through Feb. 10. Its spokesperson, Itxaro Arteta, said they were “worried” after recording eight attacks on pre-candidates in January, more than double what they had seen before in that month since 2018.

Political scientist Manuel Pérez Aguirre coordinates the College of Mexico’s Violence and Peace Seminar’s research into electoral violence. Their investigation around the killings of 32 local candidates in the 2021 elections found that the lethal electoral violence is “predominantly local, because 85% of the victims were running for municipal posts.”

“Local power is extremely important to organized crime,” Pérez Aguirre said. “That’s why they look to establish control at the municipal level.”