Mexico’s biggest election its most violent

136 deaths tallied as voting starts

CHILPANCINGO, Mexico — Voters will fill more than 3,400 local, state and federal posts today in the nation’s largest general election ever. It is also perhaps the most violent electoral season in modern Mexican history.

At least 136 politicians and political operatives have been assassinated in Mexico since last fall, according to Etellekt, a risk analysis company in Mexico. More than a third were candidates or potential candidates — most running for local offices. Others included elected officials, party members and campaign workers.

In the long run-up to the vote, much of the national and in- ternational focus has been on the presidential contest. Yet for the millions of people living in the most violent parts of the country, elections for local office could have the biggest effect on their daily lives.

And organized crime groups have all but decided many of those outcomes already.

“No one has been more active during these campaigns” than these criminal groups, said Alejandro Martínez, a top offi- cial for the center-right National Action Party in the Pacific Coast state of Guerrero, one of Mexico’s poorest and most violent.

Scores, if not hundreds, have abandoned their candidacies out of fear for their lives. Some parties have not been able to field nominees willing to contest certain posts.

Some candidates have been forced to travel in armored cars flanked by bodyguards and to wear body armor. In parts of the most violent states, threats have made campaigning impossible.

“You have to be a little crazy to run for office here,” Martínez said.

Collusion between politicians and criminal organizations in Mexico is not new. But over the past decade, criminals have increasingly sought to co-opt local politics by trying to influence the electoral process, using violence to effectively handpick slates of candidates.