Members of the Michoacan Civil Guard visit the sites that will be installed at the June 2 polling station in Morelia, Mexico on May 30, 2024.
Enrique Castro AFP Getty Images
Mexican drug cartels and gangs appear to be playing a bigger role than ever in Sunday’s election that will determine the president, nine governors and about 19,000 mayors and other local positions.
The country’s powerful drug cartels have long carried out targeted assassinations of mayors and other local candidates who threaten control. Gangs in Mexico depend on the control of local police chiefs, and take part of the municipal budget; national politics seem to have little interest.
But in the run-up to Sunday’s election, gangs have stepped up to spray campaign rallies with guns, burn ballot papers or prevent the establishment of polling stations, and even put up banners seeking to influence voters.
Security analyst David Saucedo said some drug gangs will try to force voters to vote for their preferred candidate.
“It is reasonable to assume that the cartels will mobilize their support base during Sunday’s elections,” Saucedo said. “They have loyal voters who have been won over through the distribution of food packages, cash, medicine and infrastructure projects. They will use them to support narcotics candidates.”
In some places, it appears that the gangs are encouraging people to vote while not encouraging them to vote in rival areas.
On Friday, electoral authorities reported that attackers set fire to a house where ballots were kept earlier on Sunday in the town of Chicomuselo, in the southern state of Chiapas. While he did not say who was behind the attack, the city is dominated by two warring drug cartels, Jalisco and Sinaloa.
On May 14, gunmen appeared to be linked to a cartel shootout that killed 11 people in one day in Chicomuselo. On May 17, five people were killed along with a mayoral candidate when gunmen opened fire on a crowd in the town of La Concordia, Chiapas, about 45 miles (75 kilometers) east of Chicomuselo.
Targeted killings of local candidates continue. On Wednesday, dramatic video footage showed a mayoral candidate in the southern state of Guerrero shot in the head in a rage with a pistol. A total of 31 candidates, almost all of the mayoral candidates, have died this year.
But mass attacks at campaign rallies, which have been rare in Mexico, are common, and have killed more supporters than candidates this year. Scary effect.
On Wednesday, the last official day of the campaign, unidentified gunmen opened fire a few blocks away from a mayoral candidate’s final campaign rally in the western state of Michoacan, sending hundreds scrambling for safety.
“It looks like a normal evening, like a close campaign with other candidates,” said AngĂ©lica Chávez, a housewife who was at the rally in Cotija. “Then there were gunshots, several gunshots very close. And then people started running and diving to the ground, crouching.”
Chávez fell ill in the stampede and had to take refuge in a local church.
In Celaya, a city in Guanajuato, gunmen opened fire at a campaign event in April, killing a mayoral candidate and wounding three of his supporters.
Saucedo, the analyst, sees the shooting as a sign that the narco gangs are no longer willing to see their chosen candidate lose.
“Instead of allowing the victory of candidates who are not in line with criminal interests, or allowing candidates linked to rival drug gangs to win, they use this tactic,” Saucedo said. “What we see in the final part is a pretty desperate strategy on the part of some groups of drug traffickers.”
Saucedo said efforts to control local political narcotics have been seen before in some violent states, such as Tamaulipas. “What was once limited … is now spreading to include the entire country,” he said.
The National Electoral Institute said it had to cancel plans for 170 polling stations, mostly in Chiapas and Michoacan and mostly due to security concerns. In Chiapas, election authorities say there are places they cannot go. Although this is a small fraction of the country’s 170,858 polling stations, it is troubling.
And in the northern border city of Nuevo Laredo, a shadowy group that local media reports links to the dominant Northeast drug cartel has put up posters claiming one mayoral candidate is linked to a rival Gulf drug cartel.
Authorities have not confirmed the origin of the crude poster, which includes a photoshopped image of the candidate brandishing an assault rifle and wearing a bulletproof vest emblazoned with Gulf cartel insignia.
In the state of Morelos, south of Mexico City, residents woke up this week to find banners posted in the streets claiming the gubernatorial candidate was tied to a rival drug gang. The banner was signed by an unnamed local drug lord, “Commander of the Three Letters.”
Another gang-related banner threatened that anyone trying to buy votes would be “severely punished.” The banner is signed by “People who always call here.”
These events seem to show that past calculations by the cartel – take the strongest candidate you don’t like, and the main party candidate who will still win by default – are getting more complicated.
In a town in Michoacan, Maravatio, the gangs are trying to dispel doubts about who will win this year; they killed three mayoral candidates who apparently did not want to.
