COTIJA, Mexico — Mexico’s drug cartels and gangs appear to be playing a broader role than before in Sunday’s elections which will determine the presidency, nine governorships and some 19,000 mayoralties and other local positions.
The country’s powerful drug cartels They have been carrying out selective assassinations for a long time of mayors and other local candidates who threaten their control. Gangs in Mexico depend on the control of local police chiefs and a portion of municipal budgets; national politics seem to interest them less.
But in the run-up to Sunday’s vote, gangs have increasingly begun shooting up entire campaign rallies, burning ballots or preventing the establishment of polling stations, and even putting up banners seeking to influence voters.
Security analyst David Saucedo says some drug gangs are likely trying to force voters to vote for their favorite candidates.
“It is reasonable to assume that the cartels will mobilize their support bases during Sunday’s elections,” Saucedo said. “They have loyal voters whom they have won over by distributing food parcels, cash, medicines and infrastructure projects. “They will use them to support the drug candidates.”
In some places, gangs appear to encourage people to vote while discouraging voting in areas controlled by their rivals.
On Friday, election authorities reported that assailants burned down a house where ballots were stored before Sunday in the violence-stricken town of Chicomuselo in the southern state of Chiapas. While they did not say who was behind the attack, the city is completely dominated by two warring drug cartels, Jalisco and Sinaloa.
On May 14, gunmen apparently linked to a cartel shot and killed 11 people in a single day in Chicomuselo. On May 17, five people were murdered along with a mayoral candidate when Armed men opened fire on a crowd in the town of La ConcordiaChiapas, about 45 miles (75 kilometers) east of Chicomuselo.
Selective assassinations of local candidates continued. On Wednesday, dramatic video footage showed a mayoral candidate in the southern state of Guerrero being shot in the head at point-blank range with a pistol. A total of 31 candidates, almost all of them mayoral candidates, have been assassinated this year.
But mass attacks on campaign rallies, once extremely rare in Mexico, are becoming common and have killed many more supporters than candidates this year. The effect is intimidating.
On Wednesday, the last official day of campaigning, unidentified gunmen opened fire a couple of blocks from a mayoral candidate’s final campaign rally in the western state of Michoacan, sending hundreds of people scrambling for safety.
“It seemed like a normal evening, like other candidates’ campaign closings,” said Angélica Chávez, a housewife who was at the rally in Cotija. “Then there were shots, several bursts very close. And then people started running and throwing themselves on the ground, crouching.”
Chávez was injured 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 her supporters.
Saucedo, the analyst, sees the shootings as a sign that drug gangs are no longer willing to see their carefully selected candidates lose.
“Rather than allowing a candidate to win who is not in line with their criminal interests, or allowing a candidate linked to a rival drug gang to win, they use this tactic,” Saucedo said. “What we are seeing in the final stretch is a rather desperate strategy on the part of some drug trafficking groups.”
Saucedo said such attempts at narco-control of local politics had previously been seen in some particularly violent states, such as Tamaulipas. “What was once limited … is now expanding to include the entire country,” he said.
The National Electoral Institute says it has had to cancel plans for 170 polling stations, mainly in Chiapas and Michoacán and mainly due to security problems. In Chiapas, electoral authorities say there are places they can’t even go. While this is a small fraction of the country’s 170,858 polling places, it is disturbing.
And in the northern border city of Nuevo Laredo, a shadowy group that local media says has ties to the northeast’s dominant drug cartel has posted signs claiming a mayoral candidate is linked to the drug cartel. Gulf rival.
Authorities have not confirmed the origin of the crude poster, which includes a photoshopped image of the candidate waving an assault rifle and wearing a bulletproof vest with the insignia of the Gulf cartel.
In the state of Morelos, just south of Mexico City, residents woke up this week to find a banner hanging over a road claiming that a gubernatorial candidate was linked to rival drug gangs. The banner was signed by a local drug lord whose name is unknown, “the Commander of the Three Letters.”
Another apparently gang-related banner threatened that anyone who tried to buy votes would be “severely punished.” That banner was signed by “Those who have always made the decisions here.”
These developments seem to indicate that the cartels’ previous calculations (if you eliminate the strongest candidate you don’t like, the remaining candidate from the main party will win by default) have become more complicated.
In a town in Michoacán, Maravatio, gangs apparently tried to remove any doubt about who will win this year; they killed three candidates for mayor of the city who apparently were not to his liking.
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Sánchez reported from Mexico City. Associated Press writers Mark Stevenson in Mexico City and Edgar H. Clemente in Tapachula, Mexico, contributed to this report.
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