Mexico’s 2024 elections will be ‘the most violent in history’

The choice biggest of Mexico It will also go down in history on Sunday as the most violent, with at least 30 candidates murdered and more than 200 political homicides, while the opposition denounces that organized crime puts votes at risk in almost 30% of the territory.

As a hallmark of the violence, in the last hours of the campaigns, Alfredo Cabrera, candidate of the opposition coalition Fuerza y ​​Corazón por México for mayor of Coyuca de Benítez, in the southern state of Guerrero, was murdered with two shots to the back of the head.

“This has been the most violent election in the modern history of our country. In hard terms, in terms of figures, from September 2023 to May 26, 2024, one week before the election, we have counted 749 total victims of violent attacks,” Armando Vargas, senior consultant at Integralia, explains to EFE.

Integralia, political consultancy, reported 150.5% more attacks in this electoral process, which officially began in September, compared to the last midterm elections in 2021, which includes murders, armed attacks, threats, kidnappings and disappearances.

Within this, it documented 34 murders of applicants, a figure that rises to 231 homicides when also considering officials or former officials, politicians, family members and collateral victims.

The Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC) recognized this Tuesday the murder of 22 candidates, but independent organizations register more, such as Integralia, while Data Cívica reports 31, Causa en Común documents 32 and DataInt registers 38.

This difference reflects that the “The federal government continues to deny the violent reality of the country”says Nancy Angélica Canjura, researcher at Causa en Común.

“And always in this defensive attitude. Instead of generating conditions of openness and innovation in public policies to work on these issues, we see how there is this reluctance to even accept the dimension of the problem.”, he comments.

Violence lowers participation

When analyzing previous elections, Data Cívica found that for each attack on a candidate, participation in the locality in question drops. 1.3%and if the victim is a sitting politician, like the mayor, the fall is 3%the organization’s spokesperson, Itxaro Arteta, explains to EFE.

“Without a doubt, this is a weakening of democracy because citizens are afraid to go out to vote, or they do not see the point in going out to vote, if it seems that crime is the one who is dominating, who defines, who can be a candidate, who campaigns”, warns Arteta.

The National Electoral Institute (INE) estimated on Thursday that 168 polling stations (voting centers) will not be enabled on Sunday for reasons such as insecurity and, the majority, due to “social political conflicts”.

Main victims: Local candidates and opponents

Nine out of every 10 murder victims were looking for a municipal position, details the Integralia consultant, which “strengthens the hypothesis that political violence is a mechanism for crime intervention in elections.”

Furthermore, the majority were opponents of the local government, and this ““It would suggest that criminal groups could be promoting certain political projects to expand their networks of impunity, eliminating threats, that is, opposition candidates.”

Even so, Data Cívica points out that more than a third of the victims of aggression are from the ruling National Regeneration Movement (Morena), such as Gisela Gaytán, candidate for mayor of Celaya, in the state of Guanajuato, who was murdered on April 1 in one of the highest profile attacks.

State protection?

The Secretary of the Navy (Semar) reported on Tuesday that 3,474 agents of the Armed Forces are protecting 553 candidates and reiterated a deployment of 27,245 elements for the election security operation, which will be added to the 233,543 that already carry out security tasks. public.

But candidates have died despite this protection, like Cabrera, who had escorts from the National Guard (GN), which shows that the protocol “has not worked properly”, according to the Causa en Común researcher.

Concern about security is growing because Mexico will have the largest elections in its history, with more than 98 million voters called to renew more than 20,000 positions, including the presidency, the 128 senators and the 500 deputies, as well as nine state governments.

The situation “It is very well focused” in areas with organized crime violence, such as Chiapas, Michoacán, Guerrero, Guanajuato and Zacatecas, argues Canjura.

While Arteta warns that “this does not end after the election” because “They tend to increase the levels of violence in general in the municipalities that experience this type of political violence.”

“Today it is a democracy without freedom, a limited, captive democracy, captured by criminal groups. A general balance is that today democracy has become a mechanism for criminal groups to control local territories,” concludes Vargas.

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