Mass shootings, murders as Mexican cartels try to control elections

The country’s powerful drug cartels have long staged targeted assassinations of mayors and other local candidates who threaten their control. Gangs in Mexico depend on controlling local police chiefs and taking a share of municipal budgets; they seem to care less about national politics.

But in the run-up to Sunday’s vote, gangs are increasingly spraying entire election rallies with gunfire, burning ballots or obstructing the establishment of polling stations and even putting up banners aimed at influencing voters.

Security analyst David Saucedo says it is likely that some drug gangs will try to force voters to vote for their preferred candidates.

“It is reasonable to assume that the cartels will mobilize their support bases during Sunday’s election,” Saucedo said.

“They have loyal voters who have won over by handing out food parcels, money, medicine and infrastructure projects. They will use them to support drug candidates.”

In some places, gangs appear to encourage people to vote while discouraging voting in areas controlled by their rivals.

Electoral authorities said on Friday that attackers burned down a house where ballots were stored before Sunday in the violence-torn town of Chicomucelo, in the southern state of Chiapas. Although they did not say who was behind the attack, the city is completely dominated by two rival drug cartels, Jalisco and Sinaloa.

On May 14, gunmen apparently linked to a cartel shot and killed 11 people in one day in Chicomuzelo. 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 75 km east of Chicomucelo.

Targeted killings of local candidates continued. On Wednesday, dramatic video footage showed a mayoral candidate in the southern state of Guerrero being shot in the head in a fit of rage with a gun. A total of 31 candidates, almost all mayoral candidates, have been killed this year.

But mass attacks on campaign rallies, once extremely rare in Mexico, are becoming commonplace, and this year killed far more supporters than candidates. The effect is frightening.

On Wednesday, the last official day of the election campaign, unidentified gunmen opened fire a few blocks from the latest campaign rally of a mayoral candidate in the western state of Michoacán, sending hundreds of people scrambling for safety.

“It seemed like a normal night, like the closing of other candidates’ campaigns,” said Angelica Chavez, a housewife who was at the rally in Cotia. “Then there were shots fired, several shots very close. And then people started running and diving to the ground, crouching.”

Chavez was injured in the stampede and had to hide in a local church.

In Zelaya, 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 handpicked candidates lose.

“Rather than allow a candidate who is not aligned with their criminal interests to win, or allow a candidate associated with a rival drug cartel to win, they use this tactic,” Saucedo said. “What we’re seeing in the latest stretch is a pretty desperate strategy on the part of some drug-trafficking groups.”

Saucedo said similar drug control attempts at local politics have been seen before in some particularly violent states, such as Tamaulipas. “What was once limited … is now spreading to include the entire country,” he said.

The National Electoral Institute says it has had to cancel plans for 170 polling stations, mostly in Chiapas and Michoacán, mostly because of security concerns. In Chiapas, election officials say there are places they can’t even go. Although this is a small fraction of the country’s 170,858 polling stations, it is disturbing.

And in the northern border city of Nuevo Laredo, a shadowy group that local media reports have linked to the dominant northeastern drug cartel put up posters alleging a mayoral candidate was linked to the rival Gulf drug cartel.

Authorities have not confirmed the origin of the crude poster, which includes a photographic image of the candidate brandishing an assault rifle and wearing a body armor with the insignia of the Gulf cartel.

In the state of Morelos, south of Mexico City, residents woke up this week to find a banner stretched over a road claiming a gubernatorial candidate had ties to rival drug gangs. The banner is signed by a local drug lord whose name is unknown, “The Commander of the Three Letters”.

Another banner, apparently linked to the gang, threatened that anyone trying to buy votes would be “severely punished”. This banner was signed by “Those who have always ruled here.”

Events like this seem to indicate that the cartels’ past calculations — take out the strongest candidate you don’t like and the remaining major party candidate will win by default — have become more sophisticated.

In one town in Michoacán, Maravatio, gangs have apparently tried to remove any doubt about who will win this year; they killed three candidates for mayor of the city that they clearly did not like.