Regardless of their political party, all politicians are in the crosshairs of criminal groups that have turned Mexico’s elections into a bloodbath over the past six years.
According to the report ‘Voting between Bullets’, carried out by non-governmental organizations, There are a total of 54,152 people who have been killed for reasons related to political violence since 2018 to datewhich represents almost a third of the homicides recorded during the six-year term of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The report, prepared by NGOs Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), Data Cívica, México Evalúa and the digital media Animal Político, takes stock of political-criminal violence and its implications for Mexican democracy one month after the general elections in which the ruling party candidate Claudia Sheinbaum won.
The report Voting between bullets, carried out by Data Cívica, México Evalúa and Animal Político, states that This type of political-criminal violence is used by organized crime to influence the public life of Mexican states and municipalities.
Sandra Pellegrini, a Latin American specialist for ACLED, reported that since her organization began covering Mexico in January 2018, they have recorded more than 50,000 deaths that, although not always related to specific political subjects, did cause political repercussions and can therefore be related.
Regarding the influence of violence on the recently held electoral process, Tiziano Breda, an analyst for Latin America for the same organization, reported that “there is clearly a trend towards more” violence compared to the elections held in 2021 and 2018.
The report shows that six of the ten states with the most violence due to organized crime are also those with the highest number of politically related violent events, For Breda, this correlation suggests that organised crime groups play an important role.
In #Mexico, more than 11 million people were exposed to election-related violence during the election cycle (7 Sep. 2023 to 15 June 2024), according to ACLED Conflict Exposure calculator. This is around 9% of Mexico’s population. Read the full report: https://t.co/DZHa6k5mjY pic.twitter.com/UBYEEDvte2
— Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (@ACLEDINFO) July 2, 2024
The bloodiest election?
For her part, Itzel Soto, an analyst at Data Cívica, shared the data recorded by her organization regarding political-criminal violence during the last electoral process.
From September 2023 until election day, 513 victims of attacks were recorded, of which 130 were candidates, 275 were public officials, another 50 belonged to political parties, 47 were elected officials and 26 were relatives of politicians.
Of the candidates attacked, 34 were killed, twice as many as in the 2021 election.
By state, the most violent were Guerrero (south), with seven murders, and Chiapas (south), with five; followed by four in Jalisco (west) and three in Michoacán (center).
The data also reflect the party to which the attacked candidates in the country belonged: 31% of them correspond to the National Regeneration Movement and 14% to the Force and Heart for Mexico coalition, formed by the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), according to what Soto indicated during the conference.
“80% of the reported attacks are related to people running for local office,” said the ACLED analyst.
The attacks also affect electoral participation, since “in eleven of the fifteen most violent municipalities (in the country) we see reductions in participation,” according to Sandra Ley, security coordinator for México Evalúa.
“Cases such as Pihuamo in Jalisco, where after the murder of a mayoral candidate there was a 20% turnout,” exemplified Ley, in reference to the violent death of Humberto Amezcua in March 2024.
Finally, journalist Ernesto Núñez, from Animal Político, emphasized those areas of the country where organized crime influences electoral processes without having to use violence directly.
“There are municipalities in Jalisco where you don’t even find electoral propaganda (…) and in some of those municipalities we found participation levels of 80%” reported Núñez, referring to the silent coercion exercised by criminal organizations against the population.
*With information from EFE.
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