In this electoral campaign, according to the consulting firm Etellekt, 88 candidates or aspirants to popular elected office have been assassinated. Violence is concentrated in the mayoral positions. President López Obrador said that “some media “magnify” the attacks and murders of candidates in order to “distort” the atmosphere for the upcoming elections. Expressing “condolences” to their families, AMLO declared: “Let us all try to live in peace, that no one is assaulted and that there are ethics in the media, less sensationalism, even when there are differences, that we can resolve them with arguments, with debate, respecting each other”.
By CST-Mexico June 1, 2021
Translation: Blas (Corriente Obrera LIT-CI U.S.)
Others, such as the National Electoral Institute, have questioned “Democracy in danger?” And the consulting firm Etellekt warned at the beginning of May: “political violence is an attack against democracy and compromises the integrity, independence and autonomy of future authorities”.
We are of the opinion that both the president and the consulting firms, or electoral institutes, act with hypocrisy and intentionally hide the true reality and its causes. The political violence that we suffer, both by the institutions and by organized crime, more than an attack on a supposed “democracy” that does not exist today, is an integral part of this regime of “democracy for the rich and the criminals” and for the Mexican political and electoral system, which has existed for many decades. These facts reveal once again the falsehood, repeated ad nauseam by AMLO, that the “old regime is in the past and that everything has changed”.
The president is disproved by his own Secretary of Public Security
Its representative, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, informed that she is following up on 398 cases of candidates participating in the present electoral process, of which 187 received threats, 101 reported some type of aggression and 11 were kidnapped. He stated that 250 complaints have been attended, most of them concentrated in seven states: Oaxaca, San Luis Potosí, Jalisco, State of Mexico, Veracruz, Tamaulipas and Guerrero. Mafia involvement in electoral campaigns, presenting their own candidates and assassinating others, is not new in Mexico. In most municipalities across the country, candidates are “endorsed” by regional power groups linked to organized crime, and mayors are in the narcos’ cross hairs, because they aim to control the municipal police and local means of transportation, as well as the control of information about the income of the social sectors liable to be extorted.
Particularly shocking was the murder of Alma Barragan, Mayor candidate of the city of Moroleon, Guanajuato. “Together we do it better”, she said enthusiastically, inviting her followers to an event. Shortly after, she laid on a stretcher riddled with bullets. No threat against her was known beforehand. However, her hometown is in a state particularly besieged by mafia groups.
Her murder, in broad daylight during an election campaign rally, is just one of many in a spiral of political violence: on the same day, there was an attack on the mayoral candidate in the beach resort of Acapulco. Shortly before, three candidates were killed in Puebla. In Jalisco, the mayoral candidate received a pig’s head as a threat. The level of assassinations of candidates is proportional to the level of violence in the country, these three years are the most violent in history, 85,000 homicides in total. The impunity rate for assassinations is 98%.
The Armed Forces: AMLO’s government star institution
The so-called “forces of order”, to which 150,000 more members of the National Guard have been recruited, with 161 barracks throughout the territory, in addition to those of the Army and Navy, show that rather than a solution to criminal violence, they are part of the problem, whose center is in the political power. A huge evidence is the case of General “godfather” Cienfuegos, former defense secretary of Peña Nieto, whom the president and the foreign minister agreed with Trump the “urgent rescue” from the U.S. courts, so that the Mexican Attorney General’s Office gives him an expeditious “dismissal” and declares that there is no consistent evidence to accuse him.
This regime is rotten, the political campaign stinks
Politics is concentrated economics: The assassinations are just the tip of the iceberg. For the least visible mafia action is campaign finance: a torrent of illegal money continues to flow into campaigns to buy votes and candidates. The influence of the cartels and their de facto control in some regions is evident.
With a greater or lesser number of murders, kidnappings or threats, depending on the regions and states, this campaign shows that the decomposition of the regime continues and has not changed for the better. The state of rottenness of the regime is indistinguishable between the government and the opposition. Anything goes for these “hoppers”, who jump from one party to another to obtain a candidacy or support another in exchange for a good pay. In addition, among the candidates there are not only many direct agents of the narcos, but an overwhelming predominance of wealthy businessmen, merchants or old union charros and their relatives, some of whom have cultivated an “image of respectability” or “social awareness”. Most of them are now senators and are running for governor or are state deputies and aspire to federal posts… All these so-called “popular representatives” refute the outrageous falsehood of the trite presidential slogan “for the good of all, first the poor”. Because this elite of politicians of big and ill-gotten money recruits for their campaigns those who have been orphaned without a candidacy, offering them some “little bone” in case they win those positions.
That is why, once again, we urge not to validate with the workers’ vote the prevailing swindle of the rich. Let’s vote against all of them! Let’s cross out the entire ballot!
Mexico | Murdered Candidates: The Decayed Regime Did Not Change
