The elections in Coahuila and the State of Mexico highlight violence against politicians and candidates

A new year begins and Mexico is preparing for the penultimate electoral campaign of the six-year term.

The strongholds that the PRI still retains, Coahuila and the State of Mexico, elect governor on June 4.

Coahuila also votes for its new deputies in the local Congress.

For more than 15 years, every electoral campaign at the presidential level, but also at the state and local level, has been characterized by violence and attacks against candidates, pre-candidates and elected officials.

This year's elections represent a new test for the Mexican rule of law.

There has not been a smooth election during the last three Administrations.

The high rates of violence in the country, which has more than 30,000 murders per year in the last five years, spread campaigns, votes and takeovers.

Also the same periods of Government, three years at the local level and six at the state and federal levels.

According to the consultancy Etellekt, which monitors political and electoral violence in Mexico, at least 220 mayors, councilors and trustees have been assassinated since December 2006, the beginning of the government of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), which totaled 48 murders. .

In the following administrations, the trend has been the same, special mention for that of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018).

During his tenure, 107 mayors, trustees and councilors were assassinated.

With Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the presidency, a period that began in December 2018, the murders of elected officials at the municipal level now total 65, with a cutoff at the end of December.

The last was Isauro Ambrosio, mayor of Rafael Delgado, Veracruz, shot to death in the town on December 31.

To those 220 murders registered in these 16 years, we must add attacks, fatal or not, against politicians and ex-politicians at the state and federal level, whether or not they were in the electoral campaign.

This is the case, for example, of the former governor of Jalisco, Aristóteles Sandoval, assassinated in a bar in Puerto Vallarta just over two years ago.

Or that of the candidate for federal deputy for the PRI in Coahuila, Fernando Purón, killed in June 2018 in Piedras Negras, after a debate with other candidates.

In this violent maelstrom, the 2021 electoral campaign, the largest that the country has organized in its modern history, has also been the bloodiest, only behind that of 2018. Mexico then elected 20,415 public offices, including governors, mayors , councilors and deputies.

The country counted around 800 attacks against candidates and politicians, more than those registered during the last presidential campaign, in 2018.

The magnitude of the crime wave is inversely proportional to the ability of prosecutors to solve crimes, a reality that transcends the political tableau.

According to the organization Impunidad Cero, which in December published a study on the degree of impunity in cases of murder and feminicide in the country, only seven out of 100 cases are clarified.

The rest remain unresolved.

As for other crimes, the picture is not much better.

The University of the Americas, Puebla (UDLAP) periodically prepares the Global Impunity Index, which calculates the possibility that a crime will be solved based on a series of indicators, for example, the number of prosecutors or judges per inhabitant, crimes registered or sentences achieved.

By 2022, the UDLAP calculates that the country's index rose to 60 points out of 100, taking into account the average of the data from the States.

Case by case, there are some States that present a lower index and another higher, such as the State of Mexico, the worst on the list, with a score of 75 out of 100.

Morena's push

The smaller size of this year's elections means that violence will drop compared to 2021 or 2018, at least in absolute terms.

Whether or not the dynamics change remains to be seen.

In Coahuila and the State of Mexico, the PRI faces the push of Morena and the possibility of losing power in territories that he has never stopped governing.

In both cases, the contest seems close, although the picture is somewhat different.

In the northern state, López Obrador's party arrives divided into the new year, with part of the regional structure denying the candidacy of Senator Armando Guadiana.

At the end of last year, Guadiana won the internal poll of Morena and won the candidacy for governor.

His rival, the current Federal Undersecretary for Security, Ricardo Mejía, was initially unaware of the result of the survey, but then backed down.

Part of the Morena State Council insists, however, on denying Guadiana's candidacy.

Something different happens in the State of Mexico.

Morena has a consensus candidate in the most populated region of the country, Delfina Gómez.

The former federal secretary of Education already contested the gubernatorial elections in 2017, elections won by the PRI candidate, Alfredo Del Mazo, a cousin of then-president Peña Nieto.

Gómez was close to winning, a victory that seems more possible than ever this year, given the division of the opposition, which still does not know if it will go in a coalition or not.

In previous contests, organized crime has influenced campaigns to the point of forcing the withdrawal of candidates, although the attacks and threats were aimed at the local level.

In 2021, for example, La Familia Michoacana allegedly threatened the candidate of the Va por México coalition for mayor of Valle de Bravo, Zudikey Rodríguez.

The candidate resigned from the election.

In 2018, candidates for different mayors' offices in Coahuila also denounced threats against them.

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