Safety of both voters and candidates alike is an essential condition and without it several fundamental principles of democracy cannot be exercised. Nevertheless, in the last few months, as elections come closer, there have been several murders, attacks, abductions and threats against plenty of candidates in at least eight states. According to the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), in 2012 about 20% of the national territory voted under threat of violence, affecting 3.5 million Mexicans, which is equivalent to one out of every five voters. Regardless that violence is a public security issue and thus, should be approached by local authorities, the phenomenon presents great risks especially with the regular involvement of organized crime.
The rise of criminal groups and the reduction of its size have transformed the territorial dispute into a more fragmented and, consequently, brutal one. That way, crime is not only competing for physical spaces but political control, thereby explaining the interest in strengthening its collaboration with state and municipal authorities. It is not a coincidence that murders and attacks against candidates usually take place within states that have high violence rates. Another likely hypothesis is that at least part of the violence against candidates in those states are linked with criminal interests and vice versa: that the lack of violence against candidates in those same states might imply some sort of mutual cooperation.
In any given case, the question remains: can this phenomenon be expanded to other states not as affected by the security crisis in the country or even worse, towards the federal government? Some hypothesis suggest that the latter hasn’t happened because the true interests of organized crime have not been tackled (that is to say, their finances) or simply, because criminal organizations don’t have any political goals, at least not beyond protecting their businesses. It is also important to say that there are more resources, better organizations and more solid instructions at the federal level.
In terms of economic interference within electrical processes, taxing, transparency and accountability are tools capable of (more or less) dissuading organized crime. Nevertheless, political control is part of the strategy against violence. Without pretending to participate in lobbying within the government, criminals could be interested in persuading an individual, party or group in order to hold a popular election charge. The opposite could also apply (criminal organizations being interested in having someone who would represent them: let us remember the case of former Deputy Julio César Godoy and his alleged association with the then-leader of the Familia Michoacana criminal group).
The fact that not all crime comes from drug trafficking should not be disregarded. States and municipalities have been part of the brutality of non-institutional politics of “rough Mexico”. Local political struggles have enhanced electoral violence for a long time. However, those facts seldom transcended the national scene, to the point of not even being acknowledged in some states’ capitals. This was due to the general system of political control that some governors held over local press. Nowadays, even though the ability to control the media persists in some cases, the democratic openness has enabled similar events from being publicly known. This leads to a topic that has been little discussed in Mexico: the thin line between security and democracy. If the current government – in any of its three levels – is in charge of security and is able to protect candidates as well as to determine who has criminal ties and who doesn’t, it could be used as a harmful tool to intervene within the structure of political opposition. Not only do we have a non-consolidated democracy but the violent environment and criminality in which they work offer uncountable possibilities for several interests to appear, each for their own reasons. The issue is more dangerous than it seems.
CIDAC
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