On May 27, in broad daylight, five members of the team of Dante Martínez Paulín, candidate of the Citizen Movement party (MC) for councilor of the municipality of Jiménez, in Tamaulipas, suffered two attacks in less than ten minutes when they were traveling on the highway of Ciudad Victoria to Matamoros. They were shot by a group of armed civilians, without the army, National Guard, or the Police of the state governed by the Morenista Américo Villarreal doing anything to prevent it.
This occurs just five days before the electoral process in Mexico ends, which will take place next Sunday in the midst of a violent environment and under the territorial control of organized crime in various parts of the country.
Death of candidates in different states
Just on May 16, the bodies of Aníbal Zúñiga Cortés, candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) for councilor for the municipality of Coyuca de Benítez, in the state of Guerrero, and that of his wife Rubí Bravo were found dismembered in the public street. .
That same day, the candidate for mayor of La Concordia, in Chiapas, Lucero López Maza of the Chiapaneco Popular Party, was murdered in an armed attack, as was Santos Moreno Cabada, PRI candidate for councilor in the municipality of Choix, Sinaloa.
On May 18, three campaign collaborators of the Morena candidate for the municipal presidency of Villa Corzo, Chiapas, Robertony Orozco, were murdered, who was wounded by a gunshot.
Ricardo Arizmendi Reynoso, substitute candidate for the municipal presidency of Cuautla, Morelos for the opposition coalition of PAN, PRI, PRD and Progressive Social Networks (RSP), was shot to death on May 28, when he was working in his business located in the Supply Central of that town.
At least 36 candidates for elected office, and 14 relatives of candidates, have been executed during the electoral process that concludes on June 2, according to the report “Why are so many candidates murdered in the Mexican elections?” , published by the newspaper The New York Times on May 25.
98.3 million voters called to vote in Mexico
Next Sunday, in Mexico, 98.3 million voters registered in the Nominal List of the National Electoral Institute (INE) are called to participate to cast their vote and elect the president of the republic, eight governorships, the Head of Government of Mexico City and its 16 mayoralties, 128 senatorial offices, 500 deputations, 31 local congresses, 1,580 city councils, and 24 municipal boards.
Extreme violence in these 2024 elections
Ironically, the day after the attack against the MC candidate’s campaign team in Tamaulipas, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, declared that “the elections on June 2 will be the cleanest and freest in history.”
An empty propaganda phrase, because, in reality, that no longer happened. The extreme violence and threats that dozens of candidates have suffered in all regions of the country demonstrate that the elections were neither free nor fair. Including the illegal interventionism of López Obrador, who since the pre-campaign has made propaganda in favor of the official candidate Claudia Sheinbaum, with the inexplicable lukewarmness of the INE.
The questions that arise are: can there be free and legal elections when drug cartels participate to influence the election? Is what is at stake in Mexico the existence of a ‘narcocracy’?
Narco-elections in Mexico
In electoral processes where organized crime exercises its influence through explicit violence, money or logistical support, one cannot speak of democracy or free voting, at least not in many areas of the country.
Regarding the coming to power of López Obrador himself, there are statements by members of the Sinaloa Cartel given to the United States government that indicate that his three presidential campaigns: 2006, 2012 and 2018 were financed and logistically supported by said criminal organization.
There are at least four former members of that cartel who have declared this to United States authorities as collaborating witnesses: Jesús Zambada García alias “El Rey”, Sergio Villarreal Barragán alias “El Grande”, Dámaso López Serrano alias “Mini Lic” and Guillermo Michel Hernández alias “Lagartijo”.
Perhaps that is the reason why AMLO, after establishing as a public policy “hugs and not bullets” towards organized crime, now minimizes the extreme violence it exerts in the elections.
The most immediate and palpable example of the consequences of allowing organized crime to act with impunity in the elections is what happened in the federal elections of June 6, 2021, where, in a proven and documented way, the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) not only influenced before but also during election day.
The Sinaloa Cartel kidnapped and intimidated candidates and poll workers
In columns published in 2021, before the elections, I described the various agreements between members of the official Morena party with members of the Sinaloa Cartel, such as Ismael Zambada García, and the “Los Chapitos” cartel made up of Iván, Alfredo, Ovidio and Joaquín Guzmán.
The pact was to support the candidacies of the Morena-Partido Sinaloense candidate for the governorship of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha Moya, of José Paz López Elenes, candidate for the municipal presidency of Badiraguato – birthplace of Joaquín Guzmán Loera “El Chapo” -, among others.
That pact was finalized in specific operations on June 6, 2021 when Rocha Moya was the ‘winner’ of the elections.
A report prepared by the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the National Action Party (PAN) and the PRI titled “Organized crime in the 2021 electoral process” delivered by said parties to the Organization of American States (OAS) that year , specifically describes how those commitments became specific actions that led to an election determined by criminal groups in some areas of the country.
According to the 57-page document, of which I have a copy, “on the night of Saturday, June 5, 2021, several organized crime vans circulated through the streets of Culiacán, in the state of Sinaloa. Between 3 and 5 in the morning, some of those trucks broke into the Colinas del Rey subdivision and extracted from his home the organizational secretary of the State Steering Committee of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Sinaloa, Mr. José Alberto Salas Beltrán. ”.
“Salas tried to defend himself,” the report states, “but he was subdued, beaten, and dragged into a vehicle. From that moment on he would remain deprived of liberty for nearly 50 hours. As organizational secretary of the PRI, Salas was a key player in the development of the election day the following day.”
There were at least one hundred kidnappings between the night of June 5 and 6, 2021 related to the election in Sinaloa, according to the document.
“Several vans blocked your way, five, six armed men pointed at your face, they put you in the back of one of their vehicles with beatings and insults and they covered your face with adhesive tape known as ‘tape.’ cinnamon,’ said one of the victims in an interview conducted for the preparation of this report, and who asked that his name be kept confidential. “A candidate for local representative for a district in Culiacán was part of the group that was raised,” she says.
In another paragraph it is described: “Culiacán is a historical bastion of the Sinaloa Cartel, the criminal organization led today by Ovidio Guzmán López, Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, sons of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo.
“On June 6, through violence and electoral terrorism, Los Chapitos, as these leaders are known, brought about the triumph of a political party and a candidate in Culiacán: Jesús Estrada Ferreiro, nominated by the Morena alliance. Sinaloense Party”.
“Another municipality in Sinaloa, Ahome, became on Sunday, June 6, election day, a chilling theater of the electoral war carried out by criminal groups: hooded hitmen with long weapons toured the urban area and rural communities, perpetrating riots, threatening officials and voters, stealing ballot boxes, even committing murders. The reports from that day speak of a day without historical precedent.”
In Ahome, Morena’s candidate for the Municipal Presidency in 2021 was Gerardo Vargas Landeros, who won in that election. This coming June 2 he seeks re-election for the same party.
The same dynamic occurred in Badiraguato. “In Badiraguato, the mayoral candidate for the PRI-PAN-PRD alliance, Guadalupe Iribe Gascón, had been receiving threats against her family, as well as members of her work team.” On election day at dawn, members of the Sinaloa Cartel broke into the homes of five of their collaborators, beat them and intimidated them.
“On election day, a commando kidnapped Guadalupe Iribe’s brother.” “A group of armed men arrived at a palapa in three vehicles and took him away.” Given this, the candidate withdrew from the electoral race. The one who won the election in these circumstances was Paz Elenes, who this June 2 seeks to be re-elected as a Morena candidate again.
“Since the candidacies were defined, criminal groups have interfered in the electoral process, in Badiraguato, Guasave, Concordia, Esquinapa, Cosalá, Guamuchil, El Fuerte and Elota, among other municipalities in Sinaloa,” the report indicates.
It should be noted that in Elota the candidate was Ana Karen Val Medina, for the PT party, she won the election in that context. She is the romantic partner of drug trafficker René Bastidas alias “El 00”, a member of the Sinaloa Cartel. Val Medina was a special guest at at least one event at the National Palace with AMLO, and in meetings with the current presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum when she was head of government of Mexico City.
The operation described above by the Sinaloa Cartel reveals planning and organization.
The CJNG did the same in Michoacán
That June 6, 2021, a similar phenomenon occurred in some municipalities in the state of Michoacán where the governorship was being contested. At the end of the day, the Morenoist Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla was elected.
“Who the hell are the representatives of the PRD? They are going to screw your mother here, we don’t want any member of the PRD […] If they value their lives, they leave, said one of the three armed men, dressed in black and with their faces covered, who on June 6, 2021 took control of boxes 01 and basic, corresponding to section 1297, in the municipality of Múgica, Michoacán.”, indicates the criminal complaint presented by the national president of the PRD Jesús Zambrano before the Special Prosecutor for Electoral Crimes on July 15, 2021 and which is part of the document delivered by the opposition bloc to the OAS.
According to the document, “that morning an organized crime operation had begun that spread throughout the municipalities of Múgica, Gabriel Zamora, La Huacana, Salvador Escalante, Régules, Lombardía and Zitácuaro, to ensure the triumph of a party: Morena.” .
The report indicates that information provided by officials and representatives to the district coordinators of the PRD reveals that that day “at nine in the morning, three men wearing caps and face masks broke into the polling stations in section 1299, installed on Lázaro Cárdenas Avenue in Múgica: they pointed a gun at the poll president, seized the ballots for the election for Governor and began to mark them in favor of Morena and its candidate: Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla. “The men introduced more than 400 ballots into the ballot boxes” .
In the Vicente Riva Palacio kindergarten, in the municipality of Múgica, where the polling station corresponding to section 1302 was located, two individuals with white t-shirts and black caps removed the citizens who were waiting in line to vote. “We ask all the people who are not in charge of the polls to get out of here if they value their lives. Voting is over, Morena has already won…” It is stated that they also filled the ballot box to elect governor, according to the representatives’ testimony, the post-election report adds.
“In the municipality of La Huacana, six armed men with their faces covered stood at the doors of the polling station corresponding to section 557 and prevented the passage of voters.” The same thing happened in section 558: eight civilians with high-powered rifles ordered people to leave the place. They told them: “Things are done here by egg and egg, Morena is going to win.” “They told us that we had to vote for the candidate for governor Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla, saying: ‘These are orders from the head of the zone,’” are other testimonies collected by the PRD coordinators in La Huacana.
Despite the irregularities the next day, on June 7 AMLO said that organized crime “behaved well.”
Pact with the devil
Earlier this May, the DEA published its annual report “National Drug Threat Assessment 2024.” There he defines the Sinaloa Cartel and the CJNG as “the main criminal organizations in Mexico, and the most dangerous.”
“They are called transnational criminal organizations because they are not only drug manufacturers and traffickers; They are organized crime groups, involved in arms trafficking, money laundering, migrant trafficking, sex trafficking, bribery, extortion and many other crimes.”
DEA Deputy Director George Papadopoulos appeared in July 2023 before the Homeland Security Committee of the United States Congress to explain strategies in the fight against the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl. There he stated that the Sinaloa Cartel, whose base of operations is the state of Sinaloa, has a presence in 19 of the 32 states that make up Mexico, and has more than 26,000 members in Mexico and 100 countries in the world. “Los Chapitos now run the largest, most violent and most prolific fentanyl trafficking operation in the world,” he said.
He also pointed out that the CJNG, with its operations base in Jalisco, has a presence in 21 entities, and has 18,800 associates. And it is the second largest producer and trafficker of fentanyl that reaches the United States.
It should be noted that the CJNG has a rivalry with the Sinaloa Cartel. “Los Chapitos” do not forgive Rubén Oseguera Cervantes alias “El Mencho”, leader of the CJNG, for the participation of his cartel in the kidnapping of Iván and Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, which occurred in Puerto Vallarta in 2016, whose purpose was to murder them. Even so, both operated in favor of the official party in their respective regions.
The citizens have the last word
Given the current scenario of violence and with the documented antecedents of 2021, what can we expect this June 2?
In my opinion, only a massive participation of voters, of all ages, in all regions, can set a historic example for the violent and the authoritarians. It is not a “procedure” as some want to propose, it is a democratic battle of citizens for the benefit of citizens.
In the last 15 days I have received sensitive information about the alleged planning of organized crime actions on election day that fit into the 2021 scheme.
I reserve this information in the spirit of the benefit of the doubt, but above all in the hope that the massive participation of voters can stop any attempt to manipulate the elections. The eyes of the world will closely observe everything that will happen, and if the voter, the polling stations and the right to a free and secret vote are not protected, the responsible authorities and political bodies will be called to account.
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