Frontera NorteSur
A voodoo-like doll left on a candidate’s doorstep. Political contenders jailed for shoplifting at Wal-Mart or receiving kickbacks for a garbage dump contract. A century-old cartoon character reborn as a write-in candidate. Flying accusations of narco-corruption. Deadly ambushes and killings. Such has been the stuff of the 2009 mid-term Mexican election campaign.
On Sunday, July 5, nearly 77.5 million Mexicans will be eligible to cast votes for a new federal Congress as well as new state and local governments in 10 states and the capital of Mexico City. Predictions abound of massive voter abstention, record protest voting and a victory by the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
In important ways, the federal congressional campaign in the northern border state of Chihuhaua was emblematic of the national race. A negative campaign tone was established early in the year when the Mexico City daily Excelsior published an explosive story that alleged money from the Juarez drug cartel helped finance the successful 2004 mayoral candidacy of Hector “Teto” Murguia in Ciudad Juarez. Murguia is a 2009 congressional candidate for the PRI in a border district.
An graying institution of Mexican journalism, Excelsior cited a document from the US Drug Enforcement Administration as a source for its story. A DEA spokesperson, Janet Selzer, later denied the report in question was an “official” one from her agency.
The Excelsior story traced the alleged dirty financing to US convict Saulo Reyes Gam-boa. A former Ciudad Juarez police chief during the latter days of the Murguia administration, Reyes was arrested in El Paso, Texas, last year by US government agents for attempting to smuggle a large shipment of marijuana.
Aghast at the story, Murguia called the piece a lie. The border politician repeated an earlier claim that Reyes had been recommended for the police chief job by Coparmex, the influential Mexican employers’ association.
“Neither we nor Coparmex had a crystal ball to predict that Saulo would be involved in trying to pass a shipment of marijuana three months after the end of the administration,” Murguia said.
Shadowy gun-slingers and Mysterious mud-slingers
Unproven charges of narco-infiltration and political corruption were far from unique to Chihuahua in the 2009 campaign. In some ways, Chihuahua’s weekly political scandals were tame in comparison with developments elsewhere in Mexico.
Since the beginning of the year, at least 13 candidates or their supporters have been murdered gangland-style in several states. Other candidates have been threatened or had their vehicles set on fire. The arrests of 27 public officials (including 7 mayors) accused by the federal government of serving La Familia drug cartel in the PRD-run state of Michoacan fueled public suspicions and press comments on the existence of a “narco-state” in Mexico.
The shadow of the narco also tainted political races in Nuevo Leon on Mexico’s northern border and in Colima on the Pacific Coast, among other places. A Mexican Internet news site, Reporte Indigo, posted scandalous audiotapes related to races in both Nuevo Leon and Colima. A recording featured Mario Fernandez Garza, PAN candidate for mayor of San Pedro Garza Garcia, Nuevo Leon, confirming the deep penetration of drug gangs in what was once considered Mexico’s richest and safest municipality.
“Infiltration by drug traffickers is real and it happens to all the candidates-at least the ones (narcos) consider have a possibility of winning,” Fernandez was quoted on the tape. “In my case, I let it be known that there would be no obvious agreement.”
A member of the Monterrey-area industrial elite, Fernandez is an experienced politician known for his taste in fine art and his proclivity for frankness, including the admission that he smoked the devil weed in his youth. Although he is a member of the center-right PAN, Fernandez claims a politically eclectic range of friendships, including Fidel Castro, former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, co-founder of Mexico’s center-left PRD party.
On May 27, Reporte Indigo set the fuse of another audio bomb. This one had Virgilio Mendoza Amezcua, PAN candidate for Congress in Colima, allegedly admitting to accepting dirty money.
“(Narcos) approached me like they do half the world, and they sent me money,” Mendoza allegedly said. Outraged, the candidate filed a federal legal complaint against whoever was responsible for fabricating a tape recording. Six rival political parties filed their own charges with the federal attorney general’s office, accusing Mendoza of accepting drug money.
The Reporte Indigo tapes were very similar to previous, anonymously-produced audio recordings and video tapes that involved Mexican politicians and other prominent personalities in scandals.
Typically, the tapes appear during an election season and reek of producers who most likely have experience with a state security agency of some kind. The ulterior motives of the tapes’ authors are almost never publicly revealed-at least at first.
Meanwhile, in another Colima race, the PRI’s gubernatorial candidate for governor, Mario Anguiano Moreno, has come under scrutiny because of relatives previously jailed for drug trafficking. Colima is home to the large Pacific port of Manzanillo, one of the sites where Chinese-born businessman Zhenli Ye Gon allegedly imported large amounts of ephedrine used to manufacture methamphetamines prior to 2006.
Despite plentiful narco scandals and even scattered violence, the July 5 election is likely to proceed normally in the vast majority of Mexican electoral districts. However, violence and threats in pockets of the states of Chihuahua, Sonora, Coahuila, Durango, Sinaloa, Jalisco, Michoacan, and Guerrero could make voting problematic.
Will Many People Even Bother to Vote?
The 2009 elections occur amid the highest unemployment in 14 years, creeping price inflation and falling tax revenues. Worse yet, the old escape valve of migration to the US appears to be wrench-ed shut for the moment.
Given the severity of the challenges facing Mexico, media spots run by the candidates appear frivolous to many observers. In this race, image is again the winner over substance; little serious debate about revamping social, economic and political structures has occurred within the official parameters of the elections.
Instead, citizens got spots from the PAN that cited very questionable statistics in support of President Calderon’s anti-drug war or observed messages from the pro-death penalty Mexican Green Party that advocated government vouchers for privately-run computer and English schools. Under fire from much of his party’s base, PRD leader Jesus Ortega, carried on with a small child on the airwaves about making Mexico a better place.
Although voter turn-out is typically low for mid-term elections, some observers predict a record abstention rate this year as perhaps the majority of Mexicans do not view any of the political parties capable of solving basic concerns like finding a job or paying for the kids’ school.
An unknown number of Mexicans will turn out to vote but wind up casting ballots for write-in candidates or crossing them out in protest.
A collective associated with the Saturday cultural supplement of the Aguascalientes edition of La Jornada newspaper is actually promoting a vote for Chepito Marihuano, a century-old cartoon character invented by the legendary artist Guadalupe Posada.
“We’re tired of the candidates and the entire system, including the IFE and the people involved in it,” said award-winning poet and collective member Juan Pablo de Avila. “One answer is to promote genuine candidates and representatives of the people, and one of them could be Chepito Marihuano.”
In a similar but perhaps less colorful vein, an organized movement has emerged to encourage citizens to turn in blank or mutilated ballots.
Meantime, most leading polls give the former ruling PRI an edge in the July 5 voting.
Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico