The state of Guerrero is located in Southwest
Mexico, and is home to the resort city of Acapulco, its largest city, as well
as the popular tourist destinations Zihuatanejo and Ixtapa. Its capital city is
Chilpancingo, and its population about 3.5 million.
Despite its popularity with tourists, Guerrero
has always been a violent place. During the 1970s it was a hotbed of leftist guerrilla
activity, and beginning in the 1980s drug cartels have used farmland in
Guerrero to cultivate marijuana and poppies.
On September 26, 2014, 43 male students
from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College were forcibly taken then disappeared
in Iguala, Guerrero. This made headlines around the world, as did the
government’s bungled investigation. The case remains unsolved, but it appears
that local officials were upset at the students, who were planning to
commandeer several buses to travel to Mexico City to commemorate the
anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre. It is believed that local police
took the students into custody, and then handed them over to the Guerreros
Unidos ("United Warriors") gang, who then killed them.
Though the mass murder of the student
teachers made international news, the reality is that for many years now, day
in and day out, Guerrero has been a dangerous place. It is a poor state, which
makes the local populace, particularly young men, easy prey from criminal
organizations. As of May 31, Guerrero is the second most violent state in
Mexico, with 770 murders, behind Baja California (834) and marginally ahead of
Guanajuato (768).
Politically, perhaps due to its poverty,
the right of center National Action Party (PAN) has never had much success in
Guerrero. The governor is from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI),
which ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century, and is also the
party of President Enrique Peña Nieto.
Of the three federal senators, two are from the left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and third is from the PRI.
Guerrero is no stranger to political
violence, and this campaign is no different. Since September, as of this
writing, 19 politicians have been murdered in the state.
Most recently, on May 31 Rodrigo Salgado
Agatón, 23, who was running for municipal council under the PRI banner in San
Marcos, was shot and killed. This was obviously a targeted crime: Salgado was
riding in a vehicle with campaign workers near the town of Plan de los Amates
when they were attacked by an armed group in another moving vehicle. Salgado,
who was also regional coordinator for the senatorial campaign of Manuel Añorve
Baños, former mayor of Acapulco, was the only person hit in the attack.
As well, earlier in May Abel Montúfar
Mendoza, a PRI candidate for state congress, was shot by unidentified
assailants on the road between Ciudad Altamirano and Coyuca de Catalán. This is
in the notoriously insecure Tierra Caliente region, which rises inland in
central Guerrero up into the Sierras and the border with the State of Mexico.
Montúfar, who had previously complained of
death threats, had taken leave as mayor of Coyuca to contest the July 1
elections. He was seeking a congressional seat to represent four Tierra
Caliente municipalities. The seat is currently vacant because its holder is on
the lam on homicide charges. The interim congressman was murdered in April last
year.
Journalists are also not safe in Guerrero. Before the drug war, which officially began in December, 2016, 13 journalists had been killed in the history of the state. Of these, four were killed in the 21st century. However, since the beginning of the drug war at least 15 journalists have been murdered in Guerrero.
In these circumstance, how can a democracy
possibly function? The situation so bad that the governor of the state,
Héctor Astudillo Flores, has distributed a risk map designed to warn candidates
about campaigning in certain parts of the state.
The insecurity in rural Guerrero, as in neighboring
Michoacán, has resulted on local citizens organizing civil defense forces.
These organizes are usually legitimate responses to the failure of the state to
provide security or, worse, that active collusion of local law enforcement with
drug cartels. On occasion, criminal groups themselves attempt to pass themselves
off as civil defense groups.
This is relevant to the July 1 election
because Morena, the left-of-centre political party headed by leading presidential
candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), has named Nestora Salgado García,
a former commander of a community police force, as a senatorial candidate.
Salgado was arrested in 2013 and charged
with kidnapping and with being affiliated with organized crime. The arrest was
seen by many as being politically motivated. Salgado spent two years and seven
months in jail before the Mexican courts, in a series of judgments, declared
her innocence.
During the campaign, the federal candidate for
the PRI, José Antonio Meade, cast aspersions on Salgado, AMLO, and Morena,
asserting that his political opponents on the left were sanctioning disrespect
for the law. The effort appears to have backfired: AMLO defended Salgado’s
candidacy, and maintained his lead in the polls.
One of the main sources of violence in
Guerrero is the fact that the Mexican government’s “kingpin” approach to the
war on drugs has resulted in a splintering of criminal organizations vying for
control of opium plantations in the Tierra Caliente. This has resulted in
brutal conflict, and a complete breakdown in law and order, as was seen in
early May when nine food vendors were kidnapped and murdered.
Back on April 17 armed civilians clashed
with security forces, leaving 16 dead – including six police officers. This occurred
near the resort town of Zihuatanejo after the police were attacked by an armed
group. And during the month of April four police officers, including the police
chief, were murdered in two incidents in the small town of Chilapa, one of
Mexico’s most violent communities. The bishop of Chilpancingo, Salvador Rangel, visited Chilapa
in early April to plea for a truce between warring factions, at least during
the election season. The bishop claimed that gang leaders agreed not to kill any more candidates for
election, but it appears to be of no avail.
Within such high levels of insecurity, the
local population is suffering. It is impossible to address pressing issues such
as water contamination, underfunded education, and healthcare delivery. In some
areas, schools have closed, with doctors unwilling to travel to medical clinics. Most of the trouble is in rural areas, but the city of Acapulco has
for years now been experience record levels of violence, and 2018 is turning out
to be worse than ever – in April alone 100 people were murdered in Acapulco.
Even the clowns are protesting.
Médecins Sans Frontières (Médicos sin Fronteras) in Guerrero |
Is there any good news from Guerrero? Well,
at the end of March two new stretches of highway in the Zihuatanejo-Ixtapa
corridor were officially opened.
So what happens when it comes to federal
election? PAN candidate Ricardo Anaya will have lukewarm support in Guerrero,
particularly after the PAN’s cynical alliance with the PRD, which has been in a
free-fall since AMLO left to form Morena. The PRI candidate José Antonio Meade could
usually expect to do reasonably well in Guerrero, but not this time around, as
the PRI can’t legitimately claim after six disastrous years of corruption and
violence, and the bungling of the Ayotzinapa investigation, to have the
interests of the people of Guerrero at heart.
That leave us with Andrés Manuel López
Obrador. AMLO should clean up in Guerrero, but there is of course one caveat:
there are rural areas in Guerrero where the people are so fatigued and frightened,
and the system so marred by violence and corruption, that they may not vote at
all.
Below are the links to the posts for each state:
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