The Mexican state of Guanajuato is in the
center of the country, with a population approaching six million. It’s a stronghold
the center-right National Action Party (PAN), and is one of the eight states
that is also electing a new governor on July 1. At present, the governor and
two of three federal senators are members of the PAN. The third senator is a
member of Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which is also the party of
the sitting president, Enrique Peña Nieto.
Guanajuato has been spared the corruption
scandals that have plagued many states where governors have belonged to the PRI,
but it has not been immune to the violence that has plagued the country. In the
first four months of 2018, a resident of Guanajuato is murdered every three
hours, with about eight people being killed every day.
Some of the killings, inevitably, represent
attacks on police. On Friday, June 1, gunmen killed six traffic cops in La
Gloria, a neighborhood in the city of Salamanca, Guanajuato. A motive is
unknown, but at the time Governor Miguel Márquez was attending a meeting at a
nearby military installation, purportedly discussing ways to improve security.
Some observers are speculating that the seemingly random killing was intended
to wound him politically.
So far in 2018, 34 police officers have
been killed in Guanajuato. According to the Guanajuato Attorney General, a
major source of the unrest is petroleum pipeline theft. Salamanca is the home
to a refinery by state oil company Pemex, which is now under investigation for alleged
fuel theft by company employees.
In response to the violence the government
has included Guanajuato in its Titan Shield initiative, which is intended to
stabilize those parts of the country that are in the greatest turmoil. Titan
Shield, which relies heavily on the Marines, was implemented in Guanajuato in
early March. The government claims that, as a result of Titan Shield,
gang-related killings are down 61% in Apaseo el Grande, and 43% in Celaya.
Guanajuato has also not been unaffected by
political violence leading up to the July 1 election cycle, which includes
elections at the local level, including mayors. On Thursday, May 10, a candidate
for mayor in Apaseo el Alto was shot dead along while out campaigning. José
Remedios Aguirre, 34, was standing outside the town’s ecological park when he
was killed.
Remedios Aguirre, who was the former head
of security for the municipality, was running as part of Morena, the
left-of-center coalition headed by leading presidential candidate Andrés Manuel
López Obrador (AMLO). Ricardo Sheffield Padilla, 52, the Morena candidate for
governor, has said that he holds Governor Miguel Márquez responsible for the
crime.
As well, on March 22 ten gunmen showed up in
several vehicles and opened fire in a bar and cockfighting ring in Purísima del
Rincón. They killed eight people, including the father of the mayor, and
wounded eleven others. This was clearly a targeted attack intended to kill as
many people as possible.
The state Public Security Secretary, Álvar
Cabeza de Vaca Appendini, told the Guanajuato Congress that the reason for the
wave in violence was a dispute between two criminal gangs fighting over
street-level drug sales as well the theft of fuel from Pemex pipelines. This has affected the press as well: Guanajuato had never had a journalist killed until 2015, when the journalist Gerardo Nieto Álvarez was murdered.
Security, therefore, is the number one
issue in Guanajuato during this election cycle. Though politicians in Mexico
are often slighted for their corruption, it must be acknowledged that many also
risk their lives running for office, particularly if they refuse to be bought,
or, as is sadly also sometimes the case, if are on the payroll of one criminal
group and subsequently removed another. This may have been the case with Remedios
Aguirre due to his previous role as the town security chief – it is difficult
for low level security officials on contested “plazas” (territories) to avoid
relationships with cartels. However, in a remarkable turn of events, within a
week of Remedios Aguirre’s death his wife María del Carmen Ortíz announced that
she would be running in his place.
There has been some good news for
Guanajuato on the economic front. In April it was announced that Robert Bosch
GmbH, a German engineering and electronics company, would invest US $120
million in a new manufacturing plant in Celaya. The facility is expected to
begin production next year and employ 1,200 people. Overall last year
Guanajuato recorded economic growth at, 4.58%, more than double the national
average.
Unfortunately, Guanajuato is being
negatively affected by President Donald Trump’s erratic behavior, and
uncertainty over NAFTA and the possibility of auto tariffs. This year only one
auto company, a German firm, has announced new investment in Guanajuato. In
2017 the state saw foreign investment of $1.7 billion, mostly in the automotive
sector, which is expected to create over 14,000 jobs. However, a spokesperson
for Mexico's Ministry of Economy has said that fewer international companies
than usual are now visiting Guanajuato to explore business opportunities.
But economics aren’t driving this election.
Like Colima and Baja California Sur, two states that have historically done
well economically with low levels of violence, the spike in the murder rate in
Guanajuato makes public security the dominant issue.
The state has four candidates for governor:
Diego Rodríguez Vallejo, 37 (PAN);
Felipe Arturo Camarena García, 62 (PVEM –
Green Party); Gerardo Sánchez García, 57, PRI; and the
aforementioned Ricardo Sheffield Padilla, 52 (Morena).
Given past voting patterns, Rodríguez
Vallejo of the PAN should be a shoe-in for governor. The people of Guanajuato
are inclined to take a more conservative, law and order approach, and the PAN
offers that. But Sheffield Padilla is an interesting candidate, in that he has
made the shift from PAN to be the candidate for the left-of-center Morena. He
is more experienced, and Harvard educated, which impresses conservatives in Mexico.
Gerardo Sánchez García of the PRI doesn’t
have a chance, not should he. The PRI are behind the candidacy of Felipe Arturo Camarena García of the PVEM
(Green), which is a fraudulent law-and-order party that has very little to do
with what one might identify as typical “green” policies. Their television and
online advertisements don’t even mention the environment – instead they highlight
capital punishment for murderers and kidnappers. The PRI cynically floats PVEM
candidates when it want to pull disgruntled votes from the PAN. If anything, one
hopes that by weakening the PAN candidacy of Rodríguez
Vallejo the strategy might put Sheffield Padilla over the top.
At the federal level most votes will go to Ricardo Anaya (PAN-PRD), a ruthless and whip-smart country-club kid who appeals to
business interests and, to some extent, the middle class. The PRI candidate José Antonio Meade is smart and accomplished, but the PRI is toxic in this election,
and he’ll fare poorly.
As for presidential front-runner Andrés
Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), he may do better than expected – it will all
depend on whether the electorate believes he can improve the security situation.
He has taken a softer tone than the other candidates, but that may not be what
people in Guanajuato want to hear, particularly given the recent success of
Titan Shield.
One factor to consider: Mexican presidents
are elected to six year terms. This is a longer bet than in most countries. And
in that context, AMLO’s argument that nothing can be done to address violence
as long as the country is run by a corrupt mafia – to which he has connected
Anaya and Meade – might resonate with even a more conservative voter.
Below are the links to the posts for each state:
No comments:
Post a Comment