Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum after being named the ruling Morena party’s presidential candidate for next year’s presidential election in Mexico City on September 6, 2023 Give a speech.
Claudio Cruz | AFP | Getty Images
Mexican voters are taking part in the country’s largest-ever election – voting for more than 20,000 local, state and federal offices on Sunday and almost certain to elect the country’s first female president.
But rampant violence marred the path to one of the most important elections in Mexico’s history.
Criminal gangs have taken over much of Mexico, vying for territory, trafficking drugs into the United States, making money from smuggling immigrants and extorting residents to fuel their illegal enterprises. Violence against politicians has also persisted throughout the election cycle, resulting in a 150% increase in the number of victims of political violence since 2021, according to analysis by Integralia, a public affairs consulting firm that studies political risk and other issues in Mexico.
These have deeply frustrated Mexican voters, leading most of them to cite security as their top concern. A survey released in April by Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography showed that about 6 in 10 Mexican adults believe the cities they live in are unsafe due to looting or armed violence.
The two leading presidential candidates – Claudia Scheinbaum of Mexico’s ruling Morena party and Xochitl Galvez of the opposition Broad Front of Mexico – have different views on the best ways to reduce crime. Very different ideas.
One of them is expected to make history by becoming Mexico’s first female president, given that Jorge Alvarez Menez, the presidential candidate of the Civic Movement party, is far ahead in the polls.
Scheinbaum, a former mayor of Mexico City and a physicist and climate scientist, said she plans to implement this by continuing her mentor, outgoing President Andres Manuel López Obrador. The country’s “hugs, not bullets” policy to combat violence does not take direct action as previous administrations have done against cartels.
Tony Payan, director of the Center on the United States and Mexico at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, said that before López Obrador took office, the Mexican government and local governments were “at least rhetorically interested in taking action against the violence.” “But that rhetoric has completely shifted since Mr. Lopez Obrador took office in late 2018…These criminals believe they can do almost anything they want and the state will not pursue them. them.
López Obrador’s policies have not significantly reduced killings over the past six years, with at least 102,400 homicides reported during that period, Mexican government data shows.
But the data also shows that López Obrador’s predecessor’s strategy of pursuing drug lords through an all-out war has not improved security.
Galvez, a former senator and technology entrepreneur, has worked to convince voters that health care services and economic development have stalled and crime rates have remained high under Morena. The center-right candidate is also trying to position her party as a coalition of the traditional parties that have long ruled Mexico, such as the conservative National Action Party (PAN), the small Progressive Democratic Revolutionary Party and the old-school Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI — something Mexico needs to do Make changes to unite an increasingly polarized country.
Mexico’s next president will play an important role in addressing U.S. priorities, such as immigration and foreign affairs, and determining the future of trade deals that make Mexico the United States’ largest trading partner.
On Sunday, voting opens at 8:00 a.m. local time and ends at 6:00 p.m.
