Why Mexico's Election Was So Violent

Can Claudia Sheinbaum upend the dynamics of gang violence in Mexico?

cEneasMx, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons...

Claudia Sheinbaum will be the next President of Mexico. In national elections on June 2, the protégé of President López Obrador and former Mayor of Mexico City won a landslide victory, earning nearly 59% of the vote. She is a former climate scientist and will be the first woman and the first person of Jewish origin to lead the overwhelmingly Catholic country.

But beyond the presidency, there were over 20,000 positions at all levels of government up for election, and it was in these state and local elections that things turned violent. Very violent. This was by far the bloodiest election in Mexico's history, with over 30 candidates assassinated during the campaigning.

My guest today, Falko Ernst, is the senior analyst for Mexico at the International Crisis Group. As he explains, this election-related violence is a product of criminal gangs competing for control, influence, power, and wealth. We kick off by discussing Claudia Sheinbaum's background and her unique approach to violent crime as mayor of Mexico City. We then discuss the dynamics that led to violence in the lead-up to these elections and what can be done to disrupt criminal gangs' sway over local politics in Mexico.

As always, the full podcast episode is freely available across all podcast listening platforms. The full transcript is available to paying subscribers immediately below the fold.

Transcript edited for clarity

Mark Leon Goldberg: Can you give us a biographical sketch of Claudia Sheinbaum? She seems to be an interesting political figure, a climate scientist who also ran Mexico City, which is one of the world’s largest cities. So, who is she?

Falko Ernst: Yeah, I mean, that’s a good question. To a degree, we’re going to see who she is as Mexico’s leading politician over the next six years, and there’s a number of question marks behind that. But she does have an interesting background. She’s a trained physicist. She has roots in left-wing social movements in Mexico. And she transitioned into politics. She’s been close to López Obrador, the outgoing president for quite a while and became his political daughter in many ways. And then, of course, her most prominent gig so far has been the mayorship in Mexico City.

Here, I think we received some indications of where she might be headed as president as well, especially around concerns of security. One of the main items that she ran on during this presidential campaign was her success in lowering homicide rates and other serious crimes in Mexico City. And from all we can tell, even though there’s, a number of doubts as to the veracity of official statistics but she did a better job at streamlining the actions of police in Mexico City, and really managed to more directly and deliberately address what they call “generators of violence,” i.e., really mapping out criminal networks. Finding out, through better-on-the streets, intelligence work done by police — who integrates criminal networks, who does what, who murders people — and then have police target them specifically to provoke an effect of lowering homicide rates and situational crime prevention essentially.

Mark Leon Goldberg: And it’s fair to say that Mexico City, compared to other areas in Mexico, really did do a much better job on the security front and is less impacted by murder and gang violence, correct?

Falko Ernst: Yeah, absolutely. Mexico City is quite exceptional in the sense that you have a better trained police force than you might expect somewhere else in Mexico. But what’s also interesting about this project that they implemented in Mexico City is that it’s come with a greater degree of transparency. They have been more willing to engage with outsiders and have actually invited academics on board to provide a degree of monitoring and evaluation, which is something almost unheard of when you look at the transparency of other security bodies and in Mexico.

I’m also looking at the rest of the country because what we’ve heard so far from her security team, and from herself as well, is that they want to extrapolate this experience in the city to other parts of the country, including high-conflict areas. And there you’re facing a number of other challenges that might come in as factors diluting those efforts. The challenges are greater because you don’t have such a well-equipped security body in place in many areas. Corruption and collusion is more drastic and more frank in many other areas in Mexico.

And you’re also confronting a different type of organized crime problem than you do in the city. Because here, organized crime, I mean, of course, exists. It operates in many, many ways. It is also violent — but it is not as paramilitary in nature as criminal groups are in high-conflict areas.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So, these elections were far more than president. There were thousands of seats open for elections throughout the country. And these were just extraordinarily violent elections. Over 30 candidates were killed in the run-up to Sunday’s elections. Is there a general profile the candidates that were assassinated? What accounted for their assassination? Why were they targeted in particular? Are there some generalities you can extrapolate based on the fact that so many candidates have been killed on the run-up to these elections?