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Machine gun in hand, five policemen protect her day and night. Not to reassure for all that Diana Itzel Hernandez, candidate for a seat of local deputy in the State of Guerrero, in the southwest of Mexico: “The ‘narcos’ of the corner are much more numerous and armed.” The courage of this 34-year-old woman remains her best armor against the political violence of the drug cartels, which turned the campaign for the legislative and local elections of June 6 into a massacre. 35 candidates have already fallen under the bullets of “narcopolitics”, on the eve of the biggest poll in recent history of the country.
“It is a campaign of terror, denounces Diana Itzel. The mafias try to influence the electoral results by eliminating the candidates who embarrass them.” This mother of two is in the municipality of Chilapa, a strategic area for the production and trafficking of heroin to the United States, the world’s largest market. Across Mexico, as of April 30, more than 143 people (candidates, party officials, officials and journalists) were murdered during the electoral process, which began eight months earlier. “The attacks intensify with the approach of the poll,” worries Carlos Rubio, deputy director of Integralia, a firm specializing in political risks, which keeps this count of electoral violence. 73% of attacks against politicians are committed by armed groups, which confirms the premeditation and the strike force of the aggressors.
The candidates, number 1 targets of organized crime
The scale of the elections gives cause for fear of the worst: more than 2,000 mandates are at stake, including the 500 seats of deputies, 15 of the 31 governor posts and thousands of local offices in most of the 2,467 municipalities that make up this federal republic. . “The ballot is a key moment in the reorganization of politico-mafia pacts”, sums up Carlos Rubio. And to add: “the local candidates are the most threatened, because the organized crime focuses on the municipal mandates to maintain its territorial control. The political power assures him the protection of the local police force to continue its illegal trafficking. A means, also, to get hold of the public markets to launder the dirty money in legal activities “. All parties are concerned, “but most of the victims are opponents of regional or local power,” said the expert.
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A bloodthirsty grip, of which Diana Itzel was victim in her flesh: the bodies of her parents, her grandmother and a family friend were discovered in 2017 charred in a car. At the time, his father, Ranferi Hernandez, a regional figure in social activism, was aiming for a seat as a federal deputy in the 2018 election, which remained the most violent in history with 48 candidates killed. “The killers of my family have not been arrested,” enraged Diana Itzel, local head of the young party (Morena) of left-wing president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (“Amlo”), which is leading a crusade against corruption. “I can not campaign where I want,” laments this small woman, whose soft and fragile voice contrasts with her nerves of steel. The candidate avoids going to the villages located near the town of Quechultenango, the stronghold of the Ortega brothers, heads of the Los Ardillos cartel. Member of the mafia siblings, Bernardo Ortega is himself in the running for his re-election as a local deputy in a coalition that includes the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI, center), which has governed the country without interruption for seventy-one years. , until 2000, before returning to power from 2012 to 2018.
92% of reported crimes go unpunished
“The end of the PRI’s hegemony weakened the federal state,” explains Jorge Chabat, a specialist in organized crime at the University of Guadalajara. At the time, the president and the party played the arbitrators between the cartels. political change has boosted the powers of governors and mayors, who now negotiate directly with mafia groups. ” In this context, the atmosphere becomes more and more deleterious with the approach of the poll. In the state of Nuevo Leon (northeast), the two candidates of the PRI and the Movimiento Ciudadano party (social democrats) in the race for the post of governor accuse each other of illicit financing. Even the president’s party, “Amlo”, Morena, is concerned. His candidate for mayor of Huetamo in the state of Michoacan (West) is wanted by the American anti-drug agency (DEA). According to the Mexican press, the prosecutor’s office was conducting investigations at the end of April on 370 candidates suspected of links with the drug cartels.
“Organized crime is not the only aggressor of politicians, tempers Jorge Chabat. Some local caciques recruit killers to eliminate an opponent.” In Mexico, 92% of reported crimes go unpunished, according to the non-governmental organization, Mexico Evalua. Jairo Hernandez, PRI candidate for mayor of Mariscala de Juarez, in the southwestern state of Oaxaca of the country, accuses the mayor of the Unidad Popular party of fomenting the attack, on May 19, against his country car, riddled with bullets. He escaped unharmed, but his daughter, who was accompanying him, was injured.
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Unlike Diana Itzel, he did not benefit from a police escort. The candidate protection plan put in place at the beginning of March by the government concerns nearly 150 electoral candidates nationwide, including around 30 in Guerrero. “This plan comes too late”, laments Jorge Chabat, for whom “the young Mexican democracy is threatened if people can no longer run freely in an election”. The Electoral Institute recorded, in mid-May, 419 withdrawals of candidates. In Chilapa, Leocadio Avila, the PRI candidate for mayor of this agglomeration of 31,000 inhabitants, admitted in the local press that he had given up his candidacy under the threat of armed men. Despite the risks, there was no question for Diana to throw in the towel. Her two young children remain barricaded in her house. But she continues her campaign: “My son and my daughter are safe. I have nothing more to lose.” Yes, his life.
