Election and Violence in Mexico

Our Questions and Objectives

-1- How did practices of electoral violence evolve in the recent years, and how can we better identify the actors behind them?

Electoral violence is neither a recent, nor unprecedented feature of Mexican politics. For example, between 1988 and 1992, thousands of opposition parties activists (the PRD, in this case) have been arrested, molested, tortured, assassinated and disappeared, in the hands of multiple politico-criminal groups). We will put our effort on identifying what has changed over the past decades, in order to identify trends, new practices, and modalities of electoral violence. We will be particularly attentive to the wide array of actors able to mobilize violence during electoral periods, as well as of the dynamics that may fuel such practices: local feuds (over land, property or family matters, for example); political parties’ conflicts, including internal ones; change of political affiliations; the role of businessmen; the role of “machine politics” at the state or federal level; the role of local strongmen (caciques) and other informal authorities; the role of armed public forces; and of course, the role of violent groups, including drug cartels and other criminal structures.

-2- How to better identify the causes of violence, and the actors behind it?

As said earlier, the states that are most affected by electoral violence are not necessarily the ones with the highest criminal presence, or the highest homicide rates. As it happens with other topics in Mexico, academic and media attention tends to follow spectacular events of violence and official homicides’ statistics, therefore creating a distorted vision what is happening in the country. Electoral violence has more to do with the way power is built and exerted, rather than with the mere presence of drug cartels (although Guerrero and Michoacán, as mentioned, which combine all the above mentioned dynamics, will be of crucial importance in order to study the connection between crime and electoral violence). Our project will respond to these questions by focusing on the local dynamics of coercion, without presuming of a simple explanation to them. This is where our methodology, based on extensive fieldwork, interviews and direct access to local actors (candidates, elected officials, the business community, members of armed and criminal groups) will be fundamental.

-3- Who are the most vulnerable populations, and where are they located?

We will follow a wide array of citizens that are affected by electoral violence: candidates, mayors, local public servants, local representatives, party leaders, activists, or journalists, among other “normal” citizens (the family of political candidates, for example). Although political campaigns and election periods represent peak moments of violence, we will aim at documenting electoral and political violence beyond these moments: what happens before the campaigns, and what happens after the elections, including for ex-mayors and ex-candidates, if of utmost importance. Then, it is crucial to give full space to inter-sectional characteristics of geography, age, social profile, gender, and ethnicity. For example, being an indigenous, female candidate in a rural area of Oaxaca is not the same as being a white male, avocado entrepreneur in the semi-urban region of Uruapan (Michoacán). Based on these axes, our project will cross and combine qualitative variables in order to identify and map the most vulnerable profiles of citizens.

-4- How to better measure electoral violence?

In Mexico, most studies take political parties’ affiliation as a crucial, infallible, and inalterable variable of analysis. Yet, history (and fieldwork) reveals constant bargains and strategies of power that play with parties’ etiquettes and nominations. This “political party shopping” is particularly strong at the municipal level, where it is very common for candidates to change affiliation according to different opportunities or constraints. In fact, in Oaxaca, Puebla, Guerrero and Michoacán, it is quite common to see a candidate going from PRI to PAN, PRD, or MORENA. Moreover, it is usual to observe the perpetuation of local dynasties where sons, nephews, wives or daughters assume an active political role after their fathers, even if it implies running for a different political party. In that sense, surnames might have much more political weight than a party affiliation. In such contexts, criminal and illicit interests, and the use of violence as a resource, are tied to parties’ dynamics in complex ways. Although there is no doubt about the rise of criminal groups’ political influence in the past years, it is crucial to better understand where, when, and why those political-criminal ties give room to lethal violence or not. Our work will therefore be of major importance in order to better understand the contemporary influence of illicit actors and political-criminal networks in elections, without following a binary “narcos vs. state” hypothesis.

-5- What kind of protection mechanisms exist for candidates in Mexico?

Electoral violence poses a direct threat to Mexican democracy: local elections cannot be a matter of “life or death” for local candidates. We will provide an exploration and evaluation of public policies of candidates’ protection that are in place in Mexico. We will also work with relevant Federal and state authorities in order to study these policies, and assess their efficiency, and will cross-check them with local actors’ testimonies and experiences. Electoral violence has more to do with the way power is built and exerted, rather than with the mere presence of drug cartels (although Guerrero and Michoacán, as mentioned, which combine all the above mentioned dynamics, will be of crucial importance in order to study the connection between crime and electoral violence). Our project will respond to these questions by focusing on the local dynamics of coercion, without presuming of a simple explanation to them. This is where our methodology, based on extensive fieldwork, interviews and direct access to local actors (candidates, elected officials, the business community, members of armed and criminal groups) will be fundamental.