Mexico's major election: Congress, state and local governments

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A voodoo-like doll left on a candidate’s doorstep. Political contenders jailed for shoplifting at Wal-Mart or receiving kickbacks for a garbage dump contract. A century-old cartoon character reborn as a write-in
candidate. Flying accusations of narco-corruption. Deadly ambushes and killings. Such has been the stuff of the 2009 mid-term Mexican election campaign.

On Sunday, July 5, nearly 77.5 million Mexicans will be eligible to cast votes for a new federal Congress as well as new state and local governments in 10 states and the capital of Mexico City. Predictions abound of massive voter abstention, record protest voting and a victory by the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

In important ways, the federal congressional campaign in the northern border state of Chihuhaua was emblematic of the national race. A negative campaign tone was established early in the year when the Mexico City daily Excelsior published an explosive story that alleged money from the Juarez drug cartel helped finance the successful 2004 mayoral candidacy of Hector “Teto” Murguia in Ciudad Juarez. Murguia is a 2009 congressional candidate for the PRI in a border district.

An graying institution of Mexican journalism, Excelsior cited a document from the US Drug Enforcement Administration as a source for its story. A DEA spokesperson, Janet Selzer, later denied the report in question was an “official” one from her agency.

The Excelsior story traced the alleged dirty financing to US convict Saulo Reyes Gamboa. A former Ciudad Juarez police chief during the latter days of the Murguia administration, Reyes was arrested in El Paso, Texas, last year by US government agents for attempting to smuggle a large shipment of marijuana.

Aghast at the story, Murguia called the piece a lie. The border politician repeated an earlier claim that Reyes had been recommended for the police chief job by Coparmex, the influential Mexican employers’ association.

“Neither we nor Coparmex had a crystal ball to predict that Saulo would be involved in trying to pass a shipment of marijuana three months after the end of the administration,” Murguia said.

Days prior to the July 5 election, the Teto-Juarez Cartel story was revived with the appearance of an anonymously published newspaper that circulated on the streets of Ciudad Juarez. The mysterious rag featured a reprint of the original Excelsior story in addition to related pieces.

Things Get Rude

Serious enough in its own right, the Teto affair was but the opening shot of a pitched battle between Chihuahua’s two dominant political parties, the PRI and President Calderon’s conservative National Action Party (PAN).

In late May, PAN congressional candidate and former Chihuahua City Mayor Juan Blanco was arrested by Chihuahua state police officers and imprisoned on charges of accepting kickbacks in return for granting the concession to operate the Chihuahua City landfill during Blanco’s tenure as mayor of the state’s capital city from 2004 to 2007.

According to one account, the money Blanco allegedly received from the Sirssa company could have been destined for a possible 2010 run by Blanco for the Chihuahua governor’s seat. The legal accusation smacked of the pay-for-play schemes that have increasingly stained politics in New Mexico across the border from Chihuahua. Besides Blanco, some observers have mentioned “Teto” Murguia as a possible 2010 Chihuahua gubernatorial candidate.

Declaring himself a “politically persecuted” individual, Blanco sat in the slammer for nearly a week while supporters rallied to his cause. But even as Blanco waited to be released for trial, a new incendiary spark torched the local political scene.

At a fiery press conference, Chihuahua PAN Senator Maria Teresa Ortuno accused the state’s PRI governor, Jose Reyes Baeza Terrazas, of protecting delinquents, drug traffickers and kidnappers.

“Political opponents are kidnapped in Chihuahua, while organized crime and drug traffickers are protected,” Ortuno charged. “We have hundreds, thousands of murders without clarification.”

Ortuno’s words were backed up by another PAN senator from Chihuahua, Senate President Gustavo Madero, as well as the national party president, German Martinez.

In response, Governor Reyes Baeza slapped a multi-million dollar defamation suit against Ortuno and demanded a public apology. The Chihuahua governor called Martinez’s own words “perverse, ” adding that
blame for the public safety crisis in Chihuahua could also be placed on the shoulders of the PAN-run federal government, which has deployed about 10,000 Mexican soldiers and Federal Police in Ciudad Juarez alone but failed to stop crime and killing.

In an unusual but not entirely unsurprising development, several religious leaders backed Reyes Baeza. The embattled governor’s new supporters included five Roman Catholic bishops and 19 pastors from Protestant denominations in Chihuahua. Words were then allegedly exchanged between Parral Bishop Jose Andres Corral Arredondo and the office of President Calderon’s private secretary, Felipe Bravo Mena, who is a former ambassador to the Vatican.

For her part, Senator Ortuno remained defiant. In a press conference held after the defamation suit against her was filed, Ortuno offered a “correction” to her earlier remarks about Reyes Baeza. The governor, she
said, was guilty not only of negligence but inaction as well.

“We have more dead in Chihuahua in two years than 10 years of the Iraq War,” Ortuno hyperbolically proclaimed.

“Things got rude,” editorialized Ciudad Juarez’s Lapolaka newsite, in comments on the 2009 election campaign.

As of June 18, the Chihuahua PRI, PAN and PRD political parties had filed more than 60 complaints of alleged campaign irregularities with the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE).

Shadowy gun-slingers and Mysterious mud-slingers

Unproven charges of narco-infiltration and political corruption were far from unique to Chihuahua in the 2009 campaign. In some ways, Chihuahua’s weekly political scandals were tame in comparison with developments elsewhere in Mexico.

Since the beginning of the year, at least 13 candidates or their supporters have been murdered gangland-style in several states. Other candidates have been threatened or had their vehicles set on fire. The arrests of 27 public officials (including 7 mayors) accused by the federal government of serving La Familia drug cartel in the PRD-run state of Michoacan fueled public suspicions and press comments on the existence of a “narco-state” in Mexico.

The shadow of the narco also tainted political races in Nuevo Leon on Mexico’s northern border and in Colima on the Pacific Coast, among other places. A Mexican Internet news site, Reporte Indigo, posted scandalous audiotapes related to races in both Nuevo Leon and Colima. A recording featured Mario Fernandez Garza, PAN candidate for mayor of San Pedro Garza Garcia, Nuevo Leon, confirming the deep penetration of drug gangs in what was once considered Mexico’s richest and safest municipality.

“Infiltration by drug traffickers is real and it happens to all the candidates-at least the ones (narcos) consider have a possibility of winning,” Fernandez was quoted on the tape. “In my case, I let it be known
that there would be no obvious agreement.”

A member of the Monterrey-area industrial elite, Fernandez is an experienced politician known for his taste in fine art and his proclivity for frankness, including the admission that he smoked the devil weed in
his youth. Although he is a member of the center-right PAN, Fernandez claims a politically eclectic range of friendships, including Fidel Castro, former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Cuauhtemoc
Cardenas, co-founder of Mexico’s center-left PRD party.

On May 27, Reporte Indigo set the fuse of another audio bomb. This one had Virgilio Mendoza Amezcua, PAN candidate for Congress in Colima, allegedly admitting to accepting dirty money.

“(Narcos) approached me like they do half the world, and they sent me money,” Mendoza allegedly said. Outraged, the candidate filed a federal legal complaint against whoever was responsible for fabricating a tape recording. Six rival political parties filed their own charges with the federal attorney general’s office, accusing Mendoza of accepting drug money.

The Reporte Indigo tapes were very similar to previous, anonymously-produced audio recordings and video tapes that involved Mexican politicians and other prominent personalities in scandals.

Typically, the tapes appear during an election season and reek of producers who most likely have experience with a state security agency of some kind. The ulterior motives of the tapes’ authors are almost never publicly revealed-at least at first.

Meanwhile, in another Colima race, the PRI’s gubernatorial candidate for governor, Mario Anguiano Moreno, has come under scrutiny because of relatives previously jailed for drug trafficking. Colima is home to the
large Pacific port of Manzanillo, one of the sites where Chinese-born businessman Zhenli Ye Gon allegedly imported large amounts of ephedrine used to manufacture methamphetamines prior to 2006.

Despite plentiful narco scandals and even scattered violence, the July 5 election is likely to proceed normally in the vast majority of Mexican electoral districts. However, violence and threats in pockets of the states of Chihuahua, Sonora, Coahuila, Durango, Sinaloa, Jalisco, Michoacan, and Guerrero could make voting problematic.

Additionally, an armed insurgency led by the leftist Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI) is underway in the mountains of Guerrero. Recently, the ERPI’s Comandante Ramiro told the Mexican press the guerrilla group’s rural base is fed up with politicians and political parties and will not participate in the voting.

As usual, the different political parties have levied widespread allegations of vote-buying, campaign overspending and unfair publicity by rivals.

Will Many People Even Bother to Vote?

The 2009 elections occur amid the highest unemployment in 14 years, creeping price inflation and falling tax revenues. Worse yet, the old escape valve of migration to the US appears to be wrenched shut for the
moment.

Given the severity of the challenges facing Mexico, media spots run by the candidates appear frivolous to many observers. In this race, image is again the winner over substance; little serious debate about revamping social, economic and political structures has occurred within the official parameters of the elections.

Instead, citizens got spots from the PAN that cited very questionable statistics in support of President Calderon’s anti-drug war or observed messages from the pro-death penalty Mexican Green Party that advocated government vouchers for privately-run computer and English schools. Under fire from much of his party’s base, PRD leader Jesus Ortega, carried on with a small child on the airwaves about making Mexico a better place.

Although voter turn-out is typically low for mid-term elections, some observers predict a record abstention rate this year as perhaps the majority of Mexicans do not view any of the political parties capable of solving basic concerns like finding a job or paying for the kids’ school.

“I haven’t heard them,” said Ciudad Juarez accountant Armando Miranda, in reference to the political parties’ solutions.

Maria Carmen Alanis, president of Mexico’s Federal Electoral Tribunal, said this week that voter participation trends in Mexico and Latin America could result in an abstention rate of 70 percent or more on July 5.

An unknown number of Mexicans will turn out to vote but wind up casting ballots for write-in candidates or crossing them out in protest.

A collective associated with the Saturday cultural supplement of the Aguascalientes edition of La Jornada newspaper is actually promoting a vote for Chepito Marihuano, a century-old cartoon character invented by
the legendary artist Guadalupe Posada.

“We’re tired of the candidates and the entire system, including the IFE and the people involved in it,” said award-winning poet and collective member Juan Pablo de Avila. “One answer is to promote genuine candidates and representatives of the people, and one of them could be Chepito Marihuano.”

In a similar but perhaps less colorful vein, an organized movement has emerged to encourage citizens to turn in blank or mutilated ballots. Associated with prominent intellectuals Sergio Aguayo and Denise Dresser, among others, the National Protest Vote Movement held its first assembly in Mexico City on June 30. According to Dresser, the goal of the movement is not to replace the political parties but force them to deal with national realities and take action on long overdue reforms.

Understandably, the party faithful are not keen on the protest vote movement. Puerto Vallarta resident Jose Felix Padilla disagreed with contentions that all parties and politicians are the same. “The only way to get something is by voting,” insisted Padilla, a member of the PAN. “If a person does not vote there is no way to make a change.”

The man in charge of organizing the July 5 federal election, IFE President Leonardo Valdes, pledged to a CNN interviewer that his agency would fulfill its duty of counting all votes, whether they are crossed out,
marked for unregistered candidates like Chepito Marihuano or cast for an actual living candidate.

Different polls suggest that annulled votes, which usually fall under less than 3 percent of the total cast in any given election, could amount to between 7and 20 percent of the votes tallied this year.

If a high protest vote comes to pass, the “worthless” ballots could have an immediate impact. Under Mexican electoral law, recounts are required in a federal race if the number of annulled votes is greater than the difference of ballots between the leading and second-place candidates. In this scenario, resolutions of tightly-contested races could drag on for weeks if not months.

Meantime, most leading polls give the former ruling PRI an edge in the July 5 voting.

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