Sunday’s Mexican Elections: A Bleak Panorama That Could Further Bedevil U.S.-Mexican Relations

The following is a statement by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs:
This Sunday, July 4, Mexico will hold elections for a number of important governorships and mayoralties, as well as a range of local positions. More than perhaps any election in the country since the 1950s, this round already has been marred by gruesome violence against candidates and supporters of all parties. Many of these events—the assassination of PRI gubernatorial candidate Rodolfo Torres Cantu in Tamaulipas and the dumping of a headless body outside the house of a candidate for the mayoralty of Ciudad Juarez—are unquestionably directly tied to drug gangs. The violence has raised well-founded fears that neither the elections nor the victories which they will yield will be insulated from the persuasive power of huge levels of narco-funds and narco-violence. Four years after President Felipe Calderón initiated his tragically ill-advised and poorly conceived attempt to defeat the drug gangs, the bitter harvest of the struggle is sure to come to light. As politics and narcotics become increasingly intertwined in Mexico, the cycle of violence will only be broken by a more sensible U.S. policy toward Mexico. Washington must reconsider its approach to domestic drug consumption, revive a long-lost commitment to social and economic development among Mexico’s lower classes, and avoid further militarizing an already sanguinary situation south of the border. Unless the U.S. takes such positive steps, the situation will invariably slide toward levels of instability, duplicating the Pakistan-Afghanistan crucible.

Sunday’s elections, which almost certainly will result in a sweeping victory for the PRI, speak to two major aspects of Mexican political life. First, there is the widespread disenchantment after 10 years of often inept PAN government that produced ineffectual domestic economic policies, failed to secure immigration reform in the U.S., and frustrated the hollow promises of electoral democracy. These shortcomings were already foreseen by a deeply disappointing 2006 presidential election that resulted in Calderón’s presidency. The new balloting is bound to cause more problems than will be solved. Both the PAN and the left-wing opposition PRD are political parties in various degrees of disarray, cleft by infighting, lacking charismatic leadership, and unable to build local bases of support on credible ideological grounds. The two parties always have been more than willing to provide hospitality to locally powerful defectors regardless of their ethical standards or the worthiness of their vision, and in 2010 these two ideologically bedecked opposition parties took the precipitous step of forming anti-PRI electoral alliances in a number of states. Mexican politics always have been, at their root, about local power cultivated through clientalism and group interest representation. But the PAN-PRD union belies claims about the inevitable advance of Mexican democracy. The resulting popular disenchantment has had the effect of driving many voters back to the PRI– «at least they knew how to govern»–or pushing them away from politics entirely.

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This analysis was prepared by COHA Staff