Mexican elections: Two women run for president in popular vote amid cartel violence and polarization

Mexico heads into Sunday’s election deeply divided: friends and relatives have stopped talking about politics for fear of deepening unbridgeable gaps; drug cartels have divided the country into a patchwork of competing fiefdoms; and amid extreme heat, drought, pollution and a wave of political violence, the atmosphere is literally heating up.

It remains to be seen whether Mexico’s next president will be able to curb the underlying violence and polarization.

Soledad Echagoyen, a doctor in Mexico City who supports President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Morena party, said she can no longer discuss politics with her colleagues.

“To preserve our friendship, we decided six years ago not to bring up politics because arguments began to break out and attacks began to become personal,” Dr. Echagoyen said.

It seems that criticizing the current government is not an easy task.

“There’s too much hatred,” said Luis Avalos, 21, a student in Mexico City, who said some of his friends have accused him of “betraying the country” by not supporting Lopez Obrador.

Opposition presidential candidate Xochitl Galvez expressed anger at President Lopez Obrador’s “hugs, not guns” policy, which does not confront drug cartels.

She will face Claudia Sheinbaum, a former Mexico City mayor who is running for Lopez Obrador’s Morena party. Sheinbaum, who is leading the race, has pledged to continue all of Lopez Obrador’s policies.

Lopez Obrador himself, who prefers to portray every issue as a struggle between the forces of “good people” and conspiring conservatives, has done much to stoke the flames of division and resentment.

“This is not just an election, it’s a referendum on the kind of country we want,” Lopez Obrador said recently. And it is a referendum on him: Like his US counterpart Donald Trump, he is a central figure in the campaign.

In Mexico, as around the world, angry, charismatic populist forces are battling a liberal democracy with income polarization, as issues of national identity, foreign influence and economic exclusion divide the country into opposing camps.

“What we’re building in this country is not a sense of citizenship, but a voter base,” said Gloria Alcocer, editor-in-chief of the civic-oriented magazine Voz y Voto, or “Voice and Vote.” Lopez Obrador is barred by law from running for reelection in his next six-year term.

The battle is set: The ruling Morena party already controls 23 of the country’s 32 state governorships and is aiming for them all. The party already has simple majorities in both houses of Congress and wants a two-thirds majority that would give it the freedom to amend the constitution.

It’s hard to describe how frightening that must be for some Mexicans who have spent more than four decades trying to build a formal democracy with checks and balances, oversight bodies and strict electoral rules, nearly all of which Morena says he would defund or eliminate if he had the chance.

Like the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, which held Mexico’s presidency uninterrupted for a record 70 years, Morena has not hesitated to use government power to influence elections, hand out funds or embark on massive construction projects that may never be completed.

But it is also difficult to explain why Lopez Obrador’s policies have appealed to many Mexicans who have felt alienated for four decades under a pro-market government that he describes as “neoliberal.”

Under Lopez Obrador, Mexico has more than doubled its still-pathically low minimum wage (currently about $15 a day, or $2 an hour). While this won’t change anyone’s life (a Big Mac currently costs an average of $5.69 in Mexico, compared with about $5.19 in the United States), it’s the underlying appeal of Morena’s policies that has attracted many voters.

The implicit message to many Mexicans under decades of market-oriented governments was that there was something wrong with them not learning more English, working in manual labor rather than the high-tech economy, receiving government subsidies and living in a traditional family-centered culture.

Lopez Obrador has flipped this narrative: He purposefully mispronounces English phrases, glorifies manual labor, says subsidies are good, favors state-run enterprises, and says Mexico is strong precisely because of its family values ​​and indigenous culture — values ​​he also argues keep Mexicans from falling prey to drug addiction.

Lopez Obrador says fighting the drug cartels, which control large swaths of Mexico and extort protection money from people from all walks of life, is a foreign idea imposed on Mexico by the U.S. He has instead opted for a “hugs, not bullets” approach, limiting cooperation with U.S. authorities in fighting the gangs.

Sheinbaum, an academic who lacks Lopez Obrador’s charisma, folksy style and mass appeal, has said his administration will follow the outgoing president’s policies but wants more data to back up his decisions.

Galvez, a woman who started a technology company out of a poor indigenous town, is a wild card in the race, whose plainspoken, down-to-earth style has produced both impactful phrases and historic gaffes. Both women are 61. A third, lesser-known male candidate from a smaller party is lagging far behind them.

Sunday’s election, which will also decide congressional seats and thousands of local positions, differs from past elections in other ways too.

So far this year, about 27 candidates running for mayor or city council have been killed. While this number is not that high compared to past elections, what is unprecedented is the mass shootings. Whereas previously candidates were directly attacked and killed, now criminals are shooting at every stage of the election campaign.

And as international studies professor Carlos A. Pérez Ricart points out, “the reason there aren’t shootings is because the[local government]institutions have already been taken over by the cartels.”

Mexico is also experiencing a heatwave so intense that howler monkeys are literally falling out of the trees, water shortages across much of the country, and air pollution so bad that a fifth of cars are banned from the roads in the capital.

All this is not going to calm people’s emotions or help them move towards reconciliation. Perhaps the only positive thing about the current situation is that the election doesn’t look particularly close.

“This country cannot stand a narrow victory,” Pérez Riccardo said. “There is a lack of true democrats on both sides.”