MORELIA, Mexico — Three major political parties are campaigning in the Mexican president’s home state, but it’s the groups that aren’t on today’s ballot that have everyone worried: the drug cartels.
In hilly, rural Michoacan, a state known for its avocados, marijuana and meth, the mobsters are putting Mexico’s halting democracy to a test, using violence and bribes to influence elections for governor, the legislature and all 113 mayors.
While many other Mexican states have been penetrated by narco-politics, nowhere is that influence as overt as in Michoacan. The electoral season so far has featured the kidnapping of nine pollsters, the gunning down of a mayor and the withdrawal of at least a dozen candidates frightened off the campaign trail by organized crime.
“Organized crime is getting involved in discouraging candidates, to force (elections) with only one candidate,” said Fausto Vallejo, gubernatorial candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. “And that is happening not only to the PRI, but in all the three political parties.”
The stakes in today’s vote are heightened by the fact that President Felipe Calderon is from Michoacan and made his home state the launchpad for his war against the drug cartels five years ago. His sister, Luisa Maria “Cocoa” Calderon, is running for governor and pledges to deepen her brother’s offensive.
She is running for Calderon’s conservative National Action Party and is leading in most polls on what is seen as a highly symbolic race, the last state election before the presidential ballot next July.
Accusations that some candidates are cartel members in disguise have prompted many candidates to ask federal prosecutors for letters stating there are no criminal charges or investigations against them — a sort of “proof of purity” letter now in fashion.
Michoacan both produces drugs and is a key trafficking route. The cartels have focused much of their attention on mayoral offices, said political analyst Raymundo Riva Palacio.
The traffickers “have understood that it costs less, and guarantees them more, to control local politics and local police,” he said.
Average citizens don’t see the federal government making much headway in Michoacan.
“Safer? Every day we feel less safe, but we can’t even talk about it because they’re always listening,” said a mechanic named Josue, who asked his last not be used for fear of reprisals.
