Mexico Political Candidates Risk Death From Cartels

Organized crime groups are making Mexico's election campaign this year one of the deadliest in the country's modern history, the Washington Post reported.

More than two dozen candidates have been killed before the June 2 vote, the Post noted, and hundreds of candidates have dropped out of the race. More than 400 candidates have asked the federal government for security.

"The campaign of intimidation and assassination is putting democracy itself at risk," the Post reported.

The goal of the armed groups is to install friendly leaders in local offices so they can better exploit Mexican communities, according to the report.

"Once largely focused on shipping drugs to the United States, the cartels also now smuggle migrants, extort businesses and win contracts for firms they control. They want to name towns' police chiefs and public works directors," the Post reported.

Candidates for mayors' offices, governor, and Congress are at risk.

"In some areas, cartels wield so much power they can decide who can enter towns — or even what people may say out loud," the Post reported.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador accuses the opposition and media of exaggerating the violence in places such as Chiapas.

Assassins have targeted candidates from all of Mexico's major parties, the Post noted: "In Maravatío, a municipality of 80,000 in the central state of Michoacan, three candidates for mayor have been killed — two from Morena, López Obrador's party, and one from the opposition National Action Party, or PAN."

Carlos Palomeque, head of the PAN in Chiapas, said nearly two dozen mayoral candidates from the party have dropped out of their races. It used to be the cartels bought off voters, he says. Now, "they force candidates from the race. It's cheaper."

Chiapas wasn't known for cartel violence, but these days, about a dozen cartels operate in Chiapas. They include Mexico's two most powerful crime groups: the Sinaloa and the Jalisco New Generation cartels. Homicides and disappearances have soared. The casualties in recent months include six political candidates.

Willy Ochoa is running as the Institutional Revolutionary Party candidate to represent Chiapas state in the Senate. When his campaign announces visits to strife-torn areas, he told the Post, "we receive threats and warnings to not come."

The newspaper described how Ochoa was accompanied by three truckloads of national guard troops and two state police cars with flashing red lights. He rode in his own bulletproof SUV, with bodyguards.

"You're at risk every minute," Ochoa said.