Cuernavaca and Totolapan, two more cases of growing political violence

“New democracies are more prone to political violence than consolidated democracies (…) In democracies following military rule, the old autocratic leadership often remains an active political force in the new regime. The continued presence of a materially powerful opposition creates a split in the new regime, increasing the risk of conflict.”

The above was written in 2016 by political scientists Scott Cook of Texas A&M University and Burcu Savun of the University of Pittsburgh in their article “New Democracies and the Risk of Civil Conflict: The lasting legacy of military rule”, which was published in the journal Journal of Peace Research.

Other authors have concluded that civil and political violence increase when an authoritarian regime, military or not, is displaced by a democratic system and suddenly the political forces that until then were repressed are released.

Also, other analysts have shown that it is easier for organized crime to establish itself and prosper within a democratic system that is not yet consolidated, in which the rulers do not have in their hands all the power that the laws grant them and the politicians are willing to be helped by criminals.

Mexico is a good example of the above.

Mexico’s fledgling democracy really took a leap forward in 2000 when the PRI lost the presidency after 71 years in power.

As of that year, a brutal competition broke out between the political parties to become, by hook or by crook, municipal presidencies, governorships, deputies and senatorial offices and the Presidency of the Republic.

One of the manifestations of this relentless struggle for political power and all the economic and social benefits that this gives to those who obtain it, are the physical attacks against officials and candidates for elected office.

According to the consulting firm Etellekt, from 2000 to May 31, 1,271 politicians had been assassinated throughout the country. Among them 144 aspirants, pre-candidates and candidates for elected positions. Of the latter, 116 or 81% were looking for a municipal position, 20 or 14% were looking for a local deputation or a governorship, and the remaining 8 or 6% wanted to be federal deputies.

On Thursday there were two new cases of political violence. In Cuernavaca, Gabriela Marín, a local deputy for the Morelos Progresa party, was assassinated, while in Totolapan, Guerrero, gunmen belonging to the Los Tequileros gang, which had allegedly already been dismantled, entered the municipal palace where they killed the PRD municipal president, Conrado Mendoza. and 19 other people, most of them officials.

These 21 murders are added to the 17,466 that were counted from January to last August and those that were perpetrated during September and so far in October. As it happens too often, they will surely go unpunished and we will not know what was the reason that caused them.

How many murders will be committed in the 2023 and 2024 elections? There were 152 in those of 2018 and 102 in those of 2021.

How many of them will be for purely political reasons and how many for the collusion of politicians with criminals?

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