Political-party officials carted off by armed men in pickup trucks; candidates made to withdraw from election races under death threats; citizens denied the secrecy of the voting booth; gun-toting thugs stuffing ballot boxes; a severed head, with open eyes, rolled into a polling station on voting day.
These are a few of the acts of terrorism allegedly perpetrated by Mexican cartels before, during and after the June 6, 2021, local and federal elections in seven Mexican states. The crimes are described in a 53-page report put together with the support of a coalition of three opposition political parties—the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the National Action Party and the Democratic Revolutionary Party.
The report, whose claims are based on local news stories and first-person testimony, hasn’t been released to the public. In the version I have seen, the author and witnesses aren’t named—for their protection. But in August 2021 the document was hand-delivered to the Organization of American States in Washington and reported in the Mexican press.
The report describes coercion, intimidation, terror and even murder to ensure election outcomes favored by one cartel or another. Eighteen months after the report’s release, it remains highly relevant.
President
Andrés Manuel López Obrador
and his Morena party have spent the past four years trying to eliminate institutional checks on executive power. They’ve been only partially successful, and with Mr. López Obrador’s one-term limit up in December 2024, time is running out.
That’s the good news. But even after AMLO, as the president is known, leaves office, he’s likely to remain the Morena party boss. If Morena’s as-yet-unnamed candidate wins the July 2024 presidential election and the party retains at least a plurality in Congress, Mr. López Obrador’s influence on the national agenda can be expected to remain significant.
AMLO’s presidential tenure, which began in December 2018, has been characterized by vengeance toward anyone who gets in his way, politically speaking. This includes the country’s electoral institute. Mr. López Obrador blames the institute, known by its initials as the INE, for his defeat at the polls in 2006. He seems to view it as a future threat.
Thanks to the makeup of Mexico’s Congress, Morena has the ability…
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