Politics: Security problems intersect with vote
The Covid-19 pandemic has pushed the country’s grave problems of insecurity off the front pages and the lead segments of news programs. This lack of attention also reflects the current government’s decision to push public security concerns to the back burner and a society that has grown numb to so many years of historically high levels of criminal violence. And while the pandemic has also contributed to a drop in certain types of crimes, various manifestations of insecurity, especially homicidal and gender violence, continue on a major scale, with no solutions anywhere in sight. This is evidenced by the latest crime statistics as well as a report from the security and police reform focused NGO Causa en Común, which humanizes the stories behind the cold data of official reports. The study reveals alarming levels of homicide against young children, adolescents and women, with at least 911 cases of atrocious acts against such victims registered in 2020, alongside at least 672 massacres and the uncovering of 1,350 bodies in clandestine graves.
Analyses of the causes of such violence have emphasized the turf wars pitting rival criminal organizations against each other for control of illicit markets. But as Causa en Común’s list of violent crimes makes clear, not all can be traced to underworld battles. The murders of children and women and vigilante-style attacks on crime suspects, to cite just two cases, do not appear to be especially tied to drug cartels. The complexity of this phenomenon with its multiple causes demand different types of state and social intervention. But the data also reveals there is little relationship between insecurity and violence levels, on one hand, and the extent to which National Guard troops have been deployed and the crime fighting actions taken, on the other.
The situation described above is a cause for heightened concern this year as these levels of criminal activity coincide with nationwide elections. The small yet significant percentage of violent crimes directed at public and democracy-related institutions suggests that at least some criminal organizations are openly challenging the state for control over police departments and entire municipal governments while continuing to go after rights defenders. In the first of a series of reports on the risk of such violence affecting this year’s municipal state and federal elections we focus on four out of six northern border states as well as the adjacent Baja California Sur.
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