2 mayoral candidates killed in Mexico, 18 dead so far

[oberliner]

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Two mayoral candidates in two different Mexican towns have been killed in less than 24 hours, marking a total of at least 18 candidates killed so far in campaigns leading up to the July 1 elections.

An independent mayoral candidate was gunned down in the conflict-ridden rural town of Aguililla in the western state of Michoacan on Wednesday. Michoacan Gov. Silvano Aureoles vowed to catch those responsible for killing candidate Omar Gomez Lucatero.

Aguililla is an extensive but sparsely populated mountain township where drug gangs and vigilantes have been active.

And early Thursday, the mayoral candidate for the leftist Democratic Revolution Party was killed in Ocampo, also in Michoacan.

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/apx2-mayoral-candidates-killed-in-mexico-18-dead-so-far/

Anyone following this who can share some insights into what is going on?

[Lee-Lee]

1. The government is losing control to the cartels who are essentially at this point a parallel governm

Well, is more complicated than that and requires an understanding of a lot of the history.

Mexico has always had huge problems with government corruption at all levels. It’s a societal thing that’s been accepted as a cost of doing business, from every government official at low level- cops, immigration officials, school registration etc all existed where the “mordida” was the understood perk of the job, you got to shake people down for your income.

That, of course, set the stage for two things- a lack of trust of government as an institution and a culture within government that criminal activities and bribery are ok- all the people who took the jobs were those willing to display that “moral flexibility.

It existed at a manageable level for generations. People just understood there was the unwritten law and expenses you budgeted for. Even travel guides from the 40’s and 50’s for Mexico advise travelers to make sure they had “mordida” cash and to hold it in small amounts away from their real cash stash so they wouldn’t look so rich as they went to pay.

Now enter the cartels. Huge, huge money is being made by them. Not just in drugs. They have long branched out into much more- human trafficking is often more profitable now than drugs, shaking down migrants, running the smuggling crews taking them across. They run mafia style protection rackets. They even have real business interests like trucking companies.

In much of Mexico at this point they are in more control than the government. The people in government offices- civil, police or any others- are essentially another branch of the cartels. They allow the cartels to do what they want in the best cases, in worse ones they actually act as enforcers for them. Because the cartels started in slowly- bribing them as was the custom anyway, but then starting to kill those who didn’t take the bribes, purging out any who resisted. So if your a cop in Mexico it’s either you take the bribe and let the cartels do what they want and you are safe and paid or you die.

And it’s gotten worse and worse and worse, with very little done to counteract it. Because the corruption is so rampant they can’t. Even when the federal authorities or military try and act keeping it a secret where they don’t get tipped off is almost impossible.

Most people don’t grasp just how sophisticated, massive and dangerous the cartels are and just how freely they operate. A few years ago they kidnapped a bunch of radio engineers and they enslaved them to design an build a radio network that was more sophisticated and capable than anything the Mexican Government ever had and more advanced than even what a lot of state police forces in the USA use.

That’s one example of how big this is.

Essentially the way the Mexican Government ran set the stage, by tolerating in its early stages, for the cartels to essentially grow into a parallel government system, and often the two were intertwined.

And now the two parallel governments are battling for control.