In a span of eight months, Mexico has endured the assassination of 34 candidates for local offices. But in the telling of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, this spate of violence is nothing more than media “sensationalism.”
For Obrador, there is no political liability. The incumbent president of Mexico is term-limited, and his successor will be elected on Sunday, with all signs pointing to a possible landslide election of his anointed successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, who is poised to become the nation’s first female president.
But amid Obrador’s political popularity is the inconvenient fact that Mexico is a more dangerous place than ever. In 2023, the nation recorded more than 30,000 homicides, and kidnapping, extortion, and other organized crime activities are rampant.
The assassination of political candidates, then, is a highly visible symptom of a nation afflicted by violent cartels that effectively run the country. But it also underscores how difficult it is to install leaders with the courage and fortitude to implement lasting change in the third largest economy in North America.
To drive the point home, Obrador, whose term in office is nearing its end, is simply denying that the problem exists. He has described reports on the rise in violence as “sensationalism” and touted the fact that homicides declined by 5% year over year, according to Reuters. Not mentioned in his statement was the fact his administration has seen the most murders of any Mexican president in the history of the nation.
Fixing Mexico’s homicide rate of 26 per 100,000 people will not happen unless the next president of Mexico admits that the sky-high murder rate is even a problem and not a product of “sensationalism.”
To address this epidemic of murder and lawlessness, Mexico need only look just south of its borders to El Salvador for a policy model that can end the violence of organized crime once and for all.
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In four years, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele succeeded in turning El Salvador into one of the safest countries in the Western Hemisphere. His policy? Arresting and imprisoning gang members with impunity.
Mexico is a much larger and more populous nation than El Salvador, and a similar crackdown on gangs will no doubt be a much greater logistical challenge. But for a nation in which city council candidates must wear bulletproof vests and travel with armed security, the status quo is unsustainable.