Mexican presidential candidates mostly mute on drug wars

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Mexican presidential candidates pose before the first electoral debate on May 6. From left, Enrique Pena Nieto, Josefina Vasquez Mota,Gabriel Cuadri and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

IFE via AFP/Getty Images

MEXICO CITY – The discovery of 49 decapitated bodies on a highway leading to the U.S. border would seem like the time for Mexico's presidential candidates to denounce the drug cartels and say how they will stop them.

By Christian Palma, AP

A federal policeman guards the area where dozens of bodies were found on a highway connecting Monterrey, Mexico, to the U.S. border Sunday.

By Christian Palma, AP

A federal policeman guards the area where dozens of bodies were found on a highway connecting Monterrey, Mexico, to the U.S. border Sunday.

But none of the four candidates issued statements on the tragedy or posted comments on their Twitter accounts.

Not long after the news made headlines the world over, candidate Gabriel Quadri of the teacher-union-controlled New Alliance Party said via Twitter that the song Hot for Teacher was among his favorite Van Halen tunes.

The reason for the silence, say political observers here, is no one has an answer for the violence.

"It's an uncomfortable topic for which (the candidates) don't have responses … or something clear to offer," says Jorge Buendía, director of the polling firm Buendía & Laredo.

The massacre in Nuevo León state, 95 miles from the U.S. border at McAllen, Texas, and two other mass murders over the prior 10 days, were reminders that drug cartels and organized crime remain serious threats to the rule of law in Mexico.

The presidential candidates who seek to take over for outgoing President Felipe Calderón after July 1 elections act as if it is an issue like any other. They talk incessantly of jobs, energy, taxes and labor, but not of the criminal syndicates that are murdering thousands of people yearly, corrupting police and politicians, and making parts of Mexico ungovernable.

Calderón put crime at the top of his agenda after taking office in December 2006. He has gone hard after the cartels in the past 5½ years, during which time more than 50,000 people have died in criminal-related killings. Calderón is barred by law from a second term, and his successor will take over in December.

When politicians shy away from a serious issue, it often falls to the media to bring it up. But the killings are so numerous they have become routine news.

On the day after the Sunday massacre, Mexico City newspaper El Universal led its front page with: "Job creation, the aspirants' priority." The massacre was less prominent.

Political and security analysts say the candidates' proposals differ little from Calderón's methods: improving the professionalism of the police, bolstering intelligence-gathering and keeping soldiers in the streets for now the time being.

"There aren't many good alternatives to what's being done already," independent political analyst Fernando Dworak says. "It's not politically profitable to say, 'We're going to withdraw the army and marines from violent areas.' "

Calderón has an overall approval rating of 50%, according to the latest Consulta Mitofsky poll, but his rating drops when it comes to the security situation. A survey published by Mexicans United Against Crime in November found that only 14% of Mexicans believe the government will "win the war against organized crime."

Profiting politically from the dissatisfaction is difficult because security isn't the strong suit of any of the parties or candidates, says analyst Alejandro Hope of the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness.

Front-runner Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) may want to avoid the subject given that PRI administrations govern Mexico's most violent regions along the northern border, Hope says.

Josefina Vázquez Mota, who is running under Calderón's National Action Party, has little incentive to trumpet his party's handling of security given the high death toll, says Hope. Left-wing candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador sees poverty reduction as his wedge into office and solution for insecurity.

When asked at a news conference what he would do differently, Peña Nieto said, "The first difference will be results." He mostly talks of jobs and economic growth, instead.

The PRI says it is reasonable to prioritize the economy. "The surveys we've done show the main problems people have are jobs and poverty," PRI spokesman Eduardo Sánchez says.

Even a monthly increase in gas prices of less than a penny sometimes generates larger headlines than mass killings.

"A one-peso-a-month increase adds up to a lot of money," says Alejandra Domínguez, a laundromat employee unhappy with the economic situation. "Prices always go up and wages don't keep pace."

As Hope says, most Mexicans are plain tired of the crime story. "There continues being the same worry among the people, but there's a certain fatigue with it," he says.

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