Mexicans will be voting in a couple of weeks. It looks like Claudia Sheibaum of President Andres Lopez-Obrador’s party will win. She will make history as Mexico’s first woman president and then try to govern a country overwhelmed by violence. This is the AP story:

Cartel violence is nothing new to Mexico, but bloodshed in the country has spiked ahead of the election, with April marking the most lethal month this year, government data shows.

But candidates aren’t the only ones at risk. Even before the election, it was clear that outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had made pledges to ease cartel warfare, had done little more than stabilize Mexico’s high level of violence.

Despite disbanding a corrupt Federal Police and replacing it with a 130,000-strong National Guard and focusing on social ills driving cartel recruitment, killings in April reached nearly the same historic high as when López Obrador first took office in 2018.

I guess that the new President same as the old President. The cartels continue to expand their operations and make life miserable for millions of Mexicans. The certainly did not get the memo about hugs rather the bullets, or the foolish policy advocated by the AMLO man. The cartels are not hugging Mexicanos but rather killing them.

My Mexican friends are frustrated. They understand that these levels of violence are unsustainable but fear that their leadership does not care or may be compromised.  Another problem is that a lot of the violence and cartel activity is outside urban areas or tourist attractions. In other words, the only people hearing about it are the families of the victims in rural areas. 

And to make matters worse, they kill journalists too.

P.S. Check out my blog for posts, podcasts and videos.

Image: Secretaría de Cultura CDMX