Development: On 18 September residents of Tlapa de Comonfort in Mexico’s Guerrero state marched in protest at the lack of progress in finding the mayor-elect of the nearby town of Cochoapa el Grande, Daniel Esteban González, who disappeared on 2 September along with his driver Juventino García Rojas.
Significance: At the time González, the mayoral candidate for the left-wing Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), was returning from a meeting with regional politicians along the road between Tlapa and Cochoapa. The disappearance highlights the precarious security situation for local officials in Mexico as well as the worsening violence in Guerrero state.
- According to the local press, González and rival candidate Hermelinda Rivero Francisco of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) have been wrangling over election results since 1 July following conflicting resolutions from the electoral authorities. Edith López Rivera, wife of the mayor-elect, told the media that González had received death threats telling him to end his campaign for office, and she asked the authorities to investigate the possible involvement of her husband’s political rival in his disappearance. López Rivera says that she has not received a ransom demand.
- On 13 September armed ‘self-defence groups’, the Coordinadora Regional de Autoridades Comunitarias (Crac) and the Unión de Pueblos y Organizaciones del Estado de Guerrero (Upoeg), arrived in Tlapa and set up checkpoints on local roads in a bid to find the missing mayor-elect and amid frustration with the lack of official response.
- Armed self-defence groups have popped up across Mexico in response to the dire security situation as residents cite a lack of protection from the authorities. Guerrero is one of the few states where these groups are legal and operate with the blessing of authorities. However, despite this, Guerrero has also experienced worsening homicide rates in recent years. Statistics from Secretariado Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública (SESNSP) show that the number of killings in Guerrero has increased steadily in recent years from 2,016 in 2015 to 2,213 in 2016 and 2,318 in 2017, while there were 1,336 from January-July 2018.
- While 2017 was the worst year on record for the whole of Mexico in terms of homicides, the trend in Guerrero state raises questions about the effectiveness of self-defence groups in improving public security.
Looking Ahead: The latest disappearance of a local politician shows how much work needs to be done to improve security in Mexico. President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador says that he is working on a radical set of policies that will provide a departure from the ‘mano dura’ tough public security approach that has prevailed since the Felipe Calderon administration (2006-2012), but any changes will likely take some time to be felt on the ground in places such as Tlapa.
