Mexican elections marred by violence

July 5, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

McClatchey Newspapers

MEXICO CITY

In elections marred by violence, intimidation and the growing influence of drug traffickers, Mexicans chose governors or other local officials in 14 states Sunday, a vote expected to hand a sharp rebuke to President Felipe Calderon.

A number of polling stations did not open because scores of election workers were afraid to show up as voting began early Sunday. Some candidates cast ballots in body armor with guards in tow, and army patrols were deployed in several states to protect voters.

In the violent border state of Chihuahua, four bodies were hung Sunday morning from different bridges, a typical and ominous message from drug traffickers. One was identified as a prison warden.

The opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, that dominated Mexico for 70 years until 2000 was expected to win numerous races and bolster its campaign to retake the presidency when Calderon’s term ends in two years.

In many ways, Sunday’s elections were a test of whether drug cartels have been able to so frighten voters that the very democratic process is threatened.

“We are very concerned about the violence and especially whether it stops people from going out to vote,” Sen. Manlio Fabio Beltrones, a senior official with the PRI, told the Los Angeles Times.

The elections also are a referendum on the Calderon government, mired in a nearly four-year-old war on drug cartels in which more than 23,000 people have been killed. A sluggish economy also has cost Calderon and his National Action Party, or PAN, considerable support.

With that in mind, the resurgent PRI, which dominated midterm elections last year, went into Sunday’s balloting widely favored to win in most of the 12 states choosing governors. Nine of those states already were held by the opposition group that once ran Mexico from top to bottom but lost the presidency in 2000.