● This was the bloodiest election in the history of Mexico so far.
● What does this result mean for Palestine?
As 9 million Mexican voters got ready to elect 20,000 Mayors, MPs, Governors, and a new President on June 2nd, 2024, it is no less than 37 candidates who have been assassinated.
The main 2 opponents were 2 women: Xóchitl Gálvez running for the conservative party and Claudia Sheinbaum running for Morena, the leftist party in power.
The cartels wanted to influence the elections and did not hesitate to get rid of anyone getting in their way. They are no longer sticking to drugs but are now getting involved in the meat market and other key economic sectors such as basic foods and transport.
Most candidates had to have special personal protection with bodyguards to do their campaigns.
For the past 20 years, those cartels have killed at least 400,000 Mexicans.
It is a huge challenge for the new President, Claudia Sheinbaum, if she wants to stop this violence.
She follows in the footsteps of her predecessor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador aka AMLO. He was elected as the President of Mexico on December 1st, 2018 and was the first leftist President in a long time.
He came from a poor background and focused his policies on increasing benefits to the poorest. He also launched the Maya Project: a train covering 1500km whose purpose was to develop the Southeast region of the country.
However, 180,000 Mexicans have been killed by the cartels since his elections and this violence seems to have become out of hand.
Will Claudia Sheinbaum do better? Only 24 hours after her election as President, Yolanda Sanchez, Mayor of Cotija, a small town in West Mexico, was assassinated.
She belonged to a liberal and conservative party called the National Action Party. She refused to let a cartel take control of her local police and was therefore eliminated.
The Israeli press has followed the Mexican elections with a lot of attention!
They have noted that she is Jewish and has condemned the attacks of October 7th.
However, the Israeli press claims that the 50,000 Mexican Jews who live mainly in the Mexican capital have not voted for her as they are usually centre-right.
According to them, her party is seen as authoritarian, and in 2009, she condemned the violence of Israel towards Palestinian children, which was not to their liking.
She mentioned the 2 states’ solution, which we know is only a trick to gain more Palestinian territory over time.
Did she do it to please the 80% of Catholics in the country who are pro-Palestinians, or was she sincere?
Even though Mexico recognised Palestine as a state in 2023, this recognition was done very discretely.
It is also the international press that announced the fact that Mexico was joining South Africa in its lawsuit against Israel. The Mexican authorities never announced it officially.
Claudia Sheinbaum claims she has kept her Jewishness to herself during the election but it seems that her ethnic background was celebrated all over the international media, as soon as she was elected. Same for her gender.
This in itself is both racist and misogynist as only the qualities and capacities of a President, whoever they are, should be taken into consideration and looked at.
Israel has been investing in creating deep relationships with extreme-right political parties all over the world, cashing in on the general islamophobia created by the mainstream media everywhere.
Israel has also pushed for Zionist Presidents to be elected like the very eccentric Argentinian president, Javier Milei.
Both Claudia Sheinbaum and President Milei have been elected in an overwhelmingly catholic country while belonging to the Jewish minority.
Like 95% of Jewish children in Mexico, Claudia Shainbaum went to a Jewish school, promoting Israel and Zionism.
Even though she claims to be secular, unlike the devoted Argentinian President seen below in front of the Wailing Wall, in occupied Palestine, we can legitimately ask ourselves whether she will voice loudly and proudly the solidarity of the Mexican people with the victims of the genocide in Gaza and Rafah?
Unfortunately, that sounds very unlikely.
