Sinaloa*

Nobody lives here anymore.  Whole towns, completely abandoned.  The only sounds: creaking doors, padlocked, when the wind surfs through, a few birds that hover and then abscond, the silence of a dreary sun peering through indolent clouds. 

The families have left.  The violence was too much.  Bodies mutilated, decapitated, gunned down in busy streets at midday, floating in rivers, stinking behind garages, flapping in the breeze slumped over car window ledges (the windows were up, before, but are now smashed, the remaining glass jagged, and delicately placed in bloody fragments).

This would be hell.  Except it's empty.

Elections were this past Sunday.  No one was allowed to drink, because election day is a dry day.  Everything was closed so the citizens of tomorrow could put on their Sunday best, and head to the polls.

Except here.  Here, there were no polls.  This is one of ten communities in the south of the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa that did not vote on Sunday.  Mostly because there are hardly any people left.  And also because those who have stayed are too afraid to vote anyway. 

Voting, like walking down the street to buy a bag of maize flour, might get you killed.

Welcome to democracy, narco style.  Where the gangs rule, and the citizens cower.  Where the police and the military are authorized to keep the peace, and everyone else is authorized to try their best not to get caught in the middle.

Good luck.

Sinaloa is not the poorest state in Mexico.  Indeed, it has only 60 percent as many people as Chiapas, but its economy is about a sixth larger.   It is a middling state when it comes to development, compared to Chiapas or Oaxaca, which are in last place.  If you can stay away from the narcos, it is not such a bad place to live.

Good luck.  

Oaxaca 

Violence is only one way to kill a democracy.  There are many others.  In Oaxaca, there is plenty of violence to go around.  But there are smoother tricks too.  Oaxacans voted last week, for their mayors.  It is alleged that most of the opposition candidates were selected and financed by the governor.  In other words: vote for whoever you want, it won't make any difference.  We're all friends here.  Or enemies, as the case may be.

Oaxaca is a good reminder of what the old PRI was like.  Except this is 2007, and the PRI still runs the state just like it used to run the federal government.  It buys votes, or non-votes, depending on which is more efficient.  Last week, voters reported that they were offered a variety of goods and services- from food to televisions- in exchange for their voting cards.  In Mexico, you can't vote without a voter identification.  If you are willing to hand yours over for about a week, just until the day after the elections, you could win the lottery.

This is actually quite a sophisticated operation. In the old days, you had to worry that if you gave someone a television, they might still vote for the other party.  The nuisance of secret ballots and all.  This is a much safer system.  Of course, it means that the turnout rate can fall to abysmal levels.  But, what, after all, does democracy have to do with turnout?  And even if you think you can answer that, what does Oaxaca have to do with democracy?

When voters don't want to sell their votes, there is always ballot stuffing, ballot stealing, and, if all else really does fail, a little violence around the edges.  But the other tools usually work: so well that the average difference between the winner and runner up in elections in 2003 in Oaxaca was about 30 percentage points. 

It is not all mayhem and corruption in Oaxaca, though.  The state is actually the only in the republic to have created a substantial parallel electoral system for indigenous communities where major political parties do not participate.  Instead, since 1995, voters choose their mayors according to traditional, customary practice.  Oaxaca, which has over a fifth of the country's 2500 municipalities, still has more municipalities electing mayors from the traditional parties than most states.  But over 400 municipalities follow this "customary" practice.

The creation of "customary" municipalities has been controversial, and with good reason.  In many municipalities following this practice, less than 20 percent of the population is indigenous.  It is unclear how "customary" practice affects the interests of the majority in these areas.  Then there is the problem that customary practice does not always accord well with modern ideas about democracy.  For example, in 18 percent of these 400 plus districts, women are not allowed to vote, by "custom."  Thus the usual controversy arises: is it fair to sacrifice the rights of individuals to preserve the rights of a group, particularly one that may be ill-defined and not even constitute a majority?

But on the other hand, the creation of these districts must be seen as a triumph of peaceful indigenous negotiation with the state.  After all, the alternative has shown its face elsewhere, and it is not pretty.  Power from the barrel of a gun.  Just ask the chiapanecos and the guerrerenses.

Guerrero

It would be generous to call the capital city of Guerrero, Chilpancingo, non-descript.  Hard to believe, then, that this city under a hill was once, if for less than the time it takes to say the name Chilpancingo, the capital, or declared capital, of independent Mexico.  But so it was in 1813, when one of the few Catholic priests in world history to regularly sport a bandana, José María Morelos, declared Mexico free from Spain.  Morelos was later killed by the Spaniards, and it was not until over a decade letter that Mexico did become a free state.  By then, it was clear that the capital would not be in the backwater city of Chilpancingo at all, but a bit more than a half-day away by horseback, in Mexico City.   

Lonely Planet calls Chilpancingo a university town, but this is also laughable.  In the first place, half of the university is not even in the city.  Important schools, like the school of medicine (and funnily enough, the school of political science) are in Acapulco.  In the second place, although students can be seen in Chilpancingo, it is one of the deadest university towns I have ever seen.  On a Friday night at 10 PM, the downtown area around the plaza was empty. 

Chilpancingo, being the capital, is probably best described as a government town.  And, oh, what a government.  Now, it is true that in 2005, the opposition PRD won the governor's race for the first time.  This makes Guerrero about a thousand times more democratic than Oaxaca. 

But let's not push it.  Guerrero is also one of the country's most violent states; by some indicators, it is Mexico's most violent state.  In 2006, for example, Guerrero had far and away the highest percentage of homicide cases (as a proportion of all crime) in Mexico, with a rate over two times the national average.  In 2005, one in every 7 people who died in Guerrero was murdered.  In Mexico City, which does not have a reputation for being particularly safe, the figure was half that.

During the last century, violence in Guerrero has been perpetrated by landlords, the police, the military, the guerillas, and the narcos.  In 1995, the police mowed down rural protestors in Aguas Blancas.  In 1996, the EPR, the guerilla movement which has been blowing up oil installations around Mexico this year, was formed in response.

The poorest municipality in all of Mexico (out of 2500) is also in Guerrero.  Outside of Acapulco, there has been little economic growth in the state, and the tourism industry is probably the only thing keeping the state from being in worse shape than its neighbors, Chiapas and Oaxaca.  As I pointed out last week, the health system also faces a number of serious challenges. 

Political alternation is a good thing, and the PRD has been growing stronger in the state since the 1980s.  But the party is also divided, and the current governor is not a party loyalist.  Nor is he very representative of the party base: he is a centrist, business-oriented civic activist from Acapulco.  He has been in nearly constant conflict with the party's left-wing base since he took office.  Therefore, it is not clear how much things are really changing in Guerrero, in spite of the end of PRI rule in the state.

All is not gloom and doom in Guerrero either, though.  In addition to being the home of the poorest municipality in the country, Guerrero is also the home of innovative attempts to invest in agricultural technology and keep young people from migrating north to the United States.  It is estimated that over 70,000 young people from Guerrero flee to the United States every year seeking greener pastures.  But recently, some young people have been borrowing from the government, investing in tractors, and growing tomatoes.  They recently won Mexico's National Youth Prize for their efforts to stay back and improve life at home.

Tomatoes are not going to be enough to bring prosperity to Guerrero.  But what is inspiring about these kids is that, in spite of the violence and the dysfunctional nature of state politics, they are actively working together to improve their communities against the odds.  Ultimately, that is the spirit that will make Guerrero a place young and old people alike are proud to live.

Something less than democracy

Things are getting better in Mexico. But political scientists often ignore the ground realities at the local level when they talk about "democracy." My old boss, Seymour Martin Lipset, and by implication, myself, were as guilty of this as anyone, focusing almost exclusively on the big picture at the national level.

This is not totally misguided.  Anyone who knows the history of places like Argentina, which were ruled at the national level by the military, and subjected to years of repression and state-sponsored massacres, knows that national regimes matter a lot.  But they are not the only thing that matters.  And for many, many people, a change in government at the national level will not save them from military, guerrilla, narco, or police brutality at the local level.

Nor does an institute which guarantees a free and fair vote at the national level help citizens when they vote for governor or mayor.  In fact, the national regime often leaves these local issues aside as a cost of insuring that things work okay at the national level.  Local elites agree to help the national government in exchange for a hands-off policy when it comes to their own adventures in violence, vote-buying, and voter intimidation.

So here's to Mexican democracy.  May it keep getting better.  But in the meantime, let's not forget the poor folks back home.  At least those that haven't fled for their lives.  They are still waiting for democratization at the local level.  The national government isn't going to give it to them; they are going to have to take it, just as national opposition and civil society leaders did at the national level.  They need the support of human rights activists and democrats around the world. 

*The section related to Sinaloa draws on in-depth reporting by Mexican daily, El Universal, in advance of elections there.