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00:00 In other world news, voters in Mexico head to the polls this Sunday following an election campaign
00:05 marred by repeated violence and attacks on politicians. A mayoral candidate was killed
00:11 by a gunman at a campaign rally. The latest victim ahead of that vote was since late last
00:16 year more than two dozen people who were running for office have been killed in the increasingly
00:22 polarized nation. For more we're joined now by Benjamin Smith. He's professor of Latin American
00:28 history at the University of Warwick. Thank you so much for being with us on the program professor.
00:35 Let's talk a little bit about what the polls are suggesting heading into this vote. Mexico's holding
00:41 not only presidential elections this weekend but legislative local elections as well as races for
00:47 regional governors around the country. So the next president though in Mexico is likely to be a woman
00:55 so what are we expecting? It's a big question. So we're expecting that a woman called Claudia
01:02 Sheinbaum who is running for the incumbent party, a party called Morena, she'll win. She's about 20
01:10 percent ahead in the polls so I think there's very little doubt that she's going to win quite easily.
01:17 There is some question over whether Morena will be able to win the legislature but I think again
01:23 it will manage it. The current president and his party and Morena is frankly fantastically popular
01:30 for all the problems that it has been accused of bringing to Mexico. Now candidates have been
01:37 quite literally risking their lives to stand for office. These elections described as the most
01:42 violent in recent history. Why this uptick in attacks on politicians particularly and aspiring
01:50 politicians? Well frankly for the last 15 years or so politicians have been shot and killed
01:59 during Mexican elections. It has increased I suppose over the last 10 years or so
02:04 and but it's mostly to do with organized crime groups that are attempting to muscle in on
02:13 basically ways of extracting revenue from small villages, towns, cities in Mexico.
02:20 We know a lot about the Mexican cartels. Well the Mexican cartels have turned towards
02:27 other forms of organized crime including illegal logging, illegal mining, kidnapping, extortion
02:34 and in order to do this you need the local politicians and the local police force on your side.
02:41 So the kind of mayoral election which are fairly kind of small things in somewhere like the UK
02:46 are actually quite important for these organized crime groups.
02:49 And the outgoing president had a policy, so-called policy of hugs not bullets. That obviously hasn't
02:56 been working in terms of reducing the number of killings in Mexico. So what can be done?
03:02 What kind of challenges will the new government, the new president be facing?
03:07 Well I think there are two things to bring out here. One, people claim that it hasn't worked
03:13 and there's a fair amount of evidence in these recent elections that hasn't worked. But in
03:18 natural fact homicides have declined over the last three years. So his argument is that it's
03:24 kind of working. Secondly, it's a bit of a misnomer, the hugs not bullets. In actual fact
03:32 what AMLO has done is he's got rid of something called the federal police and he's put in place
03:37 he's used basically using the military as a police force. So there is a kind of high degree
03:43 of militarization in Mexico, both against the cartels and against organized crime groups,
03:50 but also against principally against illegal migration. And it should be brought out that
03:56 Mexico is now de facto working as another border patrol for the United States,
04:03 using its own military to do that. So Claudia Sheinbaum, yeah she does have an enormous amount
04:10 on her plate, including organized crime violence, but also issues of migration in the United States,
04:16 whether she's going to actually put the military back in the barracks or whether she's going to
04:20 keep them out on the streets. And apart then from rising crime and immigration as you mentioned
04:25 there as well, what other kind of themes have dominated this campaign? I mean the reason
04:31 really that Moreno are going to romp home in this election is the economy. And particularly they've
04:36 done two things. They basically created a social safety net. In particular they've introduced
04:45 pensions, which Mexico really had very minimally beforehand. And this has really changed dynamics
04:53 in families. Suddenly you don't have to look after your parents or your grandparents as soon as they
04:58 hit 65. And the second thing is they markedly increased the minimum wage. And these two things
05:05 have got a lot of people out of poverty. It's not really that difficult to kind of understand
05:12 why they're so popular. There's a fairly good reason for it. And if we do see, as is likely,
05:17 a female president, do you think that's really going to make any difference really to Mexican
05:23 society in terms of perhaps indigenous communities and marginalized society?
05:28 I'm not entirely sure that it's going to make much difference to indigenous society,
05:35 which still remains enormously marginalized. And in actual fact, I mean something we're not
05:39 talking about today is yesterday they discovered that 27 indigenous policemen were shot in the very
05:46 indigenous state of Chiapas in southern Mexico. But this is not even really remarked upon in the
05:52 Mexican press. I mean, the indigenous people still will be marginalized. Whether it's going to change
05:57 gender relations, I think that's up in the air. AMLO's government, the Morena government,
06:01 the current incumbent has not been terribly good on gender relations, particularly on
06:07 prosecuting the wave of femicides, killing of women that has gone on in Mexico. Whether
06:14 Claudia Sheinbaum, when she comes to power, manages to turn that around, that will be of interest.
06:22 Benjamin, thank you so much for joining us. We'll have to leave it there for now. There's
06:24 elections taking place on Sunday. That is Benjamin Smith, Professor of Latin American
06:29 History at the University of Warwick. Thank you so much for your time on the programme.