Campaign tactics

Do you want to win a local election in Mexico? You better have money. Not only for radio or television commercials, but also for buckets of paint and mattresses.

I was recently in Toluca, the capital of the state of Mexico, located about an hour from Mexico City. In the town square I saw a rally with hundreds of people in red hats chatting and listening to music booming over the loudspeaker. As I walked closer to investigate, I also noticed a line of pick-up trucks along the square loaded with five-gallon buckets of paint.

These red hats belonged to supporters of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party) or PRI, and the rally was to support the PRI candidates in the upcoming legislative and gubernatorial elections. The rally itself was really just for the tried and true supporters, but the paint was different; it was there to convince the swing voters. And soon it would be handed out or delivered to certain voters who signed a pledge to vote PRI.

This is not a unique story. I heard a similar one from a student who volunteered at the polls in Nezahualcoyotl, a suburb of Mexico City. She described various party officials giving away $200 peso gift certificates to a local grocery store, so long as the recipients signed an oath to vote for the official's party. In this poor suburb, $200 peso ($18 dollars) can feed a family for a number of days.

I was with a friend of mine when I witnessed this spectacle in Toluca. She recalled a similar story about when her father ran for the mayor of their town, also in the state of Mexico. According to her, his main opponent gave away mattresses to select swing voters, and with this tactic (and claiming that, if elected, her father would shut down the churches) his opponent won.

It's tempting to dismiss these stories as comical, but when honest democratic discourse is deterred such as in these examples, governments become less responsive to the needs of their citizens.