The Latest | Mexico votes in historic elections marred by cartel violence and deep division (2024)

Mexicans are voting Sunday in historic elections weighing gender, democracy and populism, as they chart the country’s path forward shadowed by cartel violence.

With two women leading the contest, Mexico will likely elect its first female president — a major step in a country long marked by its macho culture. The election is also the biggest in the country’s history. More than 20,000 congressional and local positions are up for grabs, according to the National Electoral Institute.

Claudia Sheinbaum, the former mayor of Mexico City, has maintained a comfortable double-digit lead in opinion polls for months. Xóchitl Gálvez, an opposition senator and tech entrepreneur, represents a coalition of parties that have had little historically to unite them other than their recent opposition to outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Mexico goes into Sunday’s election deeply divided: Friends and relatives no longer talk politics for fear of worsening unbridgeable divides, while drug cartels have split the country into a patchwork quilt of warring fiefdoms. The atmosphere is literally heating up with a wave of unusual heat, drought, pollution and political violence.

Currently:

— More populist policies or tougher fight with cartels? Mexicans weigh choice as they pick a new leader.

— Mexico’s drug cartels and gangs appear to be playing a wider role in Sunday’s elections than before.

— Mexicans choose between continuity and change in an election overshadowed by violence.

— Violence clouds the last day of campaigning for Mexico’s election.

Here's the latest in Mexico's election:

ISOLATED INCIDENTS OF VIOLENCE REPORTED IN PUEBLA AND QUERÉTARO

MEXICO CITY — While voting appeared peaceful, if time-consuming, at most of Mexico’s approximately 170,000 polling places, there were isolated incidents of violence reported. In the central state of Puebla, four armed assailants tried to burst into a school where voting booths were installed to try to steal ballots. State police said arrests had been made in the case.

And the governor of the central state of Querétaro, just north of the capital, told local media that assailants had tried to burn ballots at four polling places in his state. A video posted on social media showed two masked men escaping on a motorcycle after one attack. But the problems — both logistical and involving conflicts — were perhaps greatest in the southern border state of Chiapas, where as many as 42% of polling places were delayed in setting up; some apparently couldn’t open at all.

OPPOSITION CANDIDATE XÓCHITL GÁLVEZ CASTS VOTE

MEXICO CITY — Presidential candidate Xóchitl Gálvez cast her vote after more than an hour and a half of waiting in Mexico City. After voting, she posed for photographers and then addressed journalists saying: “It is the people who have to decide, I have already done my job... let the citizens do their job.” She anticipated that the election results are likely to “come a little late” and noted that she expects a “huge turnout.”

CRIME AND VIOLENCE ON VOTERS' MINDS

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s unrelenting wave of crime and violence appeared to be uppermost in the minds of some voters, especially those leaning toward the opposition.

In Mexico City, voters appeared concerned more about street-level crime, given that the capital has not seen as many drug-cartel shootouts as in outlying states.

Julio García, 34, a Mexico City office worker, said he was voting for the opposition. “I’ve been robbed twice, with a pistol pointed at me,” Garcia said, describing armed assailants who approached his car when he was stuck in traffic.

“We definitely need a change in leadership. If we continue on the same path, we’re going to become Venezuela.”

Diego García, 49, a shopkeeper and no relation to Julio, said he was voting for the opposition. “We definitely need a change, above all, because of crime. I have relatives who have been robbed, who have been kidnapped.”

BRING YOUR DOG TO THE VOTING BOOTH

MEXICO CITY —A relatively new trend is emerging in Mexico's election: bringing your dog to the voting booth.

At one polling place in central Mexico City, nearly a dozen dogs — ranging in size from Great Danes to pugs — were waiting patiently with their owners in lines that stretched around the block.

Koba, a tawny colored Husky, accompanied his owner, Marco Delaye, into the polling place, and the two emerged smiling.

“He behaved very well,” said Delaye. “He let me vote without any problem.”

That was no small feat, given that turnout was very high early Sunday and polling places were jam-packed, perhaps because Mexicans are lining up to vote early to avoid the country’s unprecedented heat wave.

FRONT-RUNNER SHEINBAUM CASTS BALLOT

MEXICO CITY — As she left home to vote, frontrunner Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters briefly that she was “very happy, very excited” in what she described as a “historic day.”

She said that she had a “quiet” night and that after voting she would come back home to have breakfast.

She called people to go to the polls. “You have to vote, you have to go out and vote,” said the former Mexico City mayor.

MEXICO CITY — On the fringes of Mexico City in the neighborhood of San Andres Totoltepec, electoral officials filed past 34-year-old homemaker Stephania Navarrete, who watched dozens of cameramen and electoral officials gathering where frontrunner Claudia Sheinbaum was set to vote.

Navarrete said she planned to vote for Sheinbaum despite her own doubts about outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his party.

“Having a woman president, for me as a Mexican woman, it’s going to be like before when for the simple fact that you say you are a woman you’re limited to certain professions. Not anymore.”

She said the social programs of Sheinbaum’s mentor were crucial, but that deterioration of cartel violence in the past few years was her primary concern in this election.

“That is something that they have to focus more on,” she said. “For me security is the major challenge. They said they were going to lower the levels of crime, but no, it was the opposite, they shot up. Obviously, I don’t completely blame the president, but it is in a certain way his responsibility.”

At a special voting post on a large Mexico City medical campus where people like on-duty doctors and nurses who can’t get home to vote can cast their ballots, men and women are waiting for polls to open.

Aida Fabiola Valencia said, “Yesterday I told my colleagues to go vote, I don’t know who they are going to vote for, but it is the first time they are going to be able to elect a woman, who I think is going to play an important role. We (women) are 60% of the population, it is historic.”

There have been female candidates before in Mexico, but this is the first time the two leading candidates — Claudia Sheinbaum and Xóchitl Gálvez — are women.

Nearby, Mónica Martínez, said, “The fact that people vote for a candidate who is a woman implies a lot of change at all social and work levels, that means that it is already starting to get better. It already is. But the fact that it is for a presidential candidacy is much more significant.”

STORES OFFER FREE GOODS FOR SUNDAY VOTERS

MEXICO CITY — Thousands of Mexican stores are advertising offers of free goods for customers who come in Sunday and show ink on their finger, a security measure to prevent anyone from voting twice.

The offers are intended to encourage voting.

Some outlets in the nation’s largest convenience store chain, Oxxo, are offering voters a free cup of coffee. The national restaurant chamber said some members will be offering discounts on food or beverage as well.

HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION CRITICIZES ELECTORAL AUTHORITIES

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s once-autonomous National Human Rights Commission issued an unusual statement criticizing electoral authorities.

The commission, which has largely followed and supported the policies of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, claimed on Saturday electoral authorities have not acted forcefully enough against “slander,” a term frequently used by López Obrador in reaction to any criticism.

Elections in Mexico are run by the independent National Electoral Institute, and the commission is supposed to have no role in the process.

Follow AP election coverage around the world at https://apnews.com/hub/global-elections