San Pedro tragedy clouds the campaign: local influence and a mystery for the presidential race | Mexican elections 2024

The collapse of a stage at a Citizens’ Movement campaign event in Nuevo Leon state, which killed nine people and injured dozens, has disrupted the electoral campaign, and its political consequences, just a week after Mexicans went to the polls on June 2, remain to be seen. It has yet to be determined whether the tragedy that unfolded on Wednesday night in the San Pedro municipality could have been avoided. There are doubts about whether…

The collapse of a stage at a Citizens’ Movement campaign event in the state of Nuevo Leon, which killed nine people and injured dozens, disrupted the electoral campaign, and its political consequences, just a week after Mexicans went to the polls on June 2, remain to be seen. It has yet to be determined whether the tragedy that occurred on Wednesday night in the municipality of San Pedro could have been avoided. There are doubts about the strength with which the stage was built and the extent to which the event organizers ignored weather warnings (it was a gust of wind that caused the structure to collapse). The MC has concluded that it was an accidental event. The PRI has said that the Orange formation was negligent in following safety protocols. The way political actors behave in the face of this incident could affect their electoral balance. Analysts believe that the greatest impact will be at the local level, while trends at the federal level, especially in the presidential race, will not change much.

The first chips have started to move. MC presidential candidate Jorge Álvarez Mánez, who was at the site of the tragedy, suspended his campaign events and remained on the front line, taking immediate action for the recovery of the injured. Samuel García, governor of Nuevo León and his fellow member, has given space in the management of the tragedy so that Maynez appears to be taking charge, periodically publishing videos in which he releases news breaks, as if he were an authority. Morena’s candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum, and the opposition front, Xochitl Gálvez, also stopped their public events and expressed their solidarity with Mánez and the families of the victims. However, politicians and commentators sympathetic to Gálvez published messages on social networks mocking the tragedy, either the fall from the stage, or the fact that Maynez escaped safely. Some were corrected; others continued to ridicule.

The president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, came out this Thursday to spare the MC from responsibilities in the tragedy, which saw the support of the orange formation shift from the ruling party, after government critics pressured the opposition to reject Ménez’s aspirations in favor of Gálvez. “We know they are not guilty, they carry out their functions like everyone else. In any case, the authority will have to investigate, ”said the president. For her part, Sheinbaum had a rally scheduled for the afternoon in Monterrey, the state capital, which she canceled. Upon arriving at the Nuevo León airport this morning, she said she had spoken by phone not only with Ménez, but also with Governor García, to express her solidarity. It was surprising to many that a presidential candidate had a direct connection to the current leader of the state. However, experts consider that this is normal, given that Sheinbaum herself was the ruler of Mexico City and García’s counterpart.

Heidi Osuna, director of polling firm Encol, says the impact of the tragedy in political terms, positive or negative, will be greater at the local level for the MC. In addition to the presidency, Nuevo Leon will be voting for federal and local representatives, senators and mayors. The rally where the tragedy occurred was for MC candidates Lorencia Canavati and Martha Herrera, for mayor of San Pedro and Senate, respectively. Maynez attended as a guest. “A lot depends on how the crisis is handled, how the candidates and the authorities behave. I think it can have a local impact, it can also make the MC suffer, punish them, make them lose Monterrey (the state capital, where the party governs), or to a lesser extent, it will have no consequences or it will support them more if they handle the crisis well. I have seen a good response from both the governor and Maynez and the candidates, at the level of solidarity,” he says.

Political analyst Luis Miguel Carriedo believes that no candidate will openly use this tragedy for advantage; however, it draws attention to parallel strategies through the fields BotOf Influencers and strategists who want to sow polarizing ideas in the networks to politically influence some of the actors involved in the contest. “This issue does not benefit anyone, ultimately it is a tragedy that happens in a campaign event, and having a permanent exhibition on this issue does not have positive results, unless there are propaganda strategies that begin to suggest a conspiracy behind the tragedy or a fake one. In an election environment, there are constant news reports to try to deal with crises, but I do not believe that this kind of situation is a good platform for campaigning. So, a few days before the election, the agenda will oscillate between the temptation to politicize the issue and make some gains and the temptation to get out of it a little bit, so that it does not have an impact in political terms,” ​​he points out.

Carriedo says that, due to the proximity of election day, and how dangerous it is to benefit politically from this event, the priorities already formed around the candidates will hardly change. “Politics will adapt to this circumstance, controlling the events of the campaign, but at the same time, in the media agenda before the end of the campaign, this issue will undoubtedly occupy an important place. Due to the electoral time, I do not believe that it will have a great impact on priorities, but it can show us this duality as a phenomenon: grievance through strategies Marketing And the electoral use of the tragedy, and on the other hand, a kind of consensus of the candidates who all come out and say: we are in solidarity with the situation,” he describes.

Regarding López Obrador’s support for the MC, Osuna believes that the president should have behaved more neutrally, especially in the context of the elections. “I think it is a gesture towards the MC. I think it was the right thing to do, but the president should have taken a very neutral stance, supported the MC and waited for the investigation, especially because it is election time. The question is, if he had gone the other way with the PAN, the PRI or the PRD, would the president have done the same thing to spare them from responsibilities? I think it would have been the right thing to do. This support helps the MC, at least people close to Morena or followers of the president are not going to attack or make this tragedy, this polarization in the networks, even bigger, ”says the expert. For his part, Carriedo says that there are no signs that Menez is going to disavow any of the candidates in the race, even after or despite what happened in San Pedro. “At this point, I don’t think there is any doubt or temptation of a decline, a party’s strategy of going it alone in a race allows it to get a certain percentage of the vote, I don’t see any indications that there is any concern that there will be a decline”, it said.

Osuna remembers that, in April 2023, at a rally of Alejandra del Moral, the PRI candidate for the government of the State of Mexico, the wind knocked down a tarpaulin. One person died there and 19 others were injured. The governor’s race continued. “Obviously it had no resonance because it was not a campaign for the presidency. The resonance in San Pedro was due to the number of deaths and also because presidential candidates were present, and it became international news,” he explains. For this reason, it asks the INE to reinforce security requirements at campaign events and to ensure that suppliers comply with protocols, so that a similar incident does not occur again.

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