The Coastal Miguel Aleman divides Acapulco into two worlds: that of the memories of the inhabitants, on the tourist side, where the ghosts of the famous people who visited one day the beach and its important hotels, decades ago, live, and the world of violence and insecurity, located on the other side of the avenue, towards the popular colonies , towards the Zapata, the Renaissance, the Côte d’Azur, la Venta, poor colonies of unpaved streets and houses without electricity or drinking water. The faces of the candidates in the spectaculars throw the emblematic avenue, faces always smiling, eternally cheerful, as if in this port, guarded by armed elements of the Army and the National Guard, there were only reasons for rejoicing.
Acapulco is the electoral jewel in the crown: it is the municipality that contributes the most to the economy of Guerrero (30% of the state’s GDP depends on its economic outpouring) and the one that concentrates the highest density of voters (its population is equivalent to a quarter of the entire state). The two main candidates for governor, Evelyn Salgado Pineda, from Morena, and Mario Moreno Arcos, from the unusual PRI-PRD alliance — who, according to the polls, are in a technical tie in voting intention — have focused their presence and lined up their campaign closings in this coastal municipality, which in itself forms one of the seven regions of Guerrero.
On April 27, state and federal security authorities prepared a “risk map” in which 31 municipalities were listed as red hotbeds of violence and another 15 with medium risk. All of Acapulco is listed in red, indicating that political parties are not the only ones involved in the dispute over the square. A report from the guerrerense government to which this media outlet had access indicates that the Independent Cartel of Acapulco, linked to the Beltran Leyva, and Los Rojos, as well as the criminal cells La Empresa, Los Dumbos, and Los Virus operate in this municipality.
“Guerrero has always been a very violent state. We have organised crime groups that traffic drugs at a high level; in the Sierra de Guerrero there is planting of poppy and marijuana, and much of that drug that is planted is going to be distributed to the tourist areas, and that generates that these groups are strengthened, generating other crimes such as the collection of floor”, explains Alejandro Martínez, state leader of the Coparmex.
Between 25 and 27 May alone, while the leading candidates in the race were holding proselytizing events in this tourist city, 13 people were murdered in the popular colonies; local media also reported shootings, chases and the discovery of an organized crime message on a blanket. A candidate for mayor of this city, José Alberto Alonso Gutiérrez, of the Fuerza por México party, whose family has been linked to the Beltran Leyva cartel, was shot on May 26 while driving in the Zapata neighborhood, identified by residents as one of the most unsafe. Almost simultaneously, Morena’s candidate for mayor, Abelina Lopez, denounced that her electoral operators have been threatened at gunpoint so that they do not promote the vote.
With criminal violence openly sneaking into the electoral arena, Mario Moreno and Evelyn Salgado are guarded on their journeys and rallies by state policemen carrying long guns. Salgado Pineda minimizes the armor: he says he doesn’t need guaruras because he is cared for by the people; PRI member Moreno Arcos questions what the current mayor, Morenista Adela Roman, has done to stop the violence, but without mentioning that the entire state is governed by a co-religionist from his own party, Hector Astudillo.
The candidates to govern the entity spend little time discussing with the electorate at their rallies the problem of insecurity and even less on how to solve it. The brunette sometimes sings Selena’s songs; the PRI member, a day later, dismisses her by disparagingly calling her a “singer” or “improvised”; Salgado Pineda replies that she sings of happiness and warns that he will sing of pain after the day of June 6; Moreno Arcos, who has twice been mayor of Chilpancingo, calls him “inexperienced”, alluding to his age (39 years) and that he has never held a popularly elected office; she turns, “yes, I have no experience, but in stealing.”
In the midst of the electoral struggle, the harangues, the dimes and diretes, there are the guerrerenses who are transported in neighborhood leaders in pickup trucks to the rallies, who are given pots and bottles of water and told when to applaud.
Transportation to PRI electoral event
Father and campaign manager
Evelyn Salgado inherited the electoral structure from her father, whom she calls “great lineer social” and who he says is his “ultimate ideological referent”. She maintains that it is not improvised because she accompanied the struggles of Felix Salgado since she was a child. There are old photos of her at those political events, and there are followers of her father who remember seeing her there.
“I have been touring the state for more than 30 years, knowing each of the social struggles at the hands of a great leader such as Félix Salgado Macedonio, such as engineer Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, as our president López Obrador,” the candidate said at a rally at the popular unit El Coloso; “I have also been in marches, in sit-ins, in hunger strikes, I have also been supporting, and not right now, since I was very young, since I was 6 years old I was doing my tasks under the temples, and there I was with my father touring the state. ”
Salgado Pineda’s supporters are not bothered that the candidate is climbing on her father’s shoulders; in fact, Felix Salgado himself has promoted the idea that voting for his daughter is like voting for him.
“Evelyn is going to be a very good governor, I reflect on her, Evelyn knows me, knows how I think, knows how I am, and she continues that. A colleague says: of such a stick, such a splinter,” the former candidate said at a rally in Icacos. His followers ratify it and speak of the standard-bearer as if it were Adam’s rib.
“Evelyn is the teaching of that social fighter of many years, she is his offspring, and we have to support felix’s offspring,” says the merchant Remedios Morales. “We love him too much because he is a social fighter who has always fought for the right things, because we are banishing the PRI chieftain, who are already up to the mother, we want him to disappear.”
The fisherman Amancio Cruz Garcia, 72, whom “a leader” brought in an Urvan van, is not known the name of the Morenist candidate for governor, but the name of the father, because he was already mayor and, he says, helped them with food for the raising of tents.
“We have continued to support Felix, because we were told that he was a candidate, but I think it was not possible, I do not know what happened, now his daughter goes; I think the dad is going to manage, because he has to teach the daughter a lot of things, she doesn’t have many notions of this, but I think he’s going to get the daughter on the path she should walk,” says the fisherman. Despite his advanced age, he is without cover because he has already been given two doses of the Pfizer vaccine against COVID.
Do you know the name of the candidate?
Amancio puts on a face to remember and then looks at the two fishermen who come with him. But no one.
“Well, notice that it doesn’t,” he says.
Félix Salgado was nicknamed the “bull without siege”, in Plan de los Amates, “because frankly he is a man with courage, with caste, and he jumps the locks”, explains Samuel Morales, Sammy Boy, a 62-year-old cattle rancher who says he has been in charge of cleaning in the house of Salgado Macedonio in Acapulco and who has brought to a proselytizing act a bull without horns to which Chamo put him : feeling of the rally, people approach the animal, soba the backs and takes photos with what would be the lively allegory of Felix Salgado, long aspiring to the governorship of his state.
“Felix has been everything. He put out a music record, he made a film with Lina Santos, he was a wrestling wrestler, he knows how to fly airplanes, he’s a motorcyclist, he’s an activist, he’s a senator, he was municipal president. The only thing he hasn’t been is governor,” says a Salgado Macedonio aide laughing.
The most memorable supporters point out that Felix Salgado “has been robbed” three times of the governorship of Guerrero: in 1993, when priist Ruben Figueroa Alcocer was elected; in 1999, when René Juárez Cisneros, also of the PRI, won, and in 2021, when the INE decided to cancel his candidacy for not having submitted reports on pre-campaign expenses.
“In fact, Felix said that the third one was going to be the winner, like President López Obrador,” says Julio Barreto Bohórquez, 70, who wears white and carries a Mexican flagpole during a walk in the Colosio colony, just as he did in 1999, when he was also “standard bearer” of the “Exodus for Democracy.” , from Chilpancingo to Mexico City, which Salgado Macedonio emulated from López Obrador.
Salgado sympathizer.
The senator on leave attends evelyn Salgado Pineda rallies; takes the baton; his is the most anticipated speech; gives media interviews; supporters seek him out to take pictures with him as the candidate withdraws without too many hiccups. The daughter’s campaign is confused with that of the father, who does not cease to want to be president of Guerrero.
After a rally in Icacos, Felix Salgado declares that in 2027 he will be a candidate again, jumps the guns and advances his proselytizing by six years.
“I’m going to be governor. Someday, sometime, I’m going to be gobernador. I’m still young, I’m just 64 years old. I’m going to live more than 100 of them,” he says.
The former mayor of Acapulco assures that he will not get into the government of Salgado Pineda, if he wins the election.
“Evelyn is going to be the governor for 6 years. The next day (of the elections), on June 7, I return to the Senate, I’m not going to be here saying what Evelyn has to do, she will do very well,” he says.
However, after losing the candidacy, Felix Salgado assumed de facto coordination of his daughter’s campaign and inherited his electoral structure, his operators and his advisers, according to this media.
“When the candidacy was taken away from him, Felix told us: ‘We are going to continue as we came: we did not have the candidacy and we are still without it.’ There was also no time to change the team. The same coordinators stayed, although Evelyn also brought her people, “explains a collaborator of the morenista team.
He claims that Salgado Macedonio has his base of operations in Chilpancingo, from where he is in charge of the formation of electoral structure and defense of the vote together with the state leader of Morena, Marcial Rodriguez.
María de los Ángeles Santiago Dionicio, sister of guerrilla and PRD founder Octaviano Santiago Dionicio, remained leader of her daughter’s campaign. Another “transferred” operator is Jose Luis Gonzalez de la Vega Otero, guerrero’s former secretary of education who is identified as the architect of the rapprochement with the relatives of some of the missing normalists from Ayotzinapa.
The father also inherited Ricardo Peralta, former interior secretary, who serves as a communications advisor through the organization “Patriotic Alliance for the 4T,” whose trademark was registered by the same former official with the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) last February.
Although Salgado Macedonio denied Peralta’s involvement in his daughter’s campaign, Political Animal confirmed the presence of members of the “Alliance” at the candidate’s rallies, who are in charge of the production of audiovisual content and who refer to the former undersecretary as “chief.” Even Peralta, who was also head of the SAT, participated as a special guest in the closing of the candidate’s campaign last Sunday in Acapulco and has published videos in which he calls to vote for her.
Despite the work of the former interior secretary in his team, Salgado Pineda has not reported to the INE the hiring of him or his organization. The “Alliance” also advises other Morenist candidates for governorships, such as Victor Castro, in Baja California Sur; David Monreal, in Zacatecas; Miguel Ángel Navarro, in Nayarit, and Rubén Rocha, in Sinaloa.
“We are supported by colleagues from different expressions, but here there are no bosses or anything like that,” Felix Salgado said tersely when asked about Peralta’s participation in his daughter’s campaign. This media outlet has published that 10 former customs administrators close to the former head of the SAT were dismissed and reported to the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) for alleged acts of corruption, money laundering and organized crime.
“We are not sexists”
Several myths revolve around Felix Salgado. A collaborator of his says that the morenista paid for a very expensive operation without charging him.
“Once, when he was municipal president (of Acapulco), he found a tramp. He bathed him himself, cut his hair and got him a house,” he adds.
Other citizens recall an armed confrontation that took place in La Garita colony on 27 January 2006 – during the government of Salgado Macedonio – in which several policemen, suspected assassins and civilians were killed.
“With Felix came the narcos and the violence,” says a guerrerense journalist.
“I’m not going to tell you that he was a good municipal president,” says taxi driver Isidro, “but he won over people because he was charismatic, he greeted everyone, and you know that being kind earns a lot of people, and if you’re smug, you earn hate, and he was what he had, that’s why people here want him. Whoever wins Acapulco wins the state. I tell you as a citizen, I am not a politician, I have earned my daily bread up here in my taxi. That’s why he has all the people on his side because he’s charismatic, no one can give him a vote of punishment, he greets everybody, and you, being poor, you’re stupid.”
Even the rape allegations against Salgado Macedonio are rejected by his supporters.
“That is a lie, it is the dirty war to which we are exposing ourselves, a dirty war of the PRI members, they have destroyed Felix, but we are not going to leave him, because the people are with Felix, and with the people there is no game, the more they throw Felix, the more we are with him, the same with Andrés Manuel López Obrador : the more they throw him, the more we are with him, “says the trader Remedios Morales.
At a rally, Evelyn Salgado Pineda asserts that Guerrero is not a macho state, because men accept her as a candidate.
“I see a lot of women in the struggle, a lot of young people, but also the men are fighting,” she says. “Let the stigma that Guerrero is the bronco and macho Warrior who does not want a woman governor to end. I see many men here and they are also in this struggle. I ask men: do you want a woman governor?”
In chorus, although there are those who do not know his name, such as the fisherman Amancio, they answer yes.
“Do you want programs?”
In some courts of the Zapata colony, in Acapulco, the PRI-PRD candidate, Mario Moreno Arcos, cannot finish his speech because the attendees of his rally, mainly women, begin to leave while he speaks. One of the “leaders” who brought the people tries to make them stay a while longer, but they are already leaving the place, they are already getting into the vans in which they were made to come from their colonies. Moreno Arcos speaks for only three minutes.
The PRI candidate has twice been municipal president of Chilpancingo, but is trying his luck in Acapulco. Rosa Mota Rios, 37, a resident of La Venta neighborhood, says she doesn’t know him.
“We don’t know about those match things,” she says standing next to her husband.
At the rally they were given caps and T-shirts. PRI promoters go to the women’s seats and take their data; an operator also collects your voter key. In the temple at another rally, in the Renaissance colony, Moreno Arcos signs a “commitment” before a notary, as Enrique Peña Nieto did. A cheerleader takes the microphone and asks the attendees, “Do you want shows?” In chorus they answer yes.
Mario Moreno says that, unlike his rival, the morenista Evelyn Salgado, he is not an improvised “pulled out of the sleeve” or “newly created”. The PRI has been his school.
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