Under governor Javier Duarte, Veracruz has become one of Mexico’s most dangerous states – but as his term ends, so might 86 years of PRI rule

Alexander Figueroa was eating lunch with his family when armed men burst in and forced them to the ground, screaming, “Where’s the boss?” The assailants, who wore bulletproof vests, military-style boots and buzzcuts, methodically searched the house before dragging the 22-year-old away.

Minutes later, a convoy of Mexican army vehicles pulled up at the house in Córdoba, a colonial town in Mexico’s south-eastern Veracruz state. Like the gunmen, the soldiers said they were also looking for Figueroa’s father, a local leader of the sugar cane workers’ federation. He was not at home, and escaped arrest, but his son has not been seen since the raid in December 2014.

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“We’ve searched for him in the hills, rivers, and mass graves but there’s no news of him,” sobbed Figueroa’s mother, Ana Lilian Ortiz. “We have photos and witnesses but the authorities deny the military were ever here.”

Figueroa is one of scores of people to have disappeared in the region over the past six years amid escalating violence between warring cartels and corrupt security forces.

Under the rule of Governor Javier Duarte de Ocho, Veracruz has become one of Mexico’s most dangerous, most censored and most indebted states.

Duarte, who represents the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), cannot run for re-election this Sunday, when 12 states including Veracruz hold gubernatorial elections.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest The governor of Veracruz state, Javier Duarte. Photograph: Roger López/The Guardian

But the depth of his unpopularity could help put an end to 86 years of consecutive PRI rule in Veracruz – a huge blow for the party that has long dominated Mexican politics, just two years before a presidential election.

Duarte’s disastrous term of office highlights the vast powers wielded by Mexico’s state governors who are free to deal out patronage like feudal lords, said Juan Pablo Calderón, a columnist – and lifelong PRI member – from the state capital Xalapa.

“He’s one of the most inept governors in our history who reflects the trio of corruption, impunity and incompetence which are the cancer of the PRI and Mexico,” he said.

Duarte’s shortcomings as a politician were demonstrated in his reaction to Figueroa’s abduction, which took place in his home town. The UN recently ruled that it was a case of forced disappearance, indicating that state forces were directly implicated.

The missing student’s parents expected the governor would at least offer a sympathetic ear: they were lifelong PRI supporters who had hosted campaign events for Duarte.

But when they went to the governor’s palace in Xalapa to plead for help, they were turned away.

“I cooked for Duarte in my home, but he wouldn’t even see us,” said Ortiz. “We feel ashamed, deceived and abandoned.”

Veracruz, an oil-rich state on the Gulf coast with a population of eight million, is one of Mexico’s most geographically diverse and strategically important regions.

Its lucrative coffee, sugar and oil industries have long given rise to powerful local leaders, known as caciques, who political parties depended on to deliver votes in exchange for favours and support.

The state’s location and the vast port in the state’s largest city made it an important drug trafficking route, and similar deals were also reportedly struck with crime bosses.

Under Duarte’s predecessor, Fidel Herrera, tacit pacts were forged with criminal factions to ensure a relative peace in the state, according to security expert Erubíel Tirado. In 2013, a US federal court heard testimony that Herrera’s election campaign received millions of dollars from the Zetas cartel after they split from their former paymasters, the Gulf cartel. Herrera, who is currently Mexico’s consul in Barcelona has denied the allegations and is not under investigation.



Despite his lack of political experience, Duarte was picked as Herrera’s successor and it was widely speculated that Herrera intended to continue as de facto governor.

But according to former party colleagues from Córdoba, Duarte was determined to rule on his own terms. After a narrow victory clouded by allegations of electoral fraud, he rebuffed his political benefactor.

In response, Herrera withdrew his support, causing the local PRI structure to fracture, said Jorge Rebolledo, a security expert from the College of Veracruz. “Duarte didn’t have the capacity or personality to negotiate with caciques, who started making their own deals, upsetting the power balances. The security situation is now very fragile.”

Tit-for-tat atrocities have now become commonplace across the state as rival crime groups battle for territory.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Credential belonging to Anabel Flores, a journalist from El Sol de Orizaba newspaper who was kidnapped in Orizaba. Photograph: Roger López/The Guardian

Last month, several mass graves containing thousands of bone fragments were found on the outskirts of Córdoba.



Last week, five dismembered bodies were dumped on a roadside just minutes from the town’s picturesque colonial centre. With the bodies lay two sheets of cardboard with messages from the Jalisco New Generation cartel threatening Los Zetas with further “cleansings”.

On Wednesday night, a man’s head was found in a park in nearby Orizaba.

But as the violence has grown worse, Duarte has apparently opted for denial, blaming reports of escalating terror on political foes.



“Everything bad is to do with his enemies, not his government. He takes any criticism personally,” said Rebolledo.

Journalists have become of focus of this mistrust. While friendly newspapers have been propped up with government advertising contracts, critical voices have struggled to survive.

Local journalists are filmed and photographed by informants, according to several local reporters. In November, Duarte’s own security detail manhandled a photographer at an event to celebrate freedom of speech.

One local reporter described a meeting with Duarte’s minister for public security who revealed specific details of the journalist’s personal life. “He made it clear the government has files on every single journalist, information they can use when necessary,” the reporter said.

During Duarte’s rule, 16 journalists have been murdered and three others have disappeared, making Veracruz the most dangerous place for the media in Mexico, according to the press freedom organisation Article 19.



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Last July, Rubén Espinosa, a local photographer who had fled Veracruz after receiving death threats, was murdered in Mexico City, along with Nadia Vera, a social activist who left Xalapa following police intimidation, and three other women.

Journalists have also allegedly been caught up in organised crime.

In February, Anabel Flores, a 27-year-old crime reporter was dragged from her home near Orizaba by armed men in military uniforms. Her badly beaten body was dumped on a highway the following day.



Several newspapers claimed that Flores had worked for criminals; her family says she has been smeared by local authorities.

Such allegations are difficult to disprove: police investigations are themselves incomplete and beset by allegations of corruption. But nobody doubts that reporting in Veracruz is a dangerous activity.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Two men with their hands tied behind their back and with their faces covered with duct tape lie by the side of the road as police secure the area in the city of Veracruz on 6 December 2011. Photograph: Felix Marquez/AP

Communities around Córdoba and Orizaba are under constant surveillance. Journalists from outside are warned against driving through the region in a car with out-of-state licence plates.

A government spokesman said the Duarte government had confronted crime with “firmness and dedication”, channelling record resources towards fighting “high impact crimes” and “purging, professionalising and strengthening” the state police force. He also said that the state government “will always respect freedom of expression”.

But many locals remain too scared to speak openly about their experiences. Those who do are often targeted by local officials, criminal groups or both.

Araceli Salcedo made national news when she confronted Duarte over the fate of Veracruz’s many kidnap victims. Her daughter Rubí, then 21, has not been seen since she was abducted from a bar in the centre of Orizaba by armed men in September 2012.

When Duarte arrived in the city for an official visit last October, Salcedo berated the governor. Footage of the incident shows her telling him: “You don’t help us at all, señor, here in this magical town where they disappear our children.”

In response, Duarte appears to smirk.



“It’s like he was mocking my daughter and all the other disappeared. When the camera was turned off, his smile transformed into hate and anger, I could feel it,” Salcedo told the Guardian.



Since then, Salcedo has been followed and detained by police, and accused of working for opposition politicians. After repeated death threats, she was appointed two bodyguards by federal prosecutors.



A spokesman for Duarte said that the governor had met victim’s groups, but argued that some missing people “left home of their own free will”.

Rubí Salcedo’s disappearance came amid a rise in violence targeting women and girls, so in January women’s activists were elated when Duarte accepted recommendations to tackle gender violence.



Days later, however, Duarte also proposed to reform the state constitution to protect “life from conception” – effectively banning abortion in all circumstances. Veracruz has the fifth highest rate of maternal mortality in the country; almost 500 girls aged 10 to 14 gave birth in 2015.

The state government has since denied that abortion would be criminalised, but the archbishop of Veracruz has said that the governor “gave his word” that the reform would be ratified before he leaves office in December.

“Deals are made in secret and the governor can assure reforms will be passed without any concern for women’s rights or autonomy of power. This is a simulation of democracy,” said Araceli González, from the women’s collective Equifonía.

Sunday’s election remains too close to call, but whoever wins will inherit a financial mess.



Public debt has tripled during Duarte’s tenure to $2.5bn, making it the fourth most indebted state in Mexico. This figure doesn’t include millions owed to public institutions like universities, hospitals or pension funds.

People queue for hours outside emergency rooms in the rain, and roads flood where promised bridges have not been built. Meanwhile, $35m of state funds were paid to ghost companies between 2012 and 2013, according to a recent investigation by Animal Político. The governor has denied any wrongdoing.

Alberto Olvera, a sociologist at the critical University of Veracruz which claims it is owed $100m by the government, said: “Duarte has been the most autocratic, corrupt and vengeful Veracruz governor in decades. If the PRI lose this election it will be historic, healthy – and our first experience of democracy.”