The deputy director of Economic and Agricultural Censuses of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), Susana Pérez, declared yesterday before a commission of the Chamber of Deputies that agency employees were forced to hire criminals to conduct some census interviews. , and that one of the officials was kidnapped while trying to conduct interviews.
Pérez affirmed that the problem was worse in the rural areas of the country, and that INEGI had to use various methods to be able to operate in those regions.
“There are various strategies, from in some cases paying to enter,” said the director, explaining that they also resort to hiring personnel who live in those areas who are known by the residents and by “those who could be committing crime.”
In central and northern Mexico, where violence is troubled by turf wars over drug trafficking and migration, census workers found abandoned farming communities with no one to survey.
INEGI is funded by the government, but enjoys almost total autonomy to ensure that statistics are not tampered with by politicians.
Security analyst David Saucedo said Friday that drug cartels and gangs are indeed targeting INEGI workers, as well as collaborators with polling and marketing companies in some parts of Mexico.
“There are cases where organized crime groups extort money from pollsters and supervisors to let them conduct surveys. In this case, it is a simple and plain extortion crime,” said Saucedo.
Other factors make going door-to-door asking questions even more dangerous work, the analyst said. “Sometimes the cartels harass pollsters by confusing them with members of other criminal groups, because rival groups disguise themselves as government brigade members or pollsters to do intelligence work in areas under enemy control,” he added.
In places like the troubled states of Michoacán and Guerrero, drug cartels may want to influence poll results to boost the candidacies of politicians who are allied with them, analysts say. Some parties in Mexico use polls to choose their candidates in internal processes.
“If (the cartels) detect pollsters taking up questionnaires, they take them up and force them to survey members of the drug trafficker’s social support base so that the results favor the candidates of their choice,” said Saucedo.
There is growing concern in the country that the authorities have abandoned some areas that are now under the control of drug gangs.
Federal authorities acknowledged this month that a demonstration of hundreds of people in the southern city of Chilpancingo, capital of Guerrero state, was organized by the Los Ardillos drug gang, and that the mobilization was aimed at forcing the government to release two leaders of the group who were detained accused of possession of drugs and weapons.
In the neighboring state of Michoacán, residents recently acknowledged that almost all basic products in their region cost between 30% and 50% more because drug cartels controlled distribution, and that the situation was known to authorities.
Traders told the AP that the high prices were due to “taxes” charged by a local drug cartel, or by ownership of distribution points run by drug traffickers.
It has long become a dangerous practice for strangers to enter towns and start asking questions.
In 2015, a mob killed and burned two pollsters conducting a survey on tortilla consumption in a small town southeast of Mexico City.
In 2016, three men working for a polling company were rescued from a mob who brutally beat them in the Gulf of Mexico state of Tabasco.
FOUNTAIN: Associated Press
