Mexico: Mexico braced on Sunday for midtermMexico following a week of violent protests and threats by radical teachers to block the polls in impoverished southern states.
The government of President Enrique Pena Nieto deployed troops and police this weekend to patrol the streets, skies and seas of Mexico to ensure people can vote.
At least 10 people were killed on Saturday in Guerrero state when rival factions of a self-defense militia clashed in a village, though authorities suggested the fight was linked to an internal feud and not the elections.
The deployment of federal forces followed daily protests spearheaded by a dissident wing of a teachers` union that has stormed election offices, burned thousands of ballots and ransacked headquarters of political parties in Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas states.
Federal forces are focusing especially on Oaxaca, where the teachers blocked access to a state oil company facility, causing fuel shortages, until authorities stepped in.
"Mexicans want to and have the right to vote in peace. The government will take the necessary action within the law to guarantee this," said Pena Nieto`s spokesman, Eduardo Sanchez.
The CNTE union is putting pressure on Pena Nieto to withdraw a landmark education reform aimed at improving the country`s lackluster school system. Others are also furious at the collusion between gangs and politicians.
In addition to the protest, at least four candidates were murdered in the run-up to the election, including three in Guerrero and Michoacan, two states plagued by drug violence.
"The possibility that social violence could have a role in limiting the vote, affecting the results, is unprecedented in Mexico`s modern history as a democracy," said Javier Oliva, security expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Despite the rocky campaign season authorities have voiced confidence that the elections for 500 members of the lower chamber of Congress, around 900 mayors and nine governors, will not be thwarted.
The elections are a test for Pena Nieto, whose Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is expected to maintain a simple congressional majority, despite the protests and political scandals.
But history could be made in the industrial state of Nuevo Leon, where Jaime "El Bronco" Rodriguez is riding a wave of discontent against corrupt politicians and could become the first ever independent to be elected governor.The protests, however, are overshadowing the elections.
As federal forces arrived in Oaxaca on Saturday, teachers abandoned electoral offices that they had been occupying, but they left a trail of destruction.
They torched the local offices of the National Electoral Institute in Tlacolula.
In Huajuapan, teachers clashed with federal police and detained four officers, including one who was beaten, a municipal policeman said. Four teachers were arrested.
Elsewhere on Saturday, members of a "community police," or self-defense force, were attacked by a rival faction in Xolapa, Guerrero state, leaving at least 10 dead, witnesses said.
Authorities said the rival factions have been fighting over territory.
In Xochistlahuaca, at least seven supporters of the PRI were wounded when another community police force fired at them, authorities said.
In Tixtla, also in Guerrero, gunmen stopped two election officials and stole some 6,600 ballots from them.
Tixtla is home to the teacher training college of 43 students who were abducted by police and allegedly slaughtered by a drug gang last year. Their relatives also want to block the vote.
