Deconstructing Corruption Discourses in the 2018 Sonoran Elections

Abstract:

In Sonora, Mexico, corruption accusations and anti-corruption policy proposals dominated the 2018 presidential, state, and local elections. While the World Bank defines corruption as the abuse of public office for private gain, during the elections the term became a catch-all for any wrongdoing. As corruption accusations rallied huge crowds, the political staffers behind these campaigns seemed to define corruption differently depending on the specific action, actors, and present company. I analyze these inconsistencies by interviewing and shadowing twenty campaign staffers from the PRI and Morena campaigns for two months. I focus primarily on staffers from the center-left PRI political party, which despite having held an iron-grip in conservative Sonora for years suffered a surprising defeat to Morena—a new, socialist political party which had never before won a seat in Sonora. Based on my conversations with PRI staffers in the wake of their defeat, I analyzed the shifting boundaries they drew to distinguish acceptable from unacceptable corruption and the ways they used these boundaries to make sense of career uncertainty, political failure, and violence. Corruption rumors allowed PRI staffers to create a sense of elite belonging at a time when the Sonoran ruling class underwent massive upheaval.