Mexican Political Party Told To Stop Pre-Election Advertising on Tortilla Packages

If you follow current events (or if you watched the most recent episode of Last Week Tonight), then you might know that Mexico will be voting on Sunday in what has been called “the biggest election in Mexican history.” As John Oliver explained, the results “could replace their president, their entire Congress, and huge chunks of their state and local government.” So yeah, it’s big.

The current leader in the polls is former Mexico City mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is known by his initials, AMLO. But the political party representing one of AMLO’s most serious challengers has just been warned that it needs to stop using tortilla wrappers as campaign advertisements.

According to the Associated Press, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)—the party of current Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto—filed a complaint with the National Electoral Institute because the National Action Party (PAN) has been printing its campaign slogans on tortilla wrappers. PAN’s candidate, Ricardo Anaya, is currently second to AMLO in pre-election polling. (Well, he’s currently third: Second place is “No preference,” according to the most recent data from Americas Society/Council of the Americas).

The National Electoral Institute held an “extraordinary urgent session” to rule on the tortilla wrappers, before ultimately deciding that they were impermissible because they weren’t “textile-based” and not recyclable. The company that makes the wrappers had 24 hours from the time of the Institute’s decision to stop producing them; there is no word whether or not they complied.

Earlier this year, the Los Angeles Times reported on “several dozen” tortillerias in the city of Nezahualcoyotl, or Neza, that have also politicized their product. The tortillerias are all affiliated with the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and its mayoral candidate, Armando Soto. As a result of their relationships with Soto, they’ve been able to cut the prices of their tortillas in half—in exchange for contact information from their customers.

Although many of the tortillerias have banners featuring Soto’s face, or use the PRD’s symbol or color scheme, the candidate insists that he isn’t paying them to campaign on his behalf. But one owner of some of the pro-PRD stores told the Times that Soto’s foundation is providing some support, including paying to upgrade or service some of their equipment.

Again, the election will be held on Sunday, July 1. After that, maybe tortillas will go back to just being tortillas.