He’d had his own brush with danger in February, when gunmen on motorcycles charged after him, following a campaign stop in a tense town. He wasn’t going to leave himself so vulnerable again.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador accuses the opposition and media of exaggerating the violence in places such as Chiapas. Yet even López Obrador’s protege, presidential frontrunner Claudia Sheinbaum, was stopped by masked men last month in a region of the state controlled by the Sinaloa cartel. The men warned her to “remember the poor people” and waved her through their checkpoint.

Assassins have targeted candidates from all of Mexico’s major parties. In Maravatío, a municipality of 80,000 in the central state of Michoacan, three candidates for mayor have been killed – two from Morena, López Obrador’s party, and one from the opposition National Action Party, or PAN.

Carlos Palomeque, head of the PAN in Chiapas, says nearly two dozen mayoral candidates from the party have dropped out of their races. It used to be the cartels bought off voters, he says. Now, “they force candidates from the race. It’s cheaper.”

A different campaign

Ochoa, 45, grew up campaigning. His father, an activist for farmworkers and other social causes, served in Congress. Ochoa loved going to his rallies, travelling from town to town, being part of the sweating, cheering crowds.

His own young sons aren’t getting that experience. Ochoa sent the pair out of state, along with his wife, earlier this year. “I have to keep them safe,” he said as his convoy rolled through the countryside. He pulled up their latest videos on his iPhone.

“Papa, I just prayed for you,” chirped the seven-year-old.

“Only 30 more days till you come back,” said the nine-year-old, smiling into the camera. “I hope you win the election!”

“My kids are adorable,” said Ochoa, and his voice quavered, and he took a big gulp of water.

Ochoa has been a state lawmaker, a federal congressman and a top PRI official. He’s used to the rough-and-tumble of politics, and the long history of ties between Mexican politicians and cartels. But early in the campaign, he realised how different this race would be. In February, he gave a speech in Villa Las Rosas, one of a string of towns near the Guatemalan border used by traffickers to store drugs.

As he left the stage, he said, he was surrounded by about 25 men, some armed. “We have instructions to take you to the man who rules this plaza,” or crime district, one said. Ochoa managed to slip away.

About 45 minutes later, as he stopped for lunch, he spotted a line of armed men on motorcycles gunning toward the restaurant parking lot. Gunning for him. His bodyguards cocked their automatic rifles. The motorcyclists paused, perhaps waiting for reinforcements, and Ochoa and his convoy sped away.

Now, three months later, Ochoa was returning to Villa Las Rosas.

The walkie-talkie clipped to the seat back started squawking.

“The vehicle in front of us is acting as a cartel lookout,” one bodyguard was saying.

“That guy in a white cap is watching us.

“Do you see the motorcycle? It’s 60 or 70 metres ahead.

“They’re sending messages.”

‘They let different cartels in’

Chiapas, Mexico’s poorest state, burst into the headlines in 1994 when Indigenous peasants launched an armed uprising to demand justice. Led by Subcomandante Marcos, a telegenic, pipe-smoking intellectual, the Zapatista rebels won international sympathy.

Chiapas wasn’t known for cartel violence. Mexico’s lightly guarded southern border had long been a major entry point for US-bound cocaine, and the state’s lush jungles provided cover for clandestine airstrips. But the Sinaloa cartel had a monopoly on drug trafficking, and kept things quiet.

That’s changed in the last few years. Divisions have emerged in the cartel. Democracy has brought new political parties, which allegedly formed links with other trafficking groups. And the number of migrants crossing Mexico soared, fuelling a lucrative people-smuggling industry in the border state.

Ochoa, whose party ran Mexico for seven decades in the last century, blames today’s violence on incompetent politicians.

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“They let different cartels in,” he said. “They didn’t draw the line.”

These days, around a dozen cartels operate in Chiapas. They include Mexico’s two most powerful crime groups: the Sinaloa and the Jalisco New Generation cartels. Homicides and disappearances have soared. The casualties in recent months include six political candidates.

Many residents are too frightened to even talk about the rising criminality. A schoolteacher who organised a march condemning narco-violence in the town of Chicomuselo was tortured and killed in front of his wife and children.

Ochoa is determined to condemn the violence. Sure, it’s good politics – a main theme of the campaign of Xóchitl Gálvez, the presidential candidate backed by the PAN and PRI, the leading challenger to Sheinbaum. But there’s another reason for his outspokenness, Ochoa says.

“I love Chiapas. You have no idea how much.”

‘This, my friends, isn’t living’

Ochoa had started the day in the Indigenous community of San Juan Chamula. He’d walked the narrow main drag of Villa Las Rosas, shaking hands and chatting with shopkeepers.

Now he sat in his SUV outside a whitewashed community hall on the other side of town as his security team inspected the site. Hundreds of people were inside waiting for him. Many were standing. It had been nearly impossible to rent chairs.

One of Ochoa’s aides slid into the SUV and played a message from an event organiser turning down a request to provide chairs. He could have earned “a few pesos,” he said, but it could “complicate my life”.

Ochoa strode into the hall to the booming carnival-like music typical of Mexican campaigns. Taking the mic, he denounced the plague of extortion, killings and highway robberies.

“This, my friends, isn’t living,” he said.

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“I say to all the bad people, the political parties, our adversaries – Willy Ochoa will not give up, and will not drop out.”

Yet his campaign swing that day showed the scale of the challenge. In Villa Las Rosas, the opposition coalition’s mayoral candidate had quit the race. She was replaced by a 28-year-old novice.

In Ochoa’s next stop, the town of Socoltenango, the coalition’s mayoral candidate would appear with him, defying warnings to stay away.

That was crossing a line. The candidate, Arturo Navarro, received a death threat, and went into hiding.