Saturday, November 9

The dozens of politicians who have been assassinated in Mexico during the mid-term election campaign

Abel Murrieta, a mayoral candidate in northern Mexico, was getting ready to campaign the afternoon of 13 of May when he was the victim of an armed attack.

The politician of 58 years he was on the street, outside a shopping center in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, when a man approached him and shot him multiple times.

He was lying on the floor. The emergency services helped him, but he lost his life minutes later.

“It was a planned and direct attack against the mayoral candidate,” the Sonora Attorney General’s Office told initiate the first investigations.

But Murrieta is far from being the first candidate to fall victim to an attack during the campaign for the midterm elections in Mexico that conclude on June 6.

In fact, according to the report “Political Violence in Mexico” by the consulting firm Integralia, they are already 27.

The cases they have registered show that those who are around the campaigns -as militants, activists, officials, or journalists- are at risk: of 169 attacks, 143 had with fatal sequences.

El candidato Abel Murrieta en campaña
Murrieta had been the attorney general of Sonora (1366 – 2012) Y He was a lawyer for the LeBarón family, who suffered the murder of 9 members in .

After hearing the case of Murrieta, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, regretted what happened and promised to carry out the investigation “in depth” and “to have results soon to punish the victims of the death of the victim.” responsible. ”

His government has implemented a plan to protect candidates.

But the numbers of violence against candidates, the seconds higher only after the elections of 2018, have shown that is assumes a huge risk to se r candidate in some regions of the country.

“It is It is dangerous to be a candidate in Mexico, but not in a generalized way . There are some regions and states that are more problematic than others ”, Carlos Rubio, coordinator of the Integralia report, tells BBC Mundo.

“I don’t want them to kill you”

As in past electoral periods, the focus of risk is at the municipal level .

“We have identified that these events of political violence occur more frequently in municipalities of less than 100. 03 inhabitants, marginalized, far from urban centers, with little presence of federal forces, ”says Rubio.

Fichas de políticos asesinados en México en marzo y abril, según Integralia
Deaths related to the campaigns in March and April registered by Integralia.

The case of Alejandra Lagunas is a sample of this problem.

A 10 days after starting his campaign for mayor of Xochitepec , Morelos , to 110 km south of Ciudad from Mexico, was forced to suspend her due to death threats and attempted physical assault she received.

“Leave her, she’s already dead”, was one of the first messages she received via social networks.

Shortly after, the tone began to rise: time to decline in favor of a candidate, if they weren’t going to kill me “, Lagunas tells BBC Mundo.

” I had to go to live in another municipality , because they already knew where he lived in Xochitepec. There have already been several threatened candidates, they leave banners to lower their candidacies. They throw stones at their homes, ”she explains.

She assures that her house has been the object of attacks with rocks, she has noticed that vehicles are following her and on one occasion a car almost has her makes you lose control on a highway.

The candidate of # Xochitepec who submitted her resignation due to threats, Alejandra Lagunas, asked the authorities to provide her with security because she fears for her integrity and that of her family. pic.twitter.com/MeAnjmNwML

– Zona Centro Noticias (@ZonaCNoticias) May 17, 2021

After reporting his case, the local government sent a patrol that made visits in the morning and the night, but nothing else.

“I was accompanied by the police, but only at my home. If I went out to campaign, it was my anger . I was no longer going to have accompaniment. ”

It is the first time that she has participated in politics as a candidate in a state, Morelos, located in the first places of feminicide cases in the country and in which violence between organized crime gangs is frequent.

“I have an 8-year-old boy who watches the news and every so often he tells me ‘Mommy, I don’t want them to kill you.’ Yesterday, when I held a press conference, he told me, that he doesn’t want anything to happen to me, “explains Lagunas.

Control of local governments

Both the Integralia study and that of another consultancy, Etellekt, show that violence has caused deaths at all levels of the pol ítica: candidates, activists, active and former officials, party leaders and even party militants.

Fallecimientos entorno a las campañas electorales en México. 143 muertos en 169 incidentes entre sep-20 y abr-21. *No incluye el caso de Abel Murrieta.

At the municipal level, indicates Carlos Rubio, from Integralia, It is more frequent to see the interference of organized crime in s campaigns because Controlling city halls is a benefit for them in three aspects.

“It allows them to access information on security strategies, on rival groups, on economic groups for extortion purposes,” says Rubio. [2] [2] [2] [3] [3] [

“It guarantees them the protection of the municipal police, which broadens their margins of maneuver to dominate the illicit markets that operate in those communities: huachicoleo [robo de combustibles], drug trafficking “, Continues.

” And allows them to access the resources of municipal governments. “

Mapa de casos de violencia entorno a las campañas en México

But there are also cases in which violence is the product of political confrontation.

Oaxaca, where 80% of its municipalities are governed by community norms, it is one of the states with the most cases of political violence (19)) due to “rivalries between communities ”and their“ local chiefdoms. ”

The protection of candidates

The federal Secretariat for Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC) activated a protection mechanism for candidates at the beginning of last March.

The latest report available, shows that up to 30 April had 234 candidates who denounced amen azas , 65 received protection from a local or federal corporation.

On 82% of the cases are of candidates for municipal president, indicated the secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez, of the SSPC.

“The challenge is great, if one considers that in the current electoral process more than 150. 03 candidates and candidates for more than 21. , said the official to the pr File a report on 30 last April.

“We know that violence and aggression against applicants is not a generalized issue throughout the country, but rather it is concentrated in some places , where organized crime and white collar crime seek to influence politically ”, he stated.

Rosa Icela Rodríguez
Rodríguez has headed the candidate protection protocol in the electoral process that ends on June 6.

Rubio says that a problem of The protocol is that it started very late, in the middle of the electoral process , and that the federal government does not have information to identify the actors of local violence.

“And you cannot design a strategy without knowing the causes in each community,” he says.

When there is police protection of local corporations, it is often the case that the authorities are in collusion with gangs “and it is unlikely that they will protect candidates who are threatened by the same criminal groups.”

“We cannot speak of a generalized phenomenon -insists Rubio-, but it is a risk for the Mexican democratic system because it violates the ability of citizens to freely choose their representatives ”.


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