Violence against candidates escalates in final stretch of Mexican campaign

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Violence has intensified in the final stretch of the campaign for the June 6 mid-term elections in Mexico, the largest in the country’s history, with the murder of a candidate and the kidnapping and attack against two other candidates in less than 24 hours.

“It is deplorable what happened yesterday. Our condolences to the relatives. It is a regrettable situation because it happened in the middle of the electoral process,” said Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador on Wednesday in his morning press conference.

The president responded this way after the shooting murder of Alma Rosa Barragán, candidate for Mayor of Moroleón, in the state of Guanajuato, while she was campaigning in the street.

Meanwhile, the Organization of American States (OAS) observer mission, which arrived this Wednesday in Mexico, expressed its “deep concern for the incidents of violence that have occurred in the context of the electoral process”.

According to the consulting firm Etellekt, at least 88 politicians have been assassinated during the current electoral process initiated last September, 34 of which were aspirants or candidates.

UMPTEENTH ASSASSINATION

Barragán, of the Movimiento Ciudadano (MC) party, was shot at and died at the scene shortly after posting a video on social networks. She invited citizens to attend her campaign event.

López Obrador denounced that organized crime “wants to generate instability” in the middle of the campaign for the elections. The Chamber of Deputies, 15 governors, 30 local congresses, and thousands of city councils will be renewed.

In the same municipality of Guanajuato, the state that leads Mexico’s homicide rate, local congressional candidate Juan Guzman was shot last week and survived.

In addition, Barragan’s murder is reminiscent of Abel Murrieta, former prosecutor and candidate of the same party for mayor of Cajeme, in the northern state of Sonora, who was murdered at another campaign event on May 13.

TOWARDS THE MOST VIOLENT CAMPAIGN

According to Etellekt, 724 aggressions against politicians have been registered during this violent campaign, and 90 % of the victims belong to the municipal level.

“In this election, we are going to exceed the overall aggression figures of 2018, in which we had 774 aggressions, this election in that sense will be the most violent since the year 2000, at least,” said Ruben Salazar, director of the consultancy.

This Tuesday, a group of armed men kidnapped Omar Plancarte, Green Party candidate for mayor of Uruapan, a municipality in the state of Michoacan with a strong presence of drug traffickers, from his ranch.

A spate of violence continued this Wednesday, when early in the morning, the candidate for mayor of Acapulco for the Fuerza por México party, José Alberto Alonso, was shot while on his way to his first event of the day.

Alonso, who a bodyguard protected, escaped unharmed from the attack but was taken to a hospital where he was treated after going into shock.

This violence is also suffered by high-ranking officials, as happened on Monday when the Sinaloa State Preventive Police, Joel Ernesto Soto, was murdered and shot in his vehicle while traveling on the road.

“In the elections, half of the country’s governors will be elected, this implies a significant adjustment of the ruling elite and criminal organizations want to assert their interests,” said Javier Oliva, an expert in public security.

A WOUNDED DEMOCRACY

However, President López Obrador assured Wednesday that the parties and authorities often seek to “blame everything on the narco” to “avoid their responsibility”.

Earlier this week, an audio of the candidate of the ruling National Regeneration Movement (Morena) for mayor of Metepec in the State of Mexico, Gabriela Gamboa, went viral, threatening to kill the daughter of her rival, Fernando Flores.

Gamboa said through a video that it is “a manipulated audio”.

“It seems to me that we are in a situation of structural fragility of Mexican democracy”, said Oliva, to whom it seems “evident” that the plan presented by the Federal Government to protect candidates does not work.

Despite everything, the National Electoral Institute (INE) president, Lorenzo Córdova, defended on Monday that violence will not put “at-risk” the installation of the 163,000 polling stations on June 6.

“Violence is a worrying issue but, it is important to mention it, it is not impeding the organization of the election,” he affirmed.