Mexico’s political assassinations focused on increasing violence

It was a sunny afternoon in Ciudad Obregón, a town in northwestern Mexico. Abel Murrieta, the mayoral candidate for the town of Cajeme, where the town is located, was in a crowded intersection next to a shopping center, holding ballot papers in the June 6 election.

A man in a gray shirt and jeans climbed in, pulled out a gun and fired 10 bullets at the former state attorney general, including two heads, before crossing the street again and escaped in a waiting car while Murrieta was lying on the sidewalk. . The videos of the official security cameras broadcast on television showed the brochures scattered and displayed the blood soaking his white shirt.

Murrieta was the 32nd candidate to die on election day, when Mexicans across the country will elect 500 federal lawmakers, 15 state governors and thousands of mayors and local officials.

Since the election process began last September, 85 politicians have been killed, including 32 candidates for office, Etellekt Consultores reported. it monitors campaign violence. This makes it the second bloodiest election recorded in 2018 after the presidential vote.

According to Etellekt, most of the victims were candidates for mayor of opposition parties to the headlines in those states. Their deaths have revealed deep-rooted links between organized crime groups and local officials who protect them.

“If you face it, they will persecute or kill you,” Etechnet director Rubén Salazar said. “This is a democracy in Mexico at the local level. . . No one can stand as a candidate without the consent of the mayor and the head of local crime. “

Murrieta seems to have been an exception. In one polling station released after his death, he claimed “it was serious to take the crime… I’m not afraid.” Hours later he was shot dead, apparently by the assailant caught in an official street security camera, in the state where former security minister López Obrador is running for governor.

Political assassinations have highlighted the “challenges” of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.hugs not bullets”A strategy against organized crime, its new federal military police and its repeated promises of peace in countries where violence has been rampant for 15 years. nearly 100 murders one day.

Violence, everything that has gone up Mexico Since former President Felipe Calderón began a war on drugs, the Mexican election has been a major concern in many races. A survey by the newspaper El Financiero this month found two-thirds of the people disagreed With López Obrador managing the problem, only 18 percent support it.

Since 2006, the number of homicides has tripled. The government has now claimed an increase, giving a 4 per cent drop in killings in the first four months of this year compared to the same period last year.

But in April, there were 2,857 murders, 4 percent higher than in April 2020, as well as 77 femicides (female homicide by sex), a 13 percent jump from the same month last year.

The number of homicides in Mexico reached an all-time high in 2019, with 34,682 homicides and 970 homicides femicides. Last year it was slightly better: 34,554 murders and 977 femicides. So far this year, there have been 11,277 murders and 318 femicides.

Former security official Ricardo Márquez Blas said Lopez has been killed more than 3,000 times a month since Lopez Obrador’s tenure began, including femicides, compared to three in the previous 2012-18 administration.

Lopez Obrador, Who took office in 2018, says he has taken on a different flavor by addressing the root causes of the crime, offering young people jobs and scholarships instead of dealing directly with posters.

Critics say that, like past governments, it has relied on the military rather than reforming state and local police forces. officials earn about $ 600 a month, and half of them have to buy their boots.

In a sharp critique of Mexico’s strategy, Christopher Landau is a former U.S. ambassador he said López Obrador took a “fairly laissez-faire stance” despite being estimated to control “35 to 40 percent of the country” in front of drug cartels.

“He sees the posters. . . like his Vietnam, which has been for some of his predecessors, and I think so. . . focusing on that in his agenda sees this as an inconvenience, ”he told an online seminar.

This was reminiscent of “pax narca”, a tolerance for the activities of the cartels, if they continued to be maintained, while the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ruled Mexico in the twentieth century.

“The president doesn’t want to take over El Narco,” Salazar said, using the Mexican term for drug cartels.

López Obrador, who believes he is seeking to replicate the centralized power of the PRI, said he “does not understand” that he has broken the old coexistence because the new parties have disrupted pleasant criminal cooperation and sparked new ones.

“The president does not want to acknowledge that there is a very big drug policy problem that is advancing with huge strides in the country,” Salazar said, as politics and crime are mixed at the local level.

Analysts have said the president’s daily press conferences are further fueled by an atmosphere of polarization, where he is widely criticized for his political opponents and electoral authorities, which he believes are sidelined.

“With all this polarization, far from fulfilling its promises of peace, it is giving us a more turbulent country,” said Gema Kloppe-Santamaría, a crime and violence expert at Loyola University in Chicago.

“López Obrador has polarized these elections to the point of almost declaring war on electoral institutions. My big concern is that what we are seeing now is not to stop after June 6, ”he said.