The bloodshed caused by organized crime against elected officials still takes place a few months before the local elections for mayors in Mexico.

Mexico’s prosecutor’s office announced the murder of a mayor of a small town in the southwest of the country, who was running for re-election.

This is Umberto Amezcua who would be a candidate of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), a national opposition faction. Amezcua was running for a new term in the June 2nd local elections in the municipality of Puyamo, in the southern part of the state of Jalisco.

Police officers who rushed to the scene found the body inside the vehicle with apparent gunshot wounds, the prosecutor’s office explained Friday to Saturday night.

Through social networking sites, the head of the PRI’s state organization in Jalisco, Veronica Flores, lashed out at the authorities, state and national, regarding the wave of violence, generally attributed to organized crime – especially against elected officials – in Mexico, asking when it will end.

In February, Jaime Vera Alanis, the Environmental Party’s mayoral candidate in Mascota, in the northwestern state of Jalisco, a suburb of Guadalajara, the state capital, was murdered.

On Wednesday, Tomás Morales Patrón, candidate of MORENA (“Movement for National Renaissance”), the party of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, was assassinated for the office of mayor in Cilapa, a municipality in the southern state of Guerrero. In Maravatio, in the western state of Michoacán, two mayor candidates were murdered on February 26.

From June 4, 2023, to March 12, at least 43 people, including six women, were killed in election-related acts of violence, 21 of whom were preparing to run, according to data from Laboratorio Electoral, a private research and analysis firm.

Election-related killings have been recorded in 13 of Mexico’s 32 states so far, according to data compiled by the same firm.

Source: CNN Greece

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