Election-bound Mexico has been witnessing an unprecedented wave of political violence as 113 political candidates and eight journalists have been murdered since September, including two politicians in the last week. The country is going to elections on July 1.
Three women running for office were murdered in a span of less than 24 hours this month.
Mexico is facing serious challenges in providing adequate security to the politicians and journalists, especially in small towns.
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Fernando Puron, a federal candidate for the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), was shot in the back of the head while posing for a selfie with a supporter. This shocking scene was captured in a CCTV camera. Alejandro Chavez Zavala, a mayor of the right-left coalition led by the National Action Party (PAN), died in hospital on Thursday, 14 June, after being shot by a bearded man.
Michoacan Governor Silvano Aureoles said in a tweet the authorities would investigate the attacks in which Chavez’s wife was also injured.
The announcement of Chavez’s death was followed by the disappearance of another mayoral candidate in Nadadores, Ismael Aguirre Rodriguez. He went missing on Tuesday when he stepped out to buy drinks, according to local media.
Most of the candidates who were killed were running for local office.
The violence has been increasing rapidly while the presidential race still continues, where the voters will decide over 300-down ballot seats and elect a new president. But the result of this violence is the fear in-built in people working in local offices and the Mexican citizens will have fewer choices in the ballot.
‘’The risk going forward that there will be reluctant to participate in local politics because it has become so dangerous,’’ Michael Lettieri, a historian at the center for US-Mexican studies at the University of California, San Diego, has been quoted as saying by several media reports.
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