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Sunday's general elections are the most important in Mexican history and also the most violent, with at least 136 politicians murdered since September, the date of the beginning of the electoral process.
An image will remain forever recorded from the Mexican election campaign: an aspiring MP takes a "selfie" and is immediately shot in the back.
Fernando Purón candidate for the federal deputation for the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), was killed when he took a picture with a supporter to leave a debate in which he spoke several times of the fighting Los Zetas, one of the most brutal cartels in Mexico, when he was mayor of Piedras Negras, Coahuila.
Purón is only one of the 136 politicians who have been murdered since the beginning of the electoral process in Mexico in September (of which 28 pre-candidates and 20 other candidates ), according to the society of Etellekt advice
A significantly higher number than that recorded in 2012, when nine politicians and a candidate were killed, he adds
This is just a sample – according to experts – of the bloody penetration of crime organized that seeks to gain loyalty Luis Carlos Ugalde, consultant and former president of the Mexican electoral authority, told AFP that the authorities [traduction] "obeyed their instructions as a hitman or as a man of organized crime "
. "They think that a politician is not going to compromise, negotiate, give in, they kill him" points out.
Violence in Mexico is growing by leaps and bounds. Corps mutilated, burned, abandoned on the roads; police and military ambush; raped women, slaughtered in rivers, are images that are repeated in recent years.
Death to reporters
More than 25,300 violent murders were committed in 2017 the highest figure since in 1997, the official account of the Ministry of the Interior.
These crimes were committed against tourist destinations, such as Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, to the most depressed areas of the country of 120 million inhabitants, of which just over 50 million are immersed in the poverty.
The violence also affects journalists in a country considered one of the most dangerous to practice journalism. Authorities reported on Saturday the murder of José Guadalupe Chan in the state of Quintana Roo (east). Chan worked for the news portal Playa News and his death made him the sixth communicator killed in Mexico in 2018.
The reporter's latest report was the murder of a PRI activist in a neighboring community Friday afternoon.
"Silver or lead"
There is growing evidence that mafias dedicated to drug trafficking and other crimes attempt to participate in political life, especially at the municipal level, to influence election results , promote them They are similar and intimidate those who oppose it, says Guillermo Zepeda, researcher at the College of Jalisco
"It is such that the issue of money or lead", warns
. Organized crime in states such as Guerrero (south) and Michoacán (west), with a greater number of victims and threatened candidates, has permeated the structures of local governments, as well as social and economic life. the economics of communities that depend on their illicit activities.
To this is added the establishment of clientelist networks that bring a certain benefit to the people, by establishing their influence.
"We should ask ourselves how many candidates are not killed simply because they react to organized crime" Warns Ugalde
"Punitive Strategy"
Violence soars in December 2006 President Felipe Calderón, of the National Conservative Action Party (PAN), decided to withdraw the military from their barracks to confront the drug traffickers.
He developed "a punitive strategy with which he tried to break any type of communication or link between traffickers and drug traffickers. Rubén Salazar, director of Etellekt.
But the only thing he realized "was to fragment them". Since then, "countless criminal cells have appeared that are now facing an increasingly radical way of controlling territories," he explained.
For experts, the solution is not just the use of force "The only real and workable solution for the Mexican state is to undermine the strength of organized crime," concludes Ugalde
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