Bullets and voting: violence muddles elections in Mexico



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An image will be etched forever of the Mexican election campaign: an aspiring MP takes a "selfie" and is immediately shot in the back.

Fernando Purón, candidate for the federal election of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), was killed while taking a photo with a supporter after leaving a debate in which he spoke several times about the fight that was going on. He led against Los Zetas, one of the most brutal cartels in Mexico, while he was mayor of Piedras Negras, Coahuila.

Purón is only one of the 136 politicians who have been killed since the beginning of the electoral process in Mexico in September (28 of them were pre-candidates and 20 other candidates), according to Etellekt.

It is significantly higher than the one recorded in 2012, when nine politicians and one candidate were killed, he adds.

This is just a sample – according to the experts – of the bloody so they are guaranteed that they "obey their instructions as a hitman or as criminals of organized crime," he said. AFP Luis Carlos Ugalde, consultant and former president. from the Mexican Electoral Authority

"They think that a politician is not going to compromise, negotiate, give in, they are killing him," he says.

Violence in Mexico is growing by leaps and bounds. Corps mutilated, burned, abandoned on the roads; police and military ambush; women raped, slaughtered in rivers, are images that are repeated in recent years

– Death to journalists –

More than 25,300 violent murders were committed in 2017, the figure the higher since that began in 1997 the official recount of the Ministry of the Interior.

These crimes had as their scenario tourist destinations, like Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, towards the most depressed areas of the country of 120 million inhabitants, just over 50 million are immersed in poverty.

The violence also affects journalists in a country considered one of the most dangerous to practice journalism. The authorities have informed this Saturday of the badbadination 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, particularly at the level of Municipal, to influence the Guillermo Zepeda, researcher at Jalisco College

: "It is as such the issue of money or lead," he warns.

The strong presence of 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 in life. social and economic communities that depend on their illegal activities

Added to this is the establishment of clientelist networks that bring a certain benefit to the populations, by regulating their influence.

"We should ask ourselves how many candidates are not murdered just because they respond to organized crime," warns Ugalde

– "Punitive Strategy" –

Violence exploded when, in December 2006, the then President, Felipe Calderón, conservative He then devised a "punitive strategy with which he tried to break any type of communication vessel or link between drug traffickers and local and state authorities, "emphasized Rubén Salazar., director of Etellekt.

But the only thing he realized" was to fragment them. "Since then," d & # 39; innumerable criminal cells have emerged that are now facing an increasingly radical way of controlling the territories, "he explained.

For experts, the solution is not just the l & # 39; use of force "The only real and practical solution the for the Mexican state is to weaken the force of organized crime, "concludes Ugalde

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