Assassinated a Green Party candidate in Tamaulipas

The Green Party candidate for the Deputation for District 15, Francisco Rocha, in Tamaulipas.COURTESY

His electoral campaign barely lasted five days.

At dawn this Saturday, the candidate for deputy for District 15 of the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM), Francisco Rocha Chávez, was shot to death in Ciudad Victoria, who had begun on Monday to walk the streets and squares in search of the vote. .

The murder of the candidate occurred at around 03:30 a.m. at his home and later, according to the first indications, the hitmen moved and put the body in the trunk of his car, parked a few meters from his house, located in the Mariano Matamoros neighborhood, less than 700 meters from the State Attorney General's Office.

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At the moment the causes of the homicide are unknown and there are no detainees.

Nor have the authorities provided information about what happened, although local journalists displaced to the place indicated that he was shot three times and that the possibility of an assault on his home is being studied among the causes.

Francisco Rocha Chávez, known as

Batata,

was a popular man among Tamaulipas fans, first because of his long career as a soccer player in Tamaulipas and later as the coach of a children's and youth team.

On Monday he had announced his candidacy for local deputy, but his campaign only lasted a few days until his body was found with three bullets in the state capital.

The police report states: "They had beaten a male, who was encased in a recent model white Jetta, where blood is found and they mention that he is a Green Party candidate named Batata Rocha."

In his last post on Facebook, the murdered candidate was enthusiastic about his candidacy and about being able to work for his “race” to restore dignity to those who had stolen it.

He had previously traveled to a party meeting where he showed his support to the rest of his colleagues and the leadership of the green formation.

Precisely the Green Party of Tamaulipas condemned the murder and expressed condolences to his parents, the first to arrive at the scene of the murder.

Ricardo Gaviño, leader of the PVEM in Tamaulipas wrote on Twitter “My condolences to the family of my great friend Francisco Gerardo Rocha Chávez“ Batata ”, I hope they find prompt resignation to such an irreparable loss.

I'm going to miss you my little guy, "he posted on the social network.

Other small parties decided to suspend the campaign this Saturday as a sign of mourning.

Francisco Rocha during his electoral campaign, in Ciudad Victoria.

COURTESY

The Government of Mexico presented a protection strategy for the candidates who are running in the June 6 elections, the largest ever held before and which will serve to elect some 20,000 positions among state governors, deputies and mayors.

Since the electoral pre-campaign started in September and the names of the candidates for an election position were known, Mexico has added 53 candidates and 66 assassinated officials, especially heads of public security, according to data from the Etellekt consultancy, until 3 March.

According to Rubén Salazar, director of Etellekt, the way to proceed, generally, is to entrust hitmen with the elimination of a person, which tends to confuse the material authorship with the intellectual and the citizens immediately attribute these killings to the cartels. Although this circumstance is also real, the sociologist believes that in most cases it is about political violence. According to Salazar, 70% of these murders are committed by armed commandos. “There is no statistical correlation between the states with the most homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, usually related to drug trafficking, and the crimes of politicians. Furthermore, the few sentences that exist tend to relate these murders to personal and family issues, sentimental quarrels, property assaults, etc. ”, he pointed out in a recent interview with EL PAÍS.

In it, Salazar reproaches the Government for presenting larger figures (64 instead of 53 homicide victims) by adding the murders of journalists, activists and other people to the same statistics.

"In addition, he relates it to drug trafficking, and it is not just that," he criticized.

Earlier this month, the capture of Evaristo Cruz, alias el

Vaquero

, leader of a faction of the Gulf Cartel that operates in Tamaulipas, revealed the leader's growing interest in influencing state elections.

When he was arrested on April 6, he was meeting with a group of criminals who wanted to finance political campaigns in Tamaulipas, authorities said.

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