Abel Murrieta, candidate for mayor of Cajeme for the Movimiento Ciudadano party, in a campaign event.
A new homicide shakes the Mexican elections of June 6. Abel Murrieta was a candidate of the Citizen Movement for the mayoralty of Cajeme (Sonora) before being shot to death on Thursday afternoon in said municipality while he was engaged in the electoral campaign. The 58-year-old politician fell on the street with the papers scattered around his body. The party's national coordinator, Clemente Castañeda Hoeflich, sent a tweet in which he described him as "an honorable man with an impeccable career." The State Attorney General's Office reported an ongoing operation to find the criminals. A woman was also injured in the attack, according to the first newspaper reports.
Murrieta was the lawyer for the LeBarón family, which in November 2019 was the target of a brutal attack in which nine of its members, women and children, who were traveling in vans through Chihuahua, lost their lives. The spokesman for the LeBaróns, Iván García Reyes, in a telephone conversation with this newspaper, has regretted what happened and demanded that the authorities not rule out the possible connections in both cases in their investigations. “The family is hurt and dismayed. We knew that Abel was running for the electoral campaign, we had only asked him not to leave us alone ”, he said. And he has assured that he never ignored the case, that he continued to be an “excellent professional who went from being a lawyer to being a great friend. He was the one who knew the most about this case ”.
Adrián LeBarón, who lost a daughter in that armed attack, has also expressed himself terribly hurt. "I was a great teacher, as Plato was for Socrates, I learned a lot with him, we are all here crying," he said by phone. “He was at my house, I ate sandwiches with him, he was a simple man. I don't know what I'm going to do, I hope I don't lose hope of justice. All the graduates who spoke to me told me: with Abel Murrieta you can. I still see him with his notebook, because they didn't leave tape recorders. He helped me, he was my friend, my brother. He taught me to read the statements of those linked, the research folders. I'm going to that funeral to give his wife a hug. How am I going to do now so that those who are already inside do not peel me off?says in relation to the five jailed for the crime that shook his family. Adrián LeBarón blames mayors and security officials in the area: “This crime has 20 angles, and they are all correct. I don't want to know why they killed him, I only know that they killed him, ”he laments again on the phone.
Abel Murrieta, during the electoral campaign.TWITTER
Adrián had met with his lawyer for this Friday at 11 in the morning, an appointment that the secretary had confirmed.
It will no longer be.
"We arranged to meet in Tijuana, what he had to tell me he couldn't do over the phone," he says.
"There are still a lot of loose ends in this investigation."
"I didn't know how to do anything if he didn't hold my hand," he adds ruefully.
And he says that his children in the United States do not stop calling him on the phone to regret what happened.
But what happened is not new in Mexico.
The latest data collected by Etellekt Consultores, corresponding to the month of April, indicate that attacks of all kinds against candidates and their relatives in this electoral campaign are now equal to that of 2000, the most violent call in recent times in Mexico.
The murders, however, are still lower in numbers, with 83 politicians assassinated, 32 of them aspirants.
Violence is soaring.
To the homicides we must add the frustrated attempts, threats, extortion, kidnappings, both of candidates and their families and collaborators.
Assaults are already 64% more than in the same period of the last campaign in 2018.
More information
Mexico seeks to protect candidates
The government recently announced a plan for the protection of politicians, due to the numerous homicides they face during the electoral period, a democratic failure that clouds the campaign.
The latest federal report indicated that 234 candidates had requested protection and that 92 investigations had been opened.
Many do not report their situation because they are afraid to reveal their movements and campaign locations to the prosecution, they argue in Etellekt.
Violence is unexpected and you never know where it comes from.
But it does affect above all those who are running for municipal presidencies, where the chiefdom is more present.
A game of dark interests in which politics is closely mixed with economics.
The candidate Abel Murrieta Gutiérrez was transferred to a hospital after suffering the attack.
The elections are approaching and the violence does not stop.
To the headliners we must add other collaborators and relatives who have lost their lives for similar reasons.
91 officials related to security or other tasks have been assassinated.
And 28 relatives and four direct collaborators of politicians have not survived for the June 6 count either.
The majority of those killed, 88%, were opponents of the current government wherever they competed, according to Etellekt.
The name of Abel Murrieta and his status as a lawyer for the LeBaróns, adds violence to violence and leaves questions that go beyond the political contest.
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