The mayor of a small town in southwest Mexico, who was seeking re-election, was assassinated Friday evening, the regional prosecutor's office announced, in the midst of a wave of attacks against candidates for local office.
Candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), a formation in the opposition at the national level, Humberto Amezcua wanted to be reappointed, in the local elections of June 2, at the head of the municipality of Pihuamo, in the south of the state of Jalisco.
Alerted, the police discovered his body
“inside a vehicle, bearing wounds apparently caused by a firearm
,” explained the regional prosecutor's office in a press release released during the night from Friday to Saturday.
On social networks, the head of the PRI in the state of Jalisco, Verónica Flores, blamed the authorities, both national and at state level, for the violence often linked to organized crime which strikes Mexico and in particular the elected.
Murders recorded in 13 of 32 states
In February, Jaime Vera Alaniz, the Green Party candidate for mayor of Mascota, in the northwestern state of Jalisco, was assassinated in a suburb of Guadalajara, the state capital.
On Wednesday, Tomás Morales Patrón, the candidate of Morena (Movement for National Regeneration), the party of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, for mayor of Chilapa, a town in the southern state of Guerrero, was killed.
In Maravatío, in the western state of Michoacán, two mayoral candidates were assassinated on February 26.
Between June 4 and March 12 of this year, 43 people died in electoral violence, including 21 who were applying to be candidates, according to a study by the Electoral Laboratory, a private analysis and research company.
Election-related killings have been recorded in 13 of Mexico's 32 states, according to a previous report from the same office.