By Lizbeth Diaz
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s election is now the bloodiest in its modern history after a candidate for local office in the central state of Puebla was assassinated on Friday at a political rally, raising the field of candidates murdered to 37 before Sunday’s vote.
Jorge Huerta Cabrera, a candidate running for a seat on the municipal council in the city of Izucar de Matamoros, was shot dead in the attack, according to the state prosecutor’s office.
The murder brings to 37 the number of candidates murdered in the 2024 election season, one more than during the 2021 midterm elections, when 36 candidates were killed, according to data from security consultancy Integralia.
The issue of violent crime has emerged as one of the main issues in this year’s presidential race, in which the ruling party of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been forced to defend a persistently high homicide rate, while the opposition has sought to utilize the spillover of blood to defend change.
Ruling party hopeful Claudia Sheinbaum is expected to win Sunday’s vote and become Mexico’s first female president.
“It is possible that violence is being used as a means of defining elections in advance, especially when certain interests are perceived to be at risk if a certain political project triumphs,” said Armando Vargas, researcher at Integralia.
The consultancy also counted 828 non-lethal attacks on candidates during the current election season, compared to 749 since Monday.
Analysts point to Mexico’s mix of powerful drug cartels and often corrupt local governments as contributing factors to the dangers candidates face.
Earlier this week, a local mayoral candidate in the southern state of Guerrero was shot dead at close range during a campaign rally.
He was among 560 candidates and election officials who were assigned government security guards due to persistent threats.
Friday’s gruesome murder was captured on video, with chaos erupting at the rally after shots were fired.
(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz; writing by David Alire Garcia; editing by Tom Hogue)
