Mexico vows to hunt down killer of mayoral candidate
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MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities were seeking suspects Monday in the assassination of a mayoral candidate who was shot dead during a campaign rally in the gulf coast state of Veracruz.
The attack Sunday evening in Texistepec killed Yesenia Lara Gutíerrez, 49, who was running for mayor of the town of 20,000.
At least three other people were killed in the attack, authorities said. Three others were wounded.
Video of the campaign event at which the attack occurred showed a chaotic scene of people running for cover as about 20 gunshots rang out in the streets amid the rally. Media reports indicated that at least three people opened fire.
Lara, 49, was at least the second mayoral candidate killed this year in Veracruz, a violence-ridden state that is having mayoral elections in more than 200 municipalities on June 1.
Lara’s husband, Enrique Arugüelles, a former city council member in Texistepec, was shot dead in 2022.
Dozens of office-seekers have been killed in run-up to June 6 elections. Hundreds more have been threatened.
On Monday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that police were trying to track down the killers of Lara, who was running under the banner of Sheinbaum’s ruling Morena political bloc.
“We don’t know the motive,” Sheinbaum told reporters at her regular morning news conference.
State authorities in Veracruz were heading the investigation, the president said. Texistepec is about 125 miles southeast of the port city of Veracruz.
Veracruz Gov. Rocío Nahle García condemned the attack and vowed there would be no impunity. “No office or post is worth the life of a person,” the governor wrote on social media, calling the slayings “cowardly.”
Also on June 1, Mexico is holding nationwide balloting for the election of hundreds of judges — part of a controversial constitutional reform backed by Sheinbaum and her predecessor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Lara’s slaying again underscores the problem of electoral violence in Mexico, where last year’s national elections resulted in scores of killings of candidates.
Campaign rallies and other public appearances can leave candidates especially exposed despite police protection. During last year’s elections, slain candidates included a mayoral aspirant stabbed to death in the gulf coast state of Tamaulipas after a breakfast event, and mayoral hopefuls shot dead during campaign stops in the states of Guerrero and Guanajuato.
Organized crime seeks to control local mayors, whose responsibilities include police forces, budgets and contracts, experts say.
“Mayors and mayoral candidates are essentially under siege because they are a critical point of influence and protection for criminal actors,” David Shirk, a political scientist at the University of San Diego, told The Times last year.
In a report on political violence this month, the Mexican consulting firm Integralia said that organized crime sought to “capture public local institutions.”
“The threats and attempts against candidates are meant to influence electoral results,” the firm concluded. “Meantime, the kidnappings and threats against officials serve as mechanisms of territorial and financial control.”
Like Lara’s slaying, other political killings also have been carried out in public. The killing of Rosa Alma Barragán, in the town of Moroleon in Guanajuato is just one example.
Barragán, who was running for mayor, was killed at a campaign event in 2021 when gunmen sprayed a crowd with bullets.
A lawyer who was fierce advocate for her Indigenous community and women’s rights disappeared with her husband last fall. Their bodies were recently found in shallow graves in Mexico’s Oaxaca state.
Hours before her slaying, Lara published a profie of herself on social media, vowing that, if elected, she would aid the poor and young of the town.
“The force and vitality of our young motivates me to keep on walking from day to day,” she wrote.
Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.
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