Two people running for mayor in Mexico were killed on Friday, making it a total of 17 candidates killed before the June 2 election.
One person running for office was murdered on Friday in the border state of Tamaulipas in Mexico. Noe Ramos Ferretiz was running for a group that includes two political parties that used to rule Mexico until 2000. He was trying to get elected again as the mayor of the city of Ciudad Mante.
Another person who wanted to be the mayor in Oaxaca, a state in the south, was found dead after he went missing. Alberto Garcia was trying to become the mayor of San Jose Independencia, a town in Oaxaca.
The state’s lawyers in Oaxaca said they found Garcia’s body on an island in a lake near the town. It looks like he was killed by being hit. In the past, groups of people selling drugs were in the area.
The upcoming June 2 national elections are expected to be the most violent in the country’s history.
The prosecutors in Tamaulipas said Ramos Ferretiz was hurt on Friday, but they didn’t give many details and are still looking into what happened.
The news said that he got stabbed and shared pictures of a body covered in blood lying on the ground. Tamaulipas has been affected for a long time by fights over who controls the area between drug gangs. Ciudad Mante is in the south of the state, quite a distance from border cities like Reynosa and Matamoros.
“We won’t let violence influence the election,” wrote PRI party leader Alejandro Moreno on social media, where he confirmed the “cowardly murder” of Ramos Ferretiz.
In Oaxaca, the people in charge of elections are upset about the death of Garcia. He and his wife, who is the mayor of San Jose Independencia, disappeared earlier this week. The wife was discovered to be alive.
The electoral board said that Garcia was killed during the election, and they think that this should not happen during elections.
In the beginning of April, Bertha Gaytan, who was running for mayor, was shot and killed shortly after she asked for help and began her campaign. Gaytan was killed by a gun on a street in a town near Celaya, in the state of Guanajuato. She had just started her campaign to become the mayor of Celaya.
Drug gangs in Mexico try to kill mayors and people running for mayor so they can control the police and get money from the local government.
President Lopez Obrador said that drug cartels try to control who becomes mayor by either putting forward their own candidate or getting rid of their competition.
“They agree that this person will be the mayor and they don’t want anyone else to try to run for mayor. If anyone does, they know what will happen,” he said.
The government is giving bodyguards to 250 candidates because of recent murders. But, candidates running for local government positions are the most at risk and are the last to get protection.
Many politicians in Mexico are regularly targeted and harmed by violent acts. In April, the mayor of Churumuco, a town in Michoacan, was killed at a taco restaurant in Morelia.
In late February, two people running for mayor in a town in Michoacan were shot and killed within hours of each other.