Mexico’s campaign season has reached its final days, and it is expected to elect its first woman president. The assassination of opposition coalition mayoral candidate Alfredo Cabrera during a Guerrero event is a fitting way the election season is closing, considering how bloody the year has been.
The official tally puts this as the third homicide in the violent electoral process taking place in the country. Presidential candidate Xochitl Galvez, who was outraged by Cabrera’s death, was a member of the same opposition alliance. Opposition coalition member the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) said the administration did little to ensure the candidates’ safety.
A mayoral candidate in Morelos, a state in central Mexico, was killed the day before Cabrera’s killing, while another contender in Jalisco, a state in western Mexico, was injured by gunfire. Two assaults this week in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas killed nine people, but both mayoral candidates managed to survive.
The town of La Concordia, which is next to Villa Corzo, was the site of an ambush earlier this month that murdered six people, including a youngster and Lucero Lopez, a mayoral candidate. Last month, while a mayoral candidate was launching her campaign, she was fatally murdered. In order to beef up security on election day, over 27,000 troops and members of the National Guard will be deployed.
Managing migration and sensitive ties with the neighboring United States will be among the key issues confronting the next leader of Mexico, along with tackling the cartel violence that has ravaged the country and made it one of the most dangerous countries in the world. There have been over 450,000 deaths and tens of thousands of missing persons since the government sent the army to combat drug trafficking in 2006.
When millions of Mexicans cast their ballots on Sunday, Claudia Sheinbaum, a candidate from the governing Morena party, will almost certainly be named leader of the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world. Sheinbaum has promised to carry on the social programs and strategy of the departing left-wing president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, which he refers to as “hugs, not bullets.” This approach is contentious since it seeks to address the reasons behind crime.