Two mayoral hopefuls of a Mexican city are shot dead within hours of each other

Rapidcreek@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 174 points –
Two mayoral hopefuls of a Mexican city are shot dead within hours of each other
apnews.com
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As shitty as American politics can be, we should be very thankful that overt violence against political candidates, journalists, volunteers, etc. has not (yet) been normalized. I can't imagine being involved with Mexican politics, especially anti-drug/anti-corruption reform, with the threat of cartel retaliation hanging over you and your family. Strong respect to those who tough it out.

Feels like there might be some more context that locals know about but isn't clear in the article

Context like cartels that would murder you if you don’t do their bidding?

No, like why these two specifically? The article talks about a previous Morena candidate being killed, and one interviewee speculates they killed the National Action Party candidate just to appear like they don't target one party specifically. But there's no reporting beyond that. How many other mayoral candidates are there? Are some candidates purportedly aligned with cartels? Was there anything that happened before these killings that they would occur nearly simultaneously?

A record was being broken some time ago for the amount of journalists being killed on a month-to-month basis, and they all just happened to have been criticizing the current government. I wouldn't put it past them to kill their own people to try and shift blame.

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This is the best summary I could come up with:


On Tuesday, this farming town, where most of the men wear boots and big belt buckles, was in a state of wary shock following the previous day’s killings.

Talking about gynecologist Miguel Ángel Zavala, one of the murdered aspiring candidates, Maravatio resident and homemaker Carmen Luna said the crime was shocking and incomprehensible.

While she hasn’t voted in years — “whether it’s one or the other, everything stays the same” — Luna said the killings left people “angry and feeling powerless, because if the government doesn’t do anything, you can’t do anything.”

“This illustrates the extremely serious level of violence and lack of safety that prevails ahead of the most important elections in Mexican history,” National Action’s leader, Marko Cortés, wrote on social media.

Hours earlier, officials with the ruling Morena party confirmed their mayoral hopeful, Zavala, was found shot to death Monday in his car.

She said Dagoberto García, the local Morena leader, was the other hopeful who initially disappeared last October until his shot and decomposed body was found in a rural area in November.


The original article contains 729 words, the summary contains 177 words. Saved 76%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Mexico is run by gangbangers.

This is the culture they want for themselves, so it's what they get.

El Salvador on the other hand is doing a great job cleaning up the rapist murdering scum because they actually want to fix the issues.