A candidate for mayor of a municipality in Mexico is shot dead

A candidate for mayor of a municipality in the Mexican state of Guanajuato (center) was shot to death on Tuesday, reported the Movimiento Ciudadano party, in which she was a member..

Alma Barragán, candidate for mayor of the municipality of Moroléon, was attacked by gunmen during a rally in which she participated with residents of that town, ahead of the parliamentary and regional elections on June 6. Moments before the crime, Barragán made a live broadcast on Facebook inviting the inhabitants of that municipality to come and listen to his campaign proposals..

“We strongly condemn the cowardly murder of our candidate, Alma Rosa Barragán, where two more people were also injured in this armed attack,” Movimiento Ciudadano said in a statement.. The Guanajuato Prosecutor's Office reported on Twitter that it had assigned a group of experts to “investigate, clarify, and arrest the accused.”.

According to local media reports, the murdered candidate had recently gained popularity after publicly committing to donate her entire salary as a public official to the municipality of Moroleón.

Ricardo Monreal, coordinator of the ruling party bench in the upper house, also condemned the events in a message on Twitter, in which he pointed out that “violence in any of its forms is reprehensible.”.

Guanajuato, where an important network of oil pipelines runs and a refinery operates, has become one of the most violent regions in Mexico due to the dispute between Santa Rosa de Lima and the powerful Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel for controlling the traffic of stolen fuel, among other crimes. So far this year alone, the region has registered 1,263 homicides, according to recent official figures from the Mexican government..

On June 6, Mexico will hold the largest elections in its history in which the 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, 15 state governments and thousands of local positions will be renewed.. Hundreds of politicians have been assaulted or killed in attacks that multiply during election time. According to a tally by the consulting firm Etellekt, between September 2020, when the electoral process officially began, and this Tuesday, with the death of Barragan, 88 politicians have been assassinated, of which 34 were pre-candidates.

In the last elections, in 2018, Etellekt registered the death of 152 politicians, of which 48 were candidates or pre-candidates. Since December 2006, when the government launched a controversial anti-drug operation, Mexico has recorded more than 300,000 murders, according to official figures that attribute most of those crimes to organized crime.