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The assassination of

Abel Murrieta,

Cajeme's mayoral candidate, has once again highlighted the terrible insecurity faced by the contenders in the midterm elections on June 6. The Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the Prosecutor's Office of the State of Sonora have committed to persecute those responsible who, on Thursday afternoon, ended the life of Murrieta and seriously injured a member of his team, while both distributed flyers and

propaganda

on a street in the northern municipality, considered the fourth most violent in all of Mexico.

Images disseminated on social networks show Murrieta's body lying on the ground, surrounded by pamphlets and bullet shells, while a volunteer fans him with a flag of her party.

Preliminary reports indicate that the Movimiento Ciudadano candidate received a total of

10 hits,

two of them to the head.

When the ambulance arrived at the scene, the victim still had vital signs, but died minutes later upon arrival at the hospital.

His last post on social media was certainly

foreboding:

"A prosperous Cajeme is a Cajeme in which we can all feel safe. Any citizen should go out without worries and that is why I am with Abel, because I know that he will put order and that he is serious," he wrote hours before being murdered.

The president of Movimiento Ciudadano, Clemente Castañeda, is sure that "Abel paid for having said over and over again in his campaign that he had the courage to

confront the drug traffickers

and that he was going to put order as soon as he became mayor." President López Obrador has also lamented this "really sad" event and assured that "there will be an investigation and those responsible will be punished." Statistics do not help to trust AMLO's promises since, in Mexico, 90% of murders go unpunished.

Abel Murrieta, 56, was one of the most prestigious lawyers in Sonora.

Between 2003 and 2004 he was Deputy Attorney General of the State and from 2004 to 2012 he was promoted to Attorney General.

From then on he made the leap to politics serving as local and federal deputy for the PRI until 2015. During the last year he had served as a lawyer for the LeBarón family, the victim of an armed attack in 2019 in which Nine people (three women and six children) lost their lives.

The representative of the family, Adrián, has denounced: "They killed my defender! Today they cowardly killed whoever decided to defend us legally. What do we call this? The rule of law?"

The second most violent electoral campaign

Electoral campaigns in Mexico are

traditionally violent periods

in which groups outside the law seek to persuade, with threats and violence, political leaders that they are going to renew the institutions. On June 6, the North American country holds the largest elections in its history, both in terms of the number of positions in dispute and the number of voters called to the polls. That day, 93 million Mexicans will be able to participate in a process where they will elect 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, 15 of the 32 state governors and almost 20,000 local positions.

The private consultancy Etellekt has put figures on the terrible context of violence that has marked this electoral period. Since last September, when the campaign formally began, 83 politicians -including Murrieta-, 28 family members and 91 non-militant public servants have been assassinated. Interestingly, 88% of the victims were opponents of the current government in the town where they competed. The consulting firm has registered a total of 476 attacks against politicians, which also include other types of pressure, such as threats, robberies or kidnappings. According to the Government,

about 250 candidates have requested federal protection

to date. These figures place the

current electoral campaign as the second most violent

since there are records, only behind that of 2018, which brought López Obrador to power.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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