Mexico’s electoral violence spikes hours before campaigns conclude

Several attacks against political candidates have been reported in Mexico as the campaigning period for the country’s largest election in history draws to a close.

Several attacks against political candidates have been reported in Mexico as the campaigning period for the country’s largest election in history draws to a close. With just hours before the electoral campaigns officially conclude on Wednesday, a string of violent acts against candidates and their staff have been reported across the country, from Jalisco in the west to Chiapas in the south. In Morelos, a state in south-central Mexico, the attorney-general reported that Ricardo Arizmendi Reynoso, a substitute opposition candidate for the municipal presidency of the city of Cuautla, was assassinated in a shooting on Tuesday. In Jalisco state on the same day, Gilberto Palomar, the ruling Morena party’s candidate for the mayorship of the town Encarnacio de Diaz, was hospitalized after an attack by armed individuals on the party’s local offices. In the central State of Mexico, the truck of a mayoral candidate for Chalco, Eduardo Díaz, was shot, according to a local representative of the Green Ecologist Party. Meanwhile, in Puebla, central Mexico, Juan Sandoval, a Citizen Movement candidate in the municipality of Tehuacán, was attacked outside his campaign office but was unharmed, his team reported.