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News > Latin America

Mexico: Mayor, Local Lawmaker of Left-Leaning PRD Assassinated

  • Relatives stand next to the coffin of lawmaker Saul Galindo of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) during a mass in Guadalajara, Mexico Dec. 29, 2017.

    Relatives stand next to the coffin of lawmaker Saul Galindo of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) during a mass in Guadalajara, Mexico Dec. 29, 2017. | Photo: Reuters

Published 30 December 2017
Opinion

The two politicians were killed in two different Mexican states as violence escalates ahead of next summer elections.

Two Mexican politicians, a mayor and a regional lawmaker with the center-left Democratic Revolution party, were both assassinated Thursday by unidentified gunmen in two different states, local media reported Friday, the latest high-profile killings in the country ahead of elections next summer.

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In the western Mexican state of Jalisco unknown gunmen shot dead local lawmaker of the PRD Saul Galindo, who headed the justice committee in the Jalisco state congress, according to its website.

Galindo was at home in the town of Tomatlan when gunmen arrived and shot him, a spokeswoman from the state attorney general’s office said. Galindo was running for mayor of Tomatlan in the upcoming elections. 

Tomatlan lies in the western part of the state, an area where the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of the country’s most powerful drug gangs, has a strong presence.

Meanwhile, Arturo Gomez Perez, the mayor of Petatlan, a coastal town in Mexico's southern state of Guerrero, was assassinated just before midnight Thursday while at a restaurant.

He was shot three times and rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead after medicis failed to revive him.

Gomez took office in 2015 after winning elections as the candidate of an alliance between the left-of-center Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) and Workers' Party (PT).

He is the second mayor from the PRD who has been assassinated in the Guerrero in the past two years, in which a total of four mayors have been killed.

For the second year in a row, Guerrero ranked as Mexico's most violent state in 2017 with the highest number of homicides due to drugs-related crimes.

Mexico holds a string of national, state and local elections on July 1. Elections in the country have been known to cause violence in areas where gangs seek to influence local politics.

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