A Guerrero mayoral candidate was killed at a campaign event on Wednesday, becoming the latest political aspirant to be murdered during an electoral period marred by violence.
Alfredo Cabrera Barrientos, PRI-PAN-PRD candidate for mayor in the municipality of Coyuca de Benítez, was shot at point-blank range at his final campaign event.
The aggressor was shot dead by the National Guard, which had been deployed to protect the candidate.
Video footage showed that Cabrera, 40, was shot in the head as he was about to take the stage to make the final speech of his campaign.
The event was held in the community of Las Lomas in Coyuca de Benítez, a coastal municipality that borders Acapulco to the west.
The Guerrero Attorney General’s Office (FGE) said in a statement that it had opened an investigation “against the person or people” responsible for the murder of the candidate.
It noted that the “presumed aggressor” was killed. The FGE didn’t mention a possible motive for the attack, but organized crime groups are known to target politicians and candidates they see as unwilling to accommodate, or at least tolerate, their activities.
Cabrera was previously targeted in a 2023 armed attack, according to Alejandro Bravo Abarca, leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in Guerrero.
Earlier this month, a PRI-PAN-PRD candidate for councilor in Coyuca de Benítez, Aníbal Zúñiga Cortés, and her husband, Rubí Bravo Solís, were found dead. Their bodies had been dismembered.
A municipal security secretary and 12 police officers were killed in an ambush in Coyuca de Benítez last October.
Cabrera, who in video footage is seen smiling and greeting his supporters just before he was killed, became the 35th candidate or political aspirant to be murdered during the 2023-24 electoral period, according to a count by the Mexico City-based consultancy firm Integralia.
Based on the number of candidates and aspirants killed, this electoral cycle, which began last September, is the most violent in Mexican history.
Most acts of electoral violence target candidates at the municipal level, who are usually more accessible to the public and often don’t have security details.
With reports from Reforma
. . . from the article . . . \
“The aggressor was shot dead by the National Guard, which had been deployed to protect Alfredo Cabrera Barrientos, PRI-PAN-PRD candidate . . . ”
. . . the National Guard FAILED in their deployment, perhaps they are in cahoots with the CARTEL, or maybe worse . . . they had been studying the botched Afghanistan “withdrawal” thinking their “response” is the most important strategy . . .
You need an expert to reach that opinion. In the U.S.A. we’ve seen assassinations of Pres. John Kennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy as well as the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan all with secret service protection.
In my opinion it’s time for accommodation and torture (as my government used against psychopath jihadis), i.e., torture for all principals involved in assassinations and murderous insurrections against the State and the Media and accommodation somehow of some elements of cartel activity. In my opinion the U.S.A. has no business treating as criminal in sovereign México that which the U.S.A. population demands, but cartel fiefdoms are no longer sovereign México. Cartels need not deal in fentanyl or rotbrain meth as they know how to provide quality and potency, but generally don’t. Cartels need not eat themselves nor (at least if there is to be reasonable accommodation of some type) the government of México. I do not propose any accommodation of violence, corruption, kidnapping, or extortion.