Some Mayors Live, And Others Die. Many Die

On August 2, 2016 in Mexico, the mayor of Huehuetlán el Grande was assassinated. It became the third mayoral assassination in ten days. Since the beginning of 2016, 5 mayors perished, and between 2006 and 2016, 79 incumbent and former mayors of various Mexican cities met with a violent death. The state of Michoacánhas the largest number of deaths(14 people). Officially, no one says that all the mayoral assassinations are links in the same chain, for the deaths look very different. Someone was blown up in the middle of a square; someone was gunned down in his own car; someone died in a suspicious car accident, someone was taken unawared in his own home together with his own family. The attackers’ blood-thirstiness and the scale of their crimes are mind-blowing, but each murder has a different pattern. For instance, the latest assassination in the series is being treated by the law enforcement as aggravated robbery. Still, there are few who doubt that the assassinations are carried out by organized crime which has long since become one of Mexico’s branches of power claiming total control within “its own” territories.

Reuters

National Mayors’ Association (Asociación Nacional de Alcaldes, ANAC), which has recently prepared a report on assassinations since 2006, sounds the alarm and regularly appeals to the federal authorities for support which it does rarely receive. Although Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto calls himself and his administration fighters against organized crime and drug cartels, so far he has failed to bring order to a country which is torn by an endless war of all against all. Thus, one of the mayors assassinated in July, Ambrosio Soto Duarte, shortly before his death addressed the President on Twitter, asking for help and describing open threats to his life. No help came, Soto Duarte was assassinated, and the fellow members from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) now accuse Mexico’s leadership of inaction and incapacity to control the growing crime rate.

Today, Mexican authorities have no resources to fight organized crime. During Peña Nieto’s presidency, several successful operations were conducted, neutralizing the leaders of drug cartels and criminal gangs, but Mexico is still a far cry from totally cleansing the country of crime and criminals. Consequently, a mayor’s office is still for those with nerves of steel and tight security.