mayor-elect of a small town in Oaxaca state has been slain, police have said, on the heels of 11 murders of mayors in Mexico so far this year.
Antonio Jimenez, who was about to take over the mayor's post in Martires de Tacubaya, a town of 1,200, was murdered Friday on his way home from working in the country. There was no motive or suspect immediately known, police said.
Jimenez, 47, was a teacher and member of the center-left Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Authorities have blamed the murders of the other mayors on organized crime and drug gangs.
Violence has spiraled across the country since President Felipe Calderon launched a military crackdown on organized crime gangs, involving some 50,000 troops, in 2006.
narcoblogger has stepped into the breach left by Mexican journalists, who dare not report as they used to do. Thirty journalists have been killed in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon started his war on the drug cartels in 2006, making Mexico the most deadly country in Latin America for the media. Most are victims of the drug cartels, not caught in crossfire but targeted for reporting what is going on.
Last month, four reporters from the central Mexican state of Durango were kidnapped after reporting a prison riot, which followed the revelation that the prison governor was allowing inmates to go out at night and commit murders. The journalists were freed only after their TV station agreed to broadcast a video, produced by one of the drug cartels, which showed corrupt policemen who were apparently working for a rival cartel.
Today, attention has turned to Tamaulipas state where police have found 72 unburied bodies dumped on a ranch. They are presumably victims of the ever more vicious drug war, which in this part of Mexico pits Los Zetas against the Gulf Cartel. In recent weeks, the industrial city of Monterrey, Mexico’s wealthiest, has been almost brought to a standstill by cartel road blocks, kidnaps and gunbattles, following the murder of a local mayor. Police chiefs, political candidates and senior state officials are frequently targeted for assassination. The drug gangs are trying to seize the Mexican state, and closing down the media is just one part of their plan.
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