Armed group killed last Saturday night the mayor of a community in the state of Michoacán, in western Mexico, an area torn apart by the violence of gangs mainly engaged in drug trafficking, the local prosecutor’s office announced.

Guillermo Torres, 39, mayor of the community of Churumuco, and his son, 14, were the target of an “attack” by gunmen inside a restaurant in Morelia, the capital of Michoacán. The minor survived. The elector succumbed to his injuries at the hospital where he was treated.

Mayor Torres was elected in 2022, with the colors of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), but he recently left this faction and had now sided with the ruling MORENA, according to press reports.

His assassination was carried out in the midst of election campaigning ahead of the June 2 general election. in which some 20,000 offices are judged at the local, state and federal levels, including the presidency and all seats in both houses of Congress.

He followed two others in the state of Michoacán, those of candidates for the office of mayor of Maravatio, Armando Perez Luna of the National Action Party (PAN) and Miguel Angel Savala Reges of the ruling Movement for National Renaissance (MORENA, center left), in their cars on the 26th of February.

From June 4, 2023, to March 26, 2024, at least 50 people, including seven women, were killed in election-related violence, 26 of whom would be running for elected office, according to data from Laboratorio Electoral, a private research firm and analyses.

The state of Michoacán is the scene of incessant conflicts between gangs, including the powerful Jalisco New Generation cartel.

In late February, four soldiers were killed and nine others wounded in a bomb attack on their patrol in the town of Aguililla.

More than 420,000 murders have been committed in Mexico, with a population of about 126 million, according to official figures, since the so-called “war on drugs” was declared in late 2006 by the then president of the country, Felipe Calderon, with the deployment of the armed forces inside the country to to crush the cartels.