Benito Jiménez / Reform Agency
Friday, January 13, 2023 | 16:26
Mexico City.- 2022 closed with 483 attacks on politicians or officials in the country, mainly in Guanajuato, Guerrero, Veracruz, Zacatecas, Baja California and Morelos, alerted the organization Data Cívica.
The number of attacks means an increase of 174 percent compared to 2021, which reported 176 events of criminal-electoral violence, the document refers to.
Last December there were 45 attacks, an increase of 18.42 percent over the previous month.
In the monthly report “Voting Between Bullets: Understanding criminal-electoral violence in Mexico,” it was established that 29 people were killed in these attacks.
In December 2022, the federal entity that suffered the most events of electoral criminal violence in December was Zacatecas with seven events, followed by the states of Guanajuato, Guerrero and Morelos with 6 events each, the diagnosis indicated.
“Organized crime attacks on local authorities in Zacatecas increased substantially in 2022. In 2019, the entity registered only two of these events; no attacks were registered in 2020; in 2021, the number rose to six; and finally, in 2022, 34 attacks accumulated -25 of them directed against officials in the security area, police and law enforcement,” exemplifies the report.
“As some studies have referred, such increases in violence between 2021 and 2022 are partly associated with partisan alternation in the Governor’s Office and the changes that this implies for security and justice structures after the arrival of new teams and the development of new security strategies that, in turn, affect existing protection networks.
He recalled that at the beginning of 2022, a van with 10 bodies was abandoned in front of the Zacatecas Government Palace, as a form of threat or warning to the then newly elected Governor David Monreal.
The judiciary has also been targeted by criminal groups operating in Zacatecas. At the end of last year, the criminal judge, Roberto Elías Martínez, was attacked by a criminal organization that operated the attack from the prison system.
“This case illustrates that, beyond the security forces, justice itself is equally vulnerable. It is urgent to study the effects of criminal violence on the Judiciary more carefully and better measure its impact, particularly because the capacity of organized crime to weaken both security and justice through these types of attacks inevitably further complicate solutions and public policies for the prevention and care of violence in the country,” he added.
The attacks reported in December include officials from Morena, the PRI, PT and the PRD, and the same have been mayors, former councilors, police officers, trustees or administrative workers.
Last year, Guanajuato closed with 56 attacks, Guerrero with 46, Veracruz with 41, Zacatecas with 34, Baja California 29, Morelos 28, Jalisco 28, Edomex 27, Oaxaca 26 and Sonora 24, to name a few states with more violent reports.
