By Lyndsey Kelly
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

MEXICO CITY, Mexico – Aide Nava, a 42-year-old woman running for mayor, has been kidnapped and decapitated in Northern Guerrero, a Southwestern Mexican state. This same state has been the location of numerous violent crimes and most notably the recent murders of approximately 43 student teachers, which sparked the biggest crisis of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration.

Guerrero, along with eight other Mexican states, is set to hold gubernational elections in June. Nava, a candidate from the leftist Part of the Democratic Revolution was kidnapped in the town of Ahuacuotzingo, the municipality she hoped to become mayor of in the June elections. A threatening note was left next to Nava’s body, stating that the same treatment would be given to any politician who does not “fall in line.” The note was signed by “Los Rojos,” one of the main criminal groups in Gurrero. Gurrero’s chief prosecutor Miguel Angel Godinez did not confirm local media reports that Nava has been beheaded, but said “it is a very unfortunate and important case that we have to treat with a great deal of care.”

Violence throughout the state is prevalent. Nava’s husband, Francisco Quiñónez, who served as mayor of the same town Nava sought to run for mayor in, was shot dead in June 2014, two years after the couple’s son disappeared after being kidnapped. Additionally, two weeks prior to Nava’s death Leticia Salazar, the mayor of Matamoros, suffered an armed attack on a convoy she was travelling in. Further, Juan Acosta, the mayor of the town of Choix in the state of Sinaloa, is currently hospitalized after suffering bullet wounds sustained in an attack on a vehicle he was traveling.

More than 100,000 people have died in violence linked to drug cartels in Mexico during the past eights years. There have been no significant improvements in the security of citizens. Unfortunately, it seems as though now, the people who can make a difference in controlling the violence through the enactment of reforms, are the targets of the violence.

 

For more information, please see the following:

THE GUARDIAN – Mexican Mayoral Candidate Reportedly Decapitated – Body Found on Dirt Road – 11 Mar. 2015.

HUFFINGTON POST – Mayoral Candidate Aide Nava Decapitated in Mexico’s Guerrero State – 11 Mar. 2015.

LATIN POST – Mexico Drug Cartel News: Mayoral Candidate Aide Nava Found Decapitated in Guerrero Along With Threatening Note Written By Gang – 12 Mar. 2015

REUTERS – Mexico Mayoral Candidate Decapitated in Northern Guerrero State – 11 Mar. 2015.