Executions of Politicians Continues

A candidate for city council in the north-central Mexican town of Calera was found dead of gunshot wounds, officials of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Joel Arteaga Vazquez, 29, disappeared after his birthday party Wednesday night and municipal police discovered his body before dawn the next day.

Arteaga was running for council on the same ticket as Calera mayoral candidate Rodrigo Saucedo Ramirez, according to the PRI spokesperson in Zacatecas state, Veronica Murua.

“As it was not at a campaign event, one cannot presume it’s a political matter,” she said of Arteaga’s murder, though adding that the PRI would monitor the investigation.

PRI officials don’t know whether Arteaga received any threats prior to the slaying, Murua said.

Also in Chihuahua a man was executed with a firearm at Boulevard Juan Pablo II and street 85. The man was identified as Jorge Ortega Ortega of 29 years of age and a PRI candidate for the government of the state. Ortega was in company of two girls who were distributing flyiers and stickers to motorists.

Witnesses said that the siarios drove right next to the vehicle driven by Ortega, they ordered Ortega out of the veshicle and shot him at close range. He was wearing a shirt and cap with the political PRI affiliation. There were several spent casings from an AK-47 or "cuernos de chivo."

The sicarios mamaged to flee in a silver pick-up Dakota.

Last week, a candidate for mayor of the northern Mexican town of Valle Hermoso was found murdered along with his son and another person.

The bodies of Mario Guajardo Varela and the other two victims were found on the premises of his company, Proveedora Agricola Guajardo, the Tamaulipas state chairman of the rightist National Action Party, or PAN, said.

Mexico’s nationwide municipal elections are set for July 4.