In Mexico, Running For Office Can Be A 'death Sentence'

Acapulco, Mexico, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 19th Jun, 2018 ) :Running for office in Mexico is "practically a death sentence," says mayoral candidate Mario Alberto Chavez, who was eating dinner at a restaurant when a gunman opened fire on his table.

Somehow, Chavez survived the April 18 attack that wounded three staff members. But more than 100 other politicians have been killed in the country's blood-stained electoral campaign.

"I've asked (the authorities) to give me bodyguards many times, but they just keep ignoring me," says Chavez, a 35-year-old father of one, who is running for the New Alliance party in his hometown of Zumpango.

New Alliance is a splinter from President Enrique Pena Nieto's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Chavez won't speculate about who tried to kill him, saying he once considered quitting the race after receiving threatening phone calls from people who warned him they would leave dead bodies at his campaign rallies.

Rather than holding rallies, he now campaigns door-to-door in the city of 25,000 people in the violent western state of Guerrero.

"I decided it was worth it, to try to pull my community out of poverty and violent crime," he says.