Nine deaths, two assassination attempts, and candidate's HQ ambushed by barrage of 50 bullets: Political violence reaches boiling point in Mexico ahead of elections

Two mayoral candidates were nearly assassinated in separate attacks in Chiapas, Mexico, this week - as violence continues to spiral out of control ahead of the June elections.

A total of nine people were shot and killed over the weekend during the failed murder plots, which also included shooting up one candidate's headquarters.  

Nicolás Noriega, who is seeking the mayor's seat in Mapastepec, was traveling in a pickup truck early Sunday when gunmen opened fire and killed five campaign workers and wounded two others.

Images on social media showed one of the fatal victims lying on the flatbed and two others on a seat and on the road pavement.

'I deeply mourn the deaths of my friends, whose lives were taken in a cowardly manner,' Noriega posted on Facebook on Sunday.

'Evil is never going to reign in our hearts, because there are more of us who love life, who think of doing good,' the candidate under the country's ruling party, Morena, added. 'I'm asking all of society to unite to honor life.'

Nicolás Noriega, who is running for mayor in Mapastepec, a city in the southern state of Chiapas, was not harmed in an attack Sunday that left killed five campaign workers and two wounded when gunmen opened fire on his convoy

Villa Corzo mayoral hopeful Robertony Orozco was shot twice in his legs Saturday when assailants ambushed one of his campaign vehicles. Four staffers were killed and another person was wounded

Lucero López became the 30th political candidate murdered since September 2023, when the current electoral process started in Mexico

Robertony Orozco, who is running for mayor of Villa Corzo under the Morena party, was on a convoy of vehicles when he and his team were ambushed on a road that links Villa Corzo with the municipality of San Pedro Buenavista on Saturday evening.

The assailants wounded Orozco on both legs as well as another person - and killed four others.

During the early hours of Sunday, the campaign headquarters of Marco Cuate, who is running for mayor in the central city of Axiochiapan, was shot up more than 50 times.

'We will not allow this act of violence to attempt to intimidate the citizens' project in the current electoral contest for the mayor of Axochiapan,' Cuate said in a statement.

La Concordia candidate Lucero López, who is seeking the city's mayoral seat via the Chiapeneco Popular Party, and five people, including a minor, were executed at a campaign event on Thursday.

More than 50 shots were fired early Sunday at the campaign headquarters of Marco Cuate, who is running for mayor in the central Mexico town of Axiochiapan

Marco Cuate, who is running for mayor in the central city of Axiochiapan, vowed not to drop out of the race ahead of Mexico's elections June 2 after his headquarters were shot up Sunday

An ambulance rushes one of the two wounded victims who were shot in an attack directed against Robertony Orozco, who is running for mayor in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. Orozco was shot twice in the legs and survived

On Wednesday, authorities discovered the severed heads of Efraín Zúñiga, a candidate for city council in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, and his wife Rubí Bravo.

López is the 30th aspiring candidate who has been murdered since September 2023, according to Data Civica, 

At least 100 people seeking office at the local and federal have either quit their campaigns or have chosen to run at all.

In March, at least 46 candidates in the states of Michoacan and Morelos gave up their political aspirations after receiving threats from criminal organizations.

Edgardo Buscaglia, a senior scholar in law and economics at Columbia University and who has been an advisor to agencies at the United Nations, told DailyMail.com that cartels have taken advantage by funding campaigns of candidates that turn a blind eye.

'Honest people, people who want to participate in politics cannot present themselves for fear, for fear of being murdered,' Buscaglia said. 

'Many of those positions of murdered people or people who do not want to be included on the list due to threats, are later occupied by members of criminal networks who infiltrate the lists with their candidacies, candidacies that I describe in my 'mafiocratic' books.'

He cautioned that this is made possible because the Mexican government does not have the 'institutional controls that function to prevent dirty money from buying candidates or from candidates not being audited of their assets' the way it exists in the United States and countries in the European Union.