Celaya mayoral candidate Bertha Gisela Gaytán Gutiérrez. Photo: Google

By KELIN DILLON

On Monday, April 1, the in-power National Regeneration Movement’s (Morena) mayoral candidate for Celaya, Guanajuato, Bertha Gisela Gaytán Gutiérrez, was shot to death in the Mexican state’s San Miguel Octopan community.

Gaytán Gutiérrez had criticized ongoing violence in Celaya – which has experienced hundreds of murders this year alone, including the deaths of more than a dozen police officers – in a campaign speech just hours before her murder.

“In Celaya, peace has been taken from us, which is why we will strive to work with a local Secretariat of Citizen Security that recovers the importance of preventing violence. We are also aware that we need security elements that are paid with dignity, not only financially, but also in their benefits,” the mayoral candidate said at the time.

Gaytán Gutiérrez was then shot at least six times at around 6 pm Monday evening when walking through the community’s main garden. Security footage showed armed individuals fleeing the scene shortly after her murder. 

Gaytán Gutiérrez’s murder adds to the rising death toll of candidates, politicians and those involved in the political process during Mexico’s current electoral period.

According to the head of Mexico’s federal Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC) Rosa Icela Rodríguez, Gaytán Gutiérrez had requested protection on the campaign trail from the National Electoral Institute (INE) back at the beginning of March.

However, after the INE referred the petition to Guanajuato’s Public Local Electoral Organization (OPLE), the OPLE claimed that Guanajuato’s electoral process had not yet begun – despite Gaytán Gutiérrez already being on the campaign trail – and therefore would not provide the requested protection to the candidate.

Rodríguez went on to say that the SSPC is in communication with the Guanajuato governor to determine  “where the responsibility lies for the failure to protect the candidate,” while reiterating that “it is safe to campaign in Guanajuato.”

For his part, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) lamented Gaytán Gutiérrez’s death during his daily morning press conference on Tuesday, April 2.

“These events are very regrettable because there are people who fight to assert democracy, they are in the streets showing their faces and it hurts a lot that this happens in our country and anywhere,” said the federal executive.