The former governor of Jalisco was shot early Friday while on vacation in Puerto Vallarta resort, authorities said, a decomposed crime that further illustrated the government’s struggles to control the deadly violence that has erupted in Mexico over the past five years.
The assassination of former governor Aristotle Sandoval, who was shot in the back in a restaurant toilet, is one of Mexico’s most notorious political crimes in recent memory, security experts said.
Mr Sandoval was killed a few hours before President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his cabinet presented a grim update on the nation’s security situation during a news conference.
More than 31,000 crimes have been reported in Mexico this year since November, the last month for which government statistics are available, a figure roughly similar to 2019. But homicides have nearly doubled in the past five years, underscoring the government’s failure to reduce the violent violence he inherited.
Mr López Obrador offered his condolences to Sandoval’s family and, in a sign of his growing reliance on soldiers to combat the country’s growing violence, said the federal government and military would help with the investigation.
No suspects were immediately identified in the murder of Mr Sandoval, but security experts said it could be the work of the brutal Jalisco New Generation cartel, which came to power during Sandoval’s term from 2013 to 2018 and now controls a large part of the state.
“The Jalisco cartel has complete control over Puerto Vallarta,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst at Lantia Consultores in Mexico City. “No other group has the power to assassinate a former governor.”
“I am a bold, non-intimidating cartel that targets the highest levels,” Guerrero added.
More than half of this year’s killings were concentrated in six of Mexico’s 31 states, including Jalisco, President Ricardo Mejía Berdeja, the country’s deputy director of public security, told a news conference.
Mr. Sandoval’s murder comes just months after a bold attempt to kill the Mexico City police chief, an episode that was linked to the Jalisco cartel. The attack shocked residents who have long seen the capital as an oasis amid the country’s violence.
The killing of Mr Sandoval may also highlight the growing presence of strong cartels in local politics, Falko Ernst, a senior Mexican analyst for the International Crisis Group, a global think tank, said.
“There are still questions to be asked about how separate politics and organized crime really are,” Mr Ernst said. “It unleashes the beast.”
Mr. Sandoval came to the fore in October, when he announced his resignation from the top position in the Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI, which ruled Mexico for most of the twentieth century.
“I will stay in the PRI, but being critical,” he said in a video posted on social networks. “And if they don’t like it, let me kick me out. But I will never stop saying what I think. “
His death could bode well for a bloody campaign season, as Mexico heads to the 2021 by-elections, having already endured the deadliest political period in 2018.
“The message is intimidating,” said security analyst Guerrero. He also offered a sober prediction: “What we will see in the coming months are unprecedented levels of electoral political violence in Mexico.”