Talking about gynecologist Miguel Ángel Zavala, one of the murdered aspiring candidates, Maravatío resident and homemaker Carmen Luna said the crime was shocking and incomprehensible. “The way I see it, there’s no explanation for killing a person ... it might have been a power struggle between them.” 

Luna was one of Zavala’s patients, and she ruled out any potential personal motive in his killing. “He was one of the best” doctors in town, she said. “He took care of me and was very good. He was very friendly.”

While she hasn’t voted in years — “whether it’s one or the other, everything stays the same” — Luna said the killings left people “angry and feeling powerless, because if the government doesn’t do anything, you can’t do anything.”

Maravatío Mayor Jaime Hinojosa Campa said he had not been told about threats against the mayoral hopefuls, but that “everything points toward” organized crime being behind the killings. He said authorities were working on security protocols for the remaining candidates who were understandably frightened.

“What happened yesterday scared all of us,” he said.

State prosecutors said Tuesday that Armando Pérez Luna was found shot to death in his car in Maravatío just before midnight. He was the mayoral candidate for the conservative National Action Party.

“This illustrates the extremely serious level of violence and lack of safety that prevails ahead of the most important elections in Mexican history,” National Action’s leader, Marko Cortés, wrote on social media.

Hours earlier, officials with the ruling Morena party confirmed their mayoral hopeful, Zavala, was found shot to death Monday in his car.

The Morena party state committee said in a statement that the killing of Zavala was “a cowardly and reprehensible act.” The head of the Morena party in Michoacan, Juan Pablo Celis, said Zavala had announced his intention to run but had not yet been designated as the party’s candidate.

Another Morena mayoral hopeful was killed last year.

Retiree Catalina Padilla was busy packing charity packages at the local Catholic Church’s food bank. She said the city had started getting violent around 2019.

“Before, we would go out at night, but now if there isn’t a reason to go out, you don’t,” Padilla said. She said Dagoberto García, the local Morena leader, was the other hopeful who initially disappeared last October until his shot and decomposed body was found in a rural area in November.

“It could be that they don’t want anyone from Morena,” she said, suggesting that killing Pérez, of the conservative PAN, was maybe a way to make it appear that the killings were not directed at one party.

The western state of Michoacan has been particularly hard hit by gang turf wars, with the Jalisco New Generation cartel fighting a local gang, the Viagras, for control.