Édgar Morales Pérez

Who was Édgar Morales Pérez?

Édgar Morales Pérez was the mayor-elect of Matehuala, San Luis Potosí, Mexico, elected on July 1, 2012. He was a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party and the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico, which are in a coalition in his municipality. The National Action Party had ruled Matehuala for several years, and Morales Pérez was scheduled to take office in September 2012.

On August 12, 2012, he and his campaign manager Juan Francisco Hernández Colunga were killed by gunfire while driving home from a birthday party. Hernández's wife survived the attack but could not identify the perpetrators. Several publications described the attack as part of a broader crime wave. Three days earlier a van with fourteen corpses in the back had been found next to a highway in the state. In Veracruz on August 12, a family of seven, including four children, were found beheaded. In the state of Michoacán that same week, gangsters burned several buses and engaged in gun battles with the Mexican authorities. The Mexican authorities believe that the criminal group known as Los Zetas was behind the attack, and five municipal police officers have been arrested for their alleged involvement in the dual assassination.