Carlos de Leon Bravo, a local candidate in San Marcos from Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Mench?’s liberal party, has become the latest victim of the bloodshed that has marred Guatemala’s electoral campaign.
The death toll is close to 40 candidates and activists, as the presidential, congressional and local campaigns enter their final month. Front-runner Alvaro Colom’s party had 18 candidates and activists killed.
It is widely believed that the murders are the work of armed gangs—a byproduct of the 36-year conflict that erupted six years after the U.S.-backed 1954 coup against the progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz.
