Mexico’s 2018 elections were the bloodiest in living memory.

At latest count, 136 candidates and party workers had been killed, with attacks on some three hundred. Hundreds of candidates pulled out of races, some in fear for their lives, some because they were discovered to have ties to organized crime — my colleague at Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Carlos Figueroa Ibarra, head of Morena’s human rights division, puts this figure at an astonishing six hundred politicians.

The stakes were high, and several “wars from below” raged in advance of the election. Most of the killing seems to have happened in Northern Puebla, rural Oaxaca, Guerrero, and scattered states experiencing narco-warfare. Many Morena candidates were killed or threatened.