OAXACA: Mexican authorities said Wednesday that two local lawmakers from the main leftist party were killed in separate incidents in the south and west of the country.
Oaxaca state legislator Everardo Hugo Hernandez was shot at a restaurant near the state capital on Tuesday night, the state prosecutor's office said.
Hernandez, who was a member of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) and the mayor-elect of the town of San Andres Cabecera Nueva, died from his wounds early Wednesday at hospital in the city of Oaxaca.
He was also a former leader of a section of a teachers' union, the National Education Workers Coordinator (CNTE), which has led protests in Mexico City against the federal government's education reform.
Oaxaca is one of Mexico's poorest states, rife with social conflicts and land disputes. Tens of thousands of teachers have been on strike in Oaxaca, leaving 1.3 million children without school for weeks.
Elsewhere, prosecutors in the restive western state of Michoacan said local lawmaker and PRD member Osvaldo Esquivel Lucatero was hacked to death by machete-wielding assailants who attacked him in his car.
A relative of Esquivel Lucatero was wounded in the attack.
The former mayor of Buenavista was detained in 2009 when the government of then president Felipe Calderon rounded up some 30 local and state officials accused of links with a drug cartel.
The officials were later released due to lack of evidence.
Michoacan has been convulsed by violence that has prompted civilians to form armed vigilante groups in several municipalities fed up with threats from the cult-like Knights Templar cartel.
The federal government deployed troops in May to protect the communities, which faced extortion, kidnappings and murder at the hands of the cartel.
PRD president Jesus Zambrano condemned the killings of the local lawmakers and demanded investigations. (AFP)
