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Not Presidency

Were there 37 presidential candidates killed during Mexico's 2024 election cycle? No, that's not true: There were killings, but the victims were not running for president. A second claim implying the CEO of Blackrock was somehow involved in a plot because he was in a picture with president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum and not with other candidates is demonstrably false because there is photographic evidence he met with at least one other presidential candidate.

The claim was implied in a post (archived here) on X on June 4, 2024. The post included two images: One showed the headline of an article announcing Sheinbaum's presidential victory and that 37 candidates were assassinated during the election, and the other was a picture of Sheinbaum smiling next to Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, a large asset management company. The caption of the post read:

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink didn't take any pictures with the other 37 candidates now did he?...👀

Ask yourself why...

This is what the post looked like on X, formerly Twitter, at the time of writing:

(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Jun 5 15:59:09 2024 UTC)

No 2024 presidential candidates in Mexico were killed

The candidates who were killed during the 2024 election cycle in Mexico were not running for president. According to a report (archived here) published by the nonpartisan consultancy firm Integralia on May 28, 2024, in preparation for Mexico's election on June 2, 2024, 34 candidates were killed from September 2023 to May 26, 2024 (see page 11 of the report). Articles published by Al Jazeera and Reuters state that by the end of May 2024, the number of candidate killings increased to 37. Both articles cited figures from Integralia.

Lead Stories reached out to Integralia for more information about that figure. In a message sent to us via WhatsApp on June 5, 2024, Armando Vargas, senior consultant of Integralia's political risk unit, told us:

...we have a record of 39 murdered applicants or candidates, as of June 2. Integralia is a company and is not affiliated with any political party or group. Our data on political violence is publicly disseminated.

Vargas also said that a report with this figure will be published the week of June 10, 2024.

In a separate report (archived here) published on May 2, 2024, Integralia stated that all the 29 candidate killings that happened between September 2023 and May 1, 2024, were of candidates who were not running for president. In fact, 86 percent of the candidates were running for municipal positions (see page 3 of the report).

This information proves that none of the presidential candidates were among the murdered candidates. By May 1, 2024, there were only three presidential candidates: Sheinbaum, Xóchitl Gálvez and Jorge Álvarez Máynez, all of whom are alive at the time of writing. While the other candidates were announced by their parties in 2023, Máynez was named as his party's candidate in January 2024.

BlackRock CEO met with another presidential candidate

The post making the claim also suggests that Fink, CEO of BlackRock, exclusively met with Sheinbaum and no other presidential candidates. However, as the outlet Mexico Business News reported in an article (archived here) published on February 26, 2024, Fink met with both Sheinbaum and Gálvez on February 21, 2024. A picture of their meeting can be found included in a post published on Gálvez's official X account on February 21, 2024 (archived here).

Other fact checks

More Lead Stories fact checks related to Mexico can be found here.