A review of political violence in the US and Latin America

MIAMI, USA —

The attack against the former Republican president Donald Trump, who was injured in the right earis the first against a major political figure in the United States since the attack on Ronald Reagan in 1981, just 70 days after assuming the presidency.

But similar cases against those seeking power have also been reported in Latin America, with attempted murders and assassinations carried out for several decades.

Trump was escorted away by the Secret Service with blood on his face after a shooting at a rally beginning in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Although Trump’s case did not go any further, it was a reminder of how American leaders can be targeted.

On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was leaving a conference at the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, DC, when John Hinckley Jr., obsessed with actress Jodie Foster, sought attention and fired six shots from his revolver, wounding the president in the left armpit.

Precedents in the USA

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was shot in the head by actor John Wilkes Booth while attending a play on April 14, 1865 in Washington.

Later, Presidents James A. Garfield (1881) and William McKinley (1901) would also be assassinated.

On November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald fired his rifle at then-President John F. Kennedy as he was being driven through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.

Villavicencio, Ecuador

Latin America and the Caribbean have not been exempt from cases like these in recent times.

The most recent violent incident occurred on August 9, 2023, when an armed commando shot and killed presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio as he was leaving a campaign rally in Quito, the capital of Ecuador.

Villavicencio, 59, a candidate for the Movimiento Construye Ecuador party, was one of the strongest critical voices against corruption, especially during the government of former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017).

Almost a year later, an Ecuadorian court sentenced five defendants on Friday, July 13, to between 12 and 34 years in prison. the assassination of candidate Villavicencio in August last year.

Bolsonaro, Brazil

On September 6, 2016, then presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro was stabbed in the lower abdomen when he was riding on the shoulders of a supporter, looking out at the crowd, with the thumb of his left hand pointing up.

Bolsonaro, a right-wing politician, was then competing against the now two-time president, Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva. The attack confirmed the polarization of politics in Brazil.

Colosio, Mexico

On March 23, 1994, Luis Donaldo Colosio, presidential candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), was assassinated in the state of Baja California, Mexico.

Colosio had just arrived at the airport in Tijuana for a rally in front of his supporters when Mario Aburto Murrieta emerged from the crowd and fired his .38-caliber revolver at the politician’s head and then abdomen.

The event shocked a turbulent Mexico, and although the authenticity of Aburto’s authorship has been questioned, the official version points to him as the sole person responsible.

Galan, Colombia

Colombia, shaken by armed violence between the 1980s and just beyond 1990, saw drug cartels, with Pablo Escobar as their main figure, take control of much of the country’s life.

On August 18, 1989, presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento was shot dead, just one month before his 46th birthday.

Galán was running for president for the third time, this time for the New Liberalism party, and at a campaign event in Soacha, Cundinamarca, Jaime Eduardo Rueda Rocha and Henry de Jesús Pérez opened fire on him and three of the five shots that hit him were fatal.

[Parte de la información para este reporte provino de AFP y The Associated Press]

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