Bizarre! What else do you call it? A few days ago, Mrs. Claudia Sheinbaum, the woman likely to win the presidential election in Mexico, was approached by masked men while on tour in South Mexico. This is the story:

On Sunday, April 21, Mexican presidential candidate for the in-power National Regeneration Movement (Morena) Claudia Sheinbaum was stopped by hooded men at a checkpoint during her campaign tour in the southern state of Chiapas.

The men, who purportedly belong to the Sinaloa Cartel and carried images of the group’s notorious leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, used the opportunity to request that Sheinbaum remember them if elected into presidential office on June 2nd.

“We just want to tell you to remember the mountains and the poor people when you are in power; we are not against the government, keep that in mind, we are not against you,” the hooded men said during the exchange, which was captured on video and later distributed on social media.

“We don’t want Motozintla to be another disaster like Comalapa,” continued the group. “We want you, when you are president, to do us the favor of cleaning this section because we cannot travel there; if we pass through that section, they tear us into little pieces.”

Sheinbaum remained inside the vehicle throughout the confrontation, only nodding and making eye contact with the supposed cartel members.

As you can imagine, the reaction south of the border was quick. After all, we've posted here before about the candidate assassinations in this election: 16 candidates so far!

How did those masked me get that close to the leading presidential candidate? Your guess is as good as mine, but President Andres Lopez-Obrador called it "propaganda," whatever that means.

So what happened? Maybe it was all staged to show that Mrs. Sheinbaum will listen to the criminal elements. Maybe it was a security breach and the masked me just wanted to make a video with the candidate.

No one knows but the image is awful in a country where candidates get killed and cartels run sections of the countryside.

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Image:  Secretaría de Cultura CDMX