CELAYA, Mexico — On a sunny spring day last year, a young attorney named Gisela Gaytán kicked off her campaign for mayor in this gritty Mexican city.
Under her blouse she wore a ballistic vest.
Celaya had become the epicenter of a bloody cartel war, with one of the highest homicide rates in the world, and a local police force that appeared powerless to stop it.
“We must recover the security that we so long for,” Gaytán, 38, wrote on social media before setting out that day.
