A mayoral candidate and five other people were killed when gunmen opened fire at an election rally in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas, officials said.
Mayoral candidate Lucero López Maza and a girl were among the six people killed in the shooting late Thursday, state prosecutors said. Two other people were reportedly injured.
Mexican mayoral candidate killed after ignoring security requests
“A clash occurred between armed civilians during a political campaign event,” prosecutors said in a statement.
It is unclear whether López-Maza was the intended target of the attack, as shooting incidents are so frequent and widespread in the area.
A mayoral candidate and five others were killed in a shooting at an election rally in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas. (Fox News)
The shooting occurred at an intersection in the rural town of La Concordia, Chiapas state, about 125 kilometers from the border with Guatemala.
The Guatemalan border is a major smuggling route for drugs and migrants, and two of Mexico’s biggest drug cartels are fighting for control of the area.
On Sunday, 11 people were killed in a shooting in the village of Chicomcero in Chiapas state, dozens of miles (km) from La Concordia. The murderers wiped out the entire family and burned the bodies.
On Friday, the Roman Catholic Church announced that drug gangs carried out the murders because Chicomsero residents refused to leave their homes or work for drug gangs.
“These men and women refused to leave their homes despite violence, intimidation, and harassment by criminal organizations who threatened to join their gangs,” the Roman Catholic diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas said in a statement. That’s what it means.
The church statement said Chiapas, a state with a large indigenous population, is “rife with violence caused by (struggles for) territorial control and the interests of some criminal organizations to continue mining.”
The cartel did not say what kind of mine it intended to operate, but the accusations are neither novel nor unprecedented in areas of Mexico controlled by cartels. In 2013, authorities in the western state of Michoacan admitted that the Knights Templar cartel had essentially taken over iron ore mining in the state. They said ore exports to China were one of the cartel’s main sources of income.
The spike in violence in Chiapas was an embarrassment to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who traveled to the border state for talks with Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo on Friday.
López Obrador, who, as usual, refuses to confront drug cartels, sought to minimize the problem of violence.
“Some people claim that Chiapas is on fire, but no, as I explained, the problem is here, and we are going to solve it,” the president said at a news conference in Tapachula, Chiapas. said.
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Thursday’s killings also spotlighted the fact that preparations for Mexico’s July 2 elections have been marred by violence, with about 20 candidates so far killed in 2024. ing.
President López Obrador again sought to downplay the violence, painting those reporting the killings as “vultures” seeking to smear his administration.
“Fortunately, there have been fewer attacks than in other elections, but there is a lot of sensationalism right now, which is very unfortunate. There are many people who are trying to profit from killings and human suffering.” said. “This is the age of the vulture.”
