COTIJA, MEXICO: The mayor of a town in western Mexico was ambushed and killed by gunmen on Monday, shortly after the country elected its first-female president.
Yolanda Sanchez, the mayor of Cotija in the state of Michoacan, Mexico, since 2021, was shot 19 times in the town center, according to the local press.
She and her bodyguard – who was also shot – died from their wounds at a hospital later on Monday. An investigation into the incident is ongoing.
Just hours after #ClaudiaSheinbaum‘s election as Mexico’s first female president, #YolandaSánchez, the mayor of Cotija, Michoacán, was ambushed and shot 19 times by gunmen, resulting in her death and the death of her bodyguard. #Cotija #Michoacán #Mexico
Police suspect the… pic.twitter.com/oN3NRUwaUA— ⚡️🌎 World News 🌐⚡️ (@ferozwala) June 4, 2024
“A series of threats were made to the personnel of the municipality, … demanding that the mayor, she should prevent or avoid the federal forces from carrying out tasks,” said Michoacan attorney general Adrian Lopez Solis in a statement on Wednesday.
Such demands could not possibly be met by the mayor, as there are disputes between criminal gangs for territorial control around Cotija, he said.
Sanchez had already been kidnapped by the organized crime group Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) in 2023, while visiting the neighbouring state of Jalisco.
At least 39 political candidates were assassinated during Mexico’s general election campaign, which ended on Sunday.
Mexico has been grappling with drug and organised cartel related crime for a long time. In January, Investigators in the northern Mexico border state of Nuevo León found at least ten dead, burned bodies in a vehicle on a roadway near the industrial hub of Monterrey.
State prosecutors said they initially found a body and three skulls inside a burned out vehicle in the township of Pesqueria, just outside Monterrey.
But later they found four other bodies, human bones and two more skulls nearby.
Investigations were underway to determine exactly how many victims there were, and how they died.
In the early 2000s, Monterrey was ravaged by violence from the old Zetas cartel but had become calmer. A splinter group of that cartel, the Cartel of the Northeast, remains in control of the border city of Nuevo Laredo, in the neighbouring state of Tamaulipas.
(REUTERS)
In a career spanning three decades and counting, Ramananda (Ram to his friends) has been the foreign editor of The Telegraph, Outlook Magazine and the New Indian Express. He helped set up rediff.com’s editorial operations in San Jose and New York, helmed sify.com, and was the founder editor of India.com.
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