The mayor of a regional town in Mexico was shot dead on Monday, less than 24 hours after the country voted in its first ever female president.
Yolanda Sánchez, the mayor of Cotija in the western part of the country, was reportedly ambushed by gunmen who shot her 19 times outside a gym in the centre of Cotija, Michoacán. Her bodyguard was also killed in the attack.
The Michoacán attorney general’s office released a statement, saying that the pair were attacked by gunmen inside a white truck who opened fire “from the moving vehicle and then escaped.”
The regional interior ministry condemned “the murder of the municipal president (mayor) of Cotija, Yolanda Sanchez Figueroa,” on social media and said that an investigation has been launched into the murders.
No arrests have been made, though authorities speculate that the assailants belonged to the same organised crime group who kidnapped Sánchez last year.
Since taking office as mayor in 2021, Sánchez reported receiving death threats and demands for her to turn over the region’s security to state police officers who were under the command of organised crime groups.
In September 2023, she was kidnapped by armed men and held for three days. Sánchez claimed her kidnappers had made “demands” and inflicted “psychological terror” on her before her eventual release. Though her attackers were never officially identified, local newspapers hypothesise that members of the Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG) were behind the kidnapping. The transnational criminal group are known for their aggressive use of violence and involvement in drug trafficking and kidnapping of public figures for ransom and extortion.
Sánchez’s murder comes as Mexico celebrated the election of Claudia Sheinbaum, who is expected to be sworn in as president on 1 October.
Sheinbaum’s rival, Xóchitl Gálvez said that during a phone conversation on Monday with the president-elect, she said:” I saw a Mexico with a lot of pain and violence. I wished that she could solve the severe problems our people have”.
Sánchez’s killing marks the latest in more than two dozen murders of political candidates since June 2023. According to a recent survey by a Mexican political consultancy firm, roughly 200 politicians, candidates and public servants have been murdered or threatened in the lead up to the election.
The escalating violence has overshadowed Sheinbaum’s historic win. Days before the election, Alfredo Cabrera, a mayoral candidate from the central Mexican state of Morelos, was shot to death while campaigning.
Last month, mayoral candidate Lucero Lopez and five others, including a girl, were killed at a campaign rally in the southern state of Chiapas. In April, authorities in the north-central state of Guanajuato reported the murder of candidate Bertha Gisela Gaytán Gutiérrez, who was shot to death just as she was beginning her campaign trail.
Mexicans hope that Sheinbaum’s victory will bring hope for change in a country marked by gender inequality and gender-based violence. As one journalist expressed in the New York Times, “violence is the most formidable challenge that Claudia Sheinbaum…will have to confront when she takes power in October.”
“And yet she has not laid out a clear strategy to govern a country that is bathed in blood, scarred with mass graves in cow fields and garbage dumps,” Ioan Grillo wrote. “Sheinbaum will be in charge of a nation plagued by over 30,000 murders a year, 90 percent of which go unsolved, and she will have to face the powerful cartels behind those numbers, which are now networks of paramilitary organised crime and deeply embedded in communities.”