MEXICO CITY — A mayoral candidate and five other people were killed when gunmen opened fire at a campaign rally in the violence-plagued southern Mexican state of Chiapas, officials said.
State prosecutors said a girl was among six people killed in Thursday night’s shooting, along with mayoral candidate Lucero López Maza. Two others were injured, they said.
“A confrontation occurred between armed civilians during a political campaign event,” prosecutors said in a statement.
It was unclear whether López Maza was the intended target of the attack, because shootings have become very common and widespread in the area.
The mass shooting took place at a crossroads in the rural town of La Concordia, Chiapas, about 80 miles (125 kilometers) from the border with Guatemala.
The area near the border with Guatemala is a major drug and migrant smuggling route and Mexico’s two main drug cartels have been fighting for control of the region.
On Sunday, 11 people died in mass shootings in a town in the district of Chicomuselo, Chiapas, a few dozen kilometers from La Concordia. The murderers killed an entire family and burned their bodies.
On Friday, the Roman Catholic Church said drug gangs had carried out the murders in Chicomuselo because residents there had refused to leave their homes or work for the gangs.
“These men and women refused to leave their homes, despite violence, threats and harassment by criminal gangs to make them join their ranks,” according to the statement from the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Cristóbal de las Houses.
The church statement said the state of Chiapas, with a large indigenous population, “is inundated with violence generated by (fights over) territorial control and the interest of some criminal groups to continue mining.”
He did not specify which mines the cartels were trying to exploit, but the accusation is not unreasonable nor is it unprecedented in the cartel-dominated regions of Mexico. In 2013, authorities in the western state of Michoacán acknowledged that the Knights Templar cartel had essentially taken over iron ore mining in the state. They said exporting ore to China was one of the cartel’s main sources of income.
The rise in violence in Chiapas was embarrassing for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador when he visited the border state on Friday to meet with Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo.
As usual, López Obrador – who has refused to confront the drug cartels – sought to minimize the problem of violence.
“There are those who maintain that Chiapas is on fire, no, as I have explained to them, the problem is in this region and we are going to solve it,” said the president during a press conference in Tapachula, Chiapas.
Thursday’s killings also shed light on the fact that the run-up to Mexico’s July 2 election has been marred by violence, with some 20 candidates killed so far in 2024.
Once again, López Obrador tried to downplay the violence and described those who denounce the killings as “vultures” seeking to defame his administration.
“Fortunately there have been fewer attacks than in other elections, but today there is a lot of sensationalism, it is very unfortunate, there are many people who seek to profit from the killings and human suffering,” he said. “This is a time of vultures.”
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