Yolanda Sanchez Figueroa, a female Mexican Mayor who headed the country’s western town of Cotija was shot dead by gunmen almost 24 hours after the celebrated announcement of the country’s first woman president.
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According to local media, she was shot 19 times and died in a hospital shortly after. Her bodyguard was also killed in the gun battle.
Figueroa had governed Cotija, a municipality in the Mexican state of Michoacán since 2021 and was the first woman to be elected to the post.
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No arrests have been made since her killing, but it’s believed that those who carried out the attack are linked to an organised crime group.
Last September, she was kidnapped while leaving a shopping mall in the city of Guadalajara, which neighours Michoacán. She was found alive three days later.
She’s also reported to have received death threats since taking office in 2021. Cotija as it happens, had become a hotspot of cartel violence after the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), which is considered the most dangerous in Mexico, showed a presence there.
“Ms Sánchez had said that the men who had threatened her after she had taken office had demanded that she hand the security of the town over to state police officers in the pay of organised crime groups. She refused and asked for the military to reinforce the town. The mayor was also provided with armed bodyguards after the incident,” the BBC said in a report.
The government secretariat of the Michoacán state condemned the attack in a post on X, saying that a “security operation coordinated with federal agencies has been deployed to find those responsible for the incident.”
El @GobMichoacan condena el homicidio de la presidenta municipal de Cotija, Yolanda Sánchez Figueroa. Se ha desplegado un operativo de seguridad coordinado con instancias federales para dar con los responsables del hecho.
— Segob Michoacán (@SdeGobMich) June 4, 2024
