Link Found between Mexican Mayor’s Killing and Cartel Dispute

MEXICO CITY – The murder of Gisela Mota, mayor of the central Mexican city of Temixco, is linked to a dispute between rival gangs for control of police departments ahead of the implementation of a unified command system, Morelos Gov. Graco Ramirez said.

“In the past few weeks, the threats increased” against mayors who supported having their local departments assigned to a unified command under the Morelos state police, the governor told Radio Formula.

The threats were made by the Los Rojos and Guerreros Unidos gangs, which have been fighting for control of the state and “are determined to take advantage of this political situation (the start of the terms of several mayors) and again take, like before, control of the police,” Ramirez said.

The disappearance of 43 Ayotzinapa Rural Normal School students on Sept. 26, 2014, in Iguala, a city in neighboring Guerrero state, has been linked to the gang war.

The official version of events, which has been challenged by relatives of the victims, is that Iguala municipal police officers detained the students and then handed them over to Guerreros Unidos members, who thought they belonged to Los Rojos, murdered them and burned the bodies.

The 33-year-old Mota was gunned down in front of her family last Saturday by hitmen who burst into her house a day after she was sworn in as mayor.

“It’s with the monitoring of the (security) cameras that (the assailants) are spotted trying to get away and they are found around some paths heading toward the Temixco airport, and that’s where the police engaged them” in a shootout, said the governor, a member of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD.

Two of the suspects, one identified as a gang boss with a prior criminal record in Guerrero and Mexico states, were killed, Ramirez said.

“He was a very important hitman in the Los Rojos group and this same cell was the one that dumped a mutilated body in front of the state police offices on Dec. 29 in an act of provocation,” the governor said.

Three suspects have been arrested in the case – a minor, an 18-year-old man and a 32-year-old woman – and more arrests will likely be made, Ramirez said.

Ramirez signed an executive order imposing a unified police command in 15 cities that had been resisting the policy on Sunday.

Cuernavaca, the capital of Morelos, has refused to replace its local police department with a unified state command and Mayor Cuauhtemoc Blanco has clashed with the governor over the policy