3 Held in Killing of New Mayor in Mexico

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/04/world/americas/3-held-in-killing-of-new-mayor-in-mexico.html

Version 0 of 1.

MEXICO CITY — Three people, including a minor, were being held by the authorities on Sunday in the killing of the newly inaugurated mayor in Temixco, a central Mexican city.

Gov. Graco Ramírez of the state of Morelos, which contains Temixco, blamed organized crime for killing the mayor, Gisela Mota, 33, a former federal lawmaker who had been sworn in as mayor less than a day before she was shot in her home on Saturday morning.

Mr. Ramírez ordered more security measures for all of the state’s mayors, though he gave no details on what that involved.

Ms. Mota’s center-left Democratic Revolution Party released a statement describing her as “a strong and brave woman who, on taking office as mayor, declared that her fight against crime would be frontal and direct.” Bishop Ramón Castro Castro of the nearby city of Cuernavaca celebrated Mass at Ms. Mota’s home on Sunday and later spoke critically of a state where some areas are in control of organized crime.

“One theory could be that it was a warning to the other mayors,” Bishop Castro said to reporters. “If you don’t cooperate with organized crime, look at what will happen to you. It’s to scare them.”

After Ms. Mota’s killing, two suspects were killed in a clash with the police and three others were arrested, officials said. They were a 32-year-old woman, an 18-year-old man and the minor. The officials gave few other details, though the state’s attorney general, Javier Pérez Durón, said the suspects had been linked to other crimes.

Temixco, with about 100,000 people, is a suburb of Cuernavaca, a city famed among tourists for its colonial center, gardens and jacaranda-decked streets. “The city of eternal spring” was long a favorite weekend getaway for people from nearby Mexico City.

But drug and extortion gangs have plagued the area in recent years, driving away some tourists and residents. The expressway — as well as drug routes — between Mexico City and Acapulco cuts through Cuernavaca and Temixco.

Neither the governor nor prosecutors indicated which criminal organization might be involved.

Drugs, kidnappings and extortion in the area were once under the control of the Beltrán Leyva cartel, but that group’s collapse a few years ago unleashed fierce competition among its progeny and rivals in Morelos and the neighboring states of Guerrero and México.

An organization representing mayors in the country, the Association of Local Authorities of Mexico, issued a statement saying nearly 100 mayors had been killed across Mexico over the past decade, “principally at the hands of organized crime.”