The parks and gardens councilor of the municipality of San Juan Cacahuatepec, on the coast of Oaxaca, Guadalupe Urban Ceballos has been murdered, the municipality confirmed on Thursday. Ceballos, a member of the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM), was accosted as she left her home, where she was shot. “We ask the competent authorities for an immediate, serious and successful investigation, which will bring those responsible for this deplorable crime to justice,” the city council where the official worked said in a statement.
Local media reported that the attack occurred around 11 am, while the councilor was leaving her home in San Antonio Ocotlán, a town of 1,100 inhabitants near the border with the state of Guerrero. The official was surprised by a barrage of gunfire as she drove her vehicle to her workplace in San Juan Cacahuatepec, less than eight kilometers away.
Both the PVEM and the San Juan Cacahuatepec City Council condemned the crime and expressed their condolences to Ceballos’ family. “This cowardly act represents a serious affront to the institutions and values that govern our society. We cannot allow violence to try to silence the voices of those who work for the common well-being”, reads the document, which describes the councilor as “a public official committed to the causes of her community and to the strengthening of democratic life in our municipality”.
The Attorney General of the State of Oaxaca reported that it had opened an investigation into the crime. The authorities announced that they had received news of the discovery of a body on the road that connects the two municipalities on the morning of this Thursday. “Considering this, specialized and multidisciplinary personnel went to the site to carry out the assessments, the site processing, as well as the first investigations leading to the clarification of the case”, they explain in a note. The Secretariat of State for Women presented a public request to the Prosecutor’s Office for the investigations to be carried out “according to protocols and context analysis with a gender perspective”.
The councilor’s murder occurs in the same week as the murder of the mayor of Uruapan, Michoacán, Carlos Manzo, a crime that Ceballo had shared on his social networks a few days before his death, as well as that of the main lemon grower Bernardo Bravo.
