While a merry football celebration is going on in one part of the country, the reality in the south of Mexico is a lot grimmer. In the state of Oaxaca, an area where drug cartels are strongly represented, another mayor was shot dead.
According to local authorities, the victim is José Ángel Bravo Martínez, mayor of the town of San Miguel Amatitlán. According to the Oaxaca state prosecutor’s office, he was the victim of “an attack with a firearm,” according to a press release.
San Miguel Amatitlán has approximately seven thousand inhabitants. Criminal gangs, including the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) and Sinaloa, compete against each other to gain control of drug routes. Last month, another mayor, Mario Hernández García of the city of Santiago Amoltepec, was murdered in the same state. Two other people were also killed in that attack.
Oaxaca Governor Salomón Jara has condemned “the cowardly murder” of Mayor Bravo. “In Oaxaca, we will not allow violence to prevail over the law or the will of our communities,” he said.
Since 2006, about a hundred mayors have been murdered in Mexico. On November 1, 2025, popular politician Carlos Manzo Rodríguez, who was mayor of a municipality two hundred miles west of Mexico City, was assassinated. He was a widely respected leader in the fight against organized crime.