MEXICO CITY (CN) — A mayor of a town in Chiapas survived an assassination attempt just hours after a priest was shot and killed by armed men in the southern Mexican state.
Mario Hernández Aguilar, mayor of Chilón, Chiapas, was shot at, but unharmed, on Sunday night while traveling through the vicinity of Yajalón, Chiapas, after visiting indigenous areas of the state.
He began his post as mayor, under the Labor Party, on Oct. 2. No one has been arrested for the attack, which is being investigated through the Office of the Prosecutor for Indigenous Justice.
“The corresponding authorities are carrying out the relevant investigations,” the Chilón City Council said in a statement Monday.
The incident occurred hours after Father Marcelo Pérez Pérez was shot and killed after finishing Sunday mass by armed men who fled by motorcycle.
President Claudia Sheinbaum condemned the attack during her Monday morning press conference.
“We state that we mourn the murder of Father Marcelo Pérez Pérez in San Cristóbal de las Casas,” Sheinbaum said. “The investigation is being done. Yesterday, the Secretary of the Interior was in communication with the state government as well as with the diocese and the ecclesial authorities. We are coordinating to be able to move forward with the investigation so that this crime does not go unpunished.”
Pérez was a vocal opponent of organized crime in the region and an advocate for peace within indigenous municipalities of Chiapas, specifically the Tzotzil community of which he was a part.
In 2014, Pérez led a caravan that traveled to 12 Chiapas municipalities denouncing growing organized crime in the region, specifically within indigenous communities.
In 2021, he proposed a commission between the diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas, criminal groups and state and federal authorities to mediate the region’s conflicts.
Pérez received numerous death threats for over a decade, and in 2015 the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights urged the Mexican state to protect him, citing threats against his life, plans to kidnap him and marches against him planned by the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
The Mexican Office of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples Rights International condemned the attack in separate press releases on Monday. Both organizations claim he was not sufficiently protected by the state.
“The murder of Father Marcelo is absolutely unacceptable. His work was widely recognized by the indigenous peoples in Chiapas, and also internationally. Despite having protective measures and the constant complaints about the aggressions he faced, these were insufficient to prevent his murder,” said Jesús Peña Palacios, Mexican deputy representative of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, in a statement.
Pérez had to relocate various times throughout his life due to persecution. In one case, he fled the municipality of San Pedro Chenalhó after paramilitaries responsible for the Acteal Massacre threatened his life.
The Acteal Massacre of Dec. 22, 1997, saw the murder of 45 Tzotzil men, children and women of the pacifist group Las Abejas — supporters of the Zapatista National Liberation Army — while they were attending a catholic-indigenous prayer meeting inside a church in Acteal, Chiapas.
The 100 gunmen belonging to the paramilitary group, Máscara Roja, were trained by the Mexican military and backed such paramilitary groups to crush the threat of the Zapatista National Liberation Army.
An indigenous peoples’ rights reform was approved by the Mexican Congress and went into force on Oct. 1. The reform recognizes the rights of indigenous peoples at the constitutional level for the first time.
However, some critics say the reform doesn’t go far enough.
Hundreds have gathered in San Andrés Larráinzar, where Pérez was killed, to mourn his death.