An American couple was shot and killed while visiting the western Mexican state of Mexico. Michoacanwhich was invaded by a violent crime wave.
State prosecutors said in a statement On Thursday, the couple – identified as Gloria A., 50, and Rafael C., 53 – were traveling in a van in Angamacutiro municipality on Wednesday when they were shot and killed.
The woman died at the scene and the man died of his injuries a short time later at a local hospital, the release added.
It is not clear why the couple, who were married, were targeted.
A spokeswoman for state prosecutors said Reuters that the woman, who had obtained American citizenship, and the man, born in the United States to Mexican parents, had a family and a home in Angamacutiro.
ENRIQUE CASTRO/AFP via Getty Images
The spiral of violence, largely linked to drug trafficking, has led to the killing of more than 450,000 people in Mexico since 2006, when the government launched an offensive against organized crime.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaumwho took office in October, ruled out launching a new “war on drugs,” as the controversial program was called.
She pledged to follow her predecessor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s strategy of “hugs, not bullets” of using social policy to tackle the causes of crime.
Gangs and drug cartels have long infiltrated, intimidated or bribed local officials to work for them, often going so far as to take a cut of the municipal budget or use local police forces to warn or warn them. protect from federal raids. Sometimes the police themselves profit from drug trafficking.
Exposing cartel corruption can have deadly consequences. Earlier this year, a business leader from the state of Tamaulipas was dejected after complaining in television interviews of cartel extortion. A few weeks earlier, a prominent businesswoman who had filed similar complaints had been murdered in the northern border state of Baja California.