The mayor-elect of a Chiapas municipality near the Guatemala border was kidnapped from a cafe in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, on Tuesday, becoming the third politician from the mayor-elect’s besieged municipality to be disappear since last December.
Security video published on social media shows Aníbal Roblero Castillo, mayor-elect of Frontera Comalapa, Chiapas, and at least one companion being forcibly shoved into a vehicle by masked gunmen outside a cafe in the western Tuxtla Gutiérrez neighborhood of San José Terán just before 5 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon.
Roblero won Frontera Comalapa’s mayoral race for the Ecological Green Party of Mexico (PVEM) on June 2 with 28,776 votes (65%) and is due to be sworn in on Oct. 1.
Authorities on Thursday released a missing persons report that has been posted on Facebook. The mayor-elect’s family is asking the public to help locate Roblero.
A state plagued by cartel violence
For at least three years now, residents of the municipality of Frontera Comalapa — population 81,000 — have been victimized by rival criminal organizations battling to control human trafficking and drug routes through southern Mexico. The violence has spiked recently, forcing residents to leave their homes, some forcibly removed by cartels, according to various local and national media reports.
The situation is not unique to Frontera Comalapa. Hundreds of residents from across Chiapas have sought refuge from the rising violence, some fleeing across the border into Guatemala.
Unfortunately for chiapanecos, the federal government has struggled to respond to the increased presence of organized crime in Chiapas. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has downplayed the violence there and this week dismissed it as “a problem between members of criminal gangs.”
Although Roblero owns a home in downtown Frontera Comalapa, he — like many Chiapas politicians in municipalities affected by organized crime — has sought refuge in the state capital of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, according to the newspaper El Universal.
Roblero is the third Frontera Comalapa politician to be targeted by alleged drug gangs since December.
On Dec. 14, armed men kidnapped former mayor Irán Mérida Matamoros just outside of his ranch, Santa Polonia, along the border with Guatemala. Mérida was said to be headed for Tuxtla Gutiérrez, where he was the director of Chiapas’ Agriculture and Livestock Development Fund.
Four months later, a video showing Mérida being interrogated by an unidentified man was made public. The former mayor has not been seen since.
On April 27, Rey David Gutiérrez — one of Roblero’s opponents in the mayoral election — was kidnapped from his home in Frontera Comalapa after reports that he had been receiving threats. On May 1, his captors released a video of Gutiérrez, but he has yet to be found.
Despite being disappeared, Gutiérrez came in second in the June 2 election, receiving 8,550 votes.
With reports from López-Dóriga Digital, El Universal and Milenio
