Authorities said Thursday the massacre of 20 townspeople in southern Mexico appears to have been the work of a drug lord who used social media to try to blame a rival gang.
The Tequileros had long terrorized the town, but had been chased out years ago by a vigilante group believed to have been backed by the Familia Michoacana, which dominates the area.
“The attack was aimed at me,” Hurtado said describing the events in which gunmen entered the town and opened fire on a meeting the mayor was holding with other officials — apparently members of a vigilante group.“According to a serious line of investigation, it was they who carried out the mass execution and tried to make it appear as if another group,” Mejia said.
With poor lighting and sound, the Tequileros video was unlike the more slickly produced cartel videos that have become the norm, in which well-armed groups of masked cartel gunmen regularly threaten rivals and authorities, and claim or reject credit for killings. The Tequileros video now appears to have been a fake.
Hurtado said he had planned to attend the meeting at which Mayor Conrado Mendoza and his father, a former mayor, were killed, but that the gunmen opened fire before he had descended from his bulletproof vehicle, allowing him to narrowly escape.