Mayor-elect of Chiapas city near Guatemala border kidnapped

The incoming mayor of a municipality in Chiapas, near the Guatemalan border, was kidnapped Tuesday from a café in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas. He is the third politician from the incoming mayor’s besieged municipality to have disappeared since December last year.

Security video posted on social media shows Aníbal Roblero Castillo, incoming mayor of Frontera Comalapa, Chiapas, and at least one companion being forcibly pushed 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 the June 2 mayoral election in Frontera Comalapa for the Ecological Green Party of Mexico (PVEM) with 28,776 votes (65%) and will be sworn in on October 1.

Authorities released a report on Thursday missing persons report posted on facebookThe mayor-elect’s family is asking the public for help in finding Roblero.

A state plagued by cartel violence

For at least three years, residents of the Frontera Comalapa municipality — population 81,000 — have been victims of rival criminal organizations battling for control of human trafficking and drug routes through southern Mexico. Violence has recently increased, forcing residents to flee their homes, some forcibly evicted by cartels, according to local and national media reports.

The situation is not unique to Frontera Comalapa. Hundreds of residents across Chiapas have sought refuge from the increasing violence, Some flee across the border to Guatemala.

Unfortunately for ChiapaneseThe federal government is struggling to address the increased presence of organized crime in Chiapas. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has downplayed the violence there and this week I finished it as “a problem between members of criminal gangs.”

Although Roblero owns a house in the center of Frontera Comalapa, he – like many Chiapas politicians in municipalities affected by organized crime – has taken refuge in the state capital, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, according to the newspaper El Universal.

Roblero is the third politician from Frontera Comalapa to be targeted by suspected drug gangs since December.

On December 14, gunmen kidnapped former mayor Irán Mérida Matamoros just outside his ranch, Santa Polonia, along the border with Guatemala. Mérida was believed to be en route to Tuxtla Gutiérrez, where he was director of Chiapas’ Agriculture and Livestock Development Fund.

Four months later, a video was made public of Mérida being interrogated by an unknown man. The former mayor has not been seen since.

On April 27, Rey David Gutiérrez, one of Roblero’s opponents in the mayoral elections, was kidnapped from his home in Frontera Comalapa after reports that he had received threats. On May 1, his captors released a video of Gutiérrez, but he has still not been found.

Despite his disappearance, Gutiérrez finished second in the June 2 elections, with 8,550 votes.

With reports from Lopez-Dóriga Digital, The Universal And Milenio