Another Mayor and Former Schoolteacher Murdered in Mexico, This Time By Stoning

(Sept. 28) -- A Mexican schoolteacher-turned-mayor was stoned to death along with one of his aides in the western state of Michoacan, authorities said Monday, making him the fifth mayor in less than six weeks to be killed in Mexico.

Gustavo Sanchez, 29, became the interim mayor of Tancitaro in December after the town's mayor, city council and police department all resigned in light of threats from drug traffickers. The head of the city council had been kidnapped and killed earlier.

Sanchez went missing on Saturday. Police found his body and the body of his secretary, Rafael Equihua Cervantes, 36, in the back of an abandoned truck along a rural road outside the town of Uruapan on Monday. They say that bloody rocks found nearby were used to smash the victims' heads.

The execution style has authorities concerned because drug cartels generally stick to slayings by gunshot or beheading.

"We've had executions of people, a town official, a councilman, but always shot to death ... never anything like this," Michoacan state prosecutor Jesus Montejano said, according to the Los Angeles Times. "We are worried because this situation is very different from what organized crime usually does."

In Mexico's ferocious drug wars, which have claimed 29,000 lives since 2006, Michoacan is the territory of La Familia Michoacana, a drug cartel specializing in crystal meth and infamous for carving initials into the heads of its victims. Its leader is Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, or El Mas Loco, the Craziest One.

Michoacan, known for its avocados, mangoes and marijuana, includes the port city of Lazaro Cardenas, a critical station for drug trafficking routes into the United States, according to The Economist.

Sanchez is the 11th mayor to be slain in Mexico this year alone. Last week, Prisciliano Rodriguez, the mayor of Doctor Gonzalez, a town in the northeastern state of Nuevo Leon, was shot to death. The next day, the mayor-elect of Gran Morelos, a town in the northern state of Chihuahua, was shot in an assassination attempt. On Sept. 8, Alexander Lopez Garcia, the mayor of a small town in San Luis Potosi state, was shot to death while he sat at his desk in City Hall.

Drug gangs' increased targeting of mayors may not be a coincidence, according to security expert Raul Benitez, who spoke to The Christian Science Monitor. As President Felipe Calderon cracks down on local police and authorities who have agreements with the drug cartels, the mayors are forced to be less lenient than before.

The unfortunate result is murder.

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