Courageous Mexican mayor Maria Santos Gorrostieta cheated death twice when
she survived assassination attempts by druglords — but three times was too
much.
Gorrostieta, dubbed a “heroine of the 21st century” for her refusal to be
cowed by the ruthless cartels that rule much of Mexico, was kidnapped in broad
daylight this month after leaving her home in the town of Morelia.
She was driving her daughter to school when thugs in another vehicle blocked
her white van. They pulled her out and began kicking and beating her in front of
passers-by.
The 36-year-old mother begged the men to spare her girl and appeared to get
into the thugs’ vehicle voluntarily, witnesses said.
Gorrostieta, mayor of the town of Tiquicheo from 2008 to 2011, had previously
had a police escort and government security assigned to her.
But despite the two ambushes — which killed her husband and left her horribly
scarred — her protection was pulled after she left office.
“No one could do anything to help her,” newspaper El Universal said of her
abduction two weeks ago.
Her relatives waited for a call from the kidnappers, hoping they would trade
her for ransom.
No call came. The family alerted police, who launched a search.
Five days after her disappearance, farm workers found Gorrostieta’s body —
stabbed, burned and beaten — in a roadside ditch in the town of San Juan
Tararameo.
Her relatives identified the body of the mother of three the next day.
Parts of Mexico have become a no-man’s-land, where legal authorities fear to
tread and death comes cheap.
Over the weekend, 19 bodies were found in the northern border state of
Chihuahua, including those of eight people who had been tortured and killed on
Friday.
Many of the dead have been victims of the drug cartels, which have
increasingly included elected and appointed officials.
Since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a war on the cartels six
years ago, about two dozen mayors have been murdered.
Gorrostieta was one of at least seven women who were willing to serve as
mayors or police chiefs.
Two of them, Hermila Garcia Quinones and Silvia Molina, were assassinated. A
third, Erika Gandara, was kidnapped and is feared dead, and a fourth, Marisol
Valles Garcia, 21, left her job and fled to the United States.
Gorrostieta, a doctor who studied medicine in a university in Morelia, began
getting threats after she ran for mayor of Tiquicheo and was elected as a member
of the Institutional Revolutionary Party in 2008.
She ignored the threats — at her own peril. In October 2009, her car was
attacked by gunmen in the town of El Limone. Her husband, José Sanchez — who had
escaped a showdown with an armed mob that year — died in the fusillade.
Gorrostieta was seriously wounded but soon returned to work, as defiant as
ever.
Three months later, in January 2010, she was attacked again, this time on a
road between the states of Guerrero and Michoacan as she headed to a meeting.
Gunmen with assault rifles fired 30 bullets at her van. Three hit her,
leaving serious wounds. Her brother and a reporter were wounded.
But Gorrostieta sought to use the publicity to get the public to join her war
on drugs. She bared her scars in photos that appeared in a local newspaper.
“I wanted to show them my wounded, mutilated, humiliated body because I’m not
ashamed of it,” she said, “because it is the product of the great misfortunes
that have scarred my life, that of my children and my family.”
The wounds left her in near constant pain. She had to wear a colostomy
bag.
Gorrostieta, a devout Catholic, said she couldn’t understand why she had been
marked for death.
“I have a clear conscience,” she said.
“I have never had any issues of any kind, be it money, family or crime
related, and I have never had any fights with any neighbors or residents of my
town or any other town.”
After the second attack, she considered quitting — but couldn’t. She said she
had an obligation to her town of 13,000-plus people as well as to the memory of
her slain husband.
“At another stage in my life, perhaps I would have resigned from what I have,
my position, my responsibilities as the leader of my Tiquicheo,” she said.
“But today, no.”
“It is not possible for me to surrender when I have three children whom I
have to educate by setting an example,” she said.
“And also because of the memory of the man of my life, the father of my three
little ones, the one who was able to teach me the value of things and to fight
for them.”
She admitted to being plagued by the memory of the two attacks.
“I struggle day to day to erase from my mind the images of the horror I
lived, and that others who did not deserve or expect it also suffered,” she
said.
Nevertheless, Gorrostieta rebuilt her life. She married again, to Nereo
Delgado Patinoran. She switched political parties.
After her stint at Tiquicheo was over, she ran in an election for Mexico’s
legislature, the Congress of the Union, but failed to win a seat.
Her death is being investigated by Mexico’s Anti-Kidnapping and Extortion
Institution.
The unit has another task: Gorrostieta’s second husband, Patinoran, vanished
when she did and is still missing.
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