On Monday at the Teotihuacan ruins, 30 miles northeast of Mexico City, a disturbed 27-year-old man shot and killed a Canadian tourist and shot and injured 7 others. Six other tourists were injured during the attack, which was on the Pyramid of the Moon, the largest at the ruins:
Pyramid of the Moon, taken when we visited there on Jan 1 this year.
As you can see, people trying to evade a shooter could easily be injured. The stairs are steep and narrow.
Officers from the National Guard (which are federal police) and a local police officer climbed the pyramid as soon as they could get there and shot the attacker in the leg. (They were stationed at the entrances of the ruins, and it took them under 10 minutes to arrive since the place is huge.) After he was shot, the attacker took his life with his own gun.
The attacker was carrying an old Smith & Wesson .38 revolver, which was manufactured before 1968 so the ATF couldn’t trace it. He had a plastic bag full of bullets that he used to reload his pistol at least twice. April 20 was the anniversary of the Columbine shooting, and that’s apparently why this guy did it:
Ministerial authorities located next to the man's body a picture frame with a photograph created with artificial intelligence, in which he simulated accompanying Erick David Harris and Dylan Bennet Klebold, responsible for the Columbine High School massacre in the state of Colorado, which occurred on April 20, 1999.
It was also established that the killer was wearing a shirt with the words "Disconnected & Self-Destruct" and the timers were found to be at zero, a situation that has led the Attorney General's Office of the State of Mexico (FGJEM) to investigate whether the attack was timed.
[…]
The shooter was wearing a t-shirt with the slogan 'Disconnect and Self-Destroy', linked to The True Crime Community movement , which emerged after the Columbine massacre in the United States.
This type of clothing is part of a subculture that glorifies violence and has been used in other deadly events, such as the one on April 20, 1999, when two teenagers, identified as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered 12 students and a teacher before committing suicide at Columbine High School in Colorado.
In numerous analyses of these events, the concept of True Crime emerged , which was taken up in clandestine movements that, as a tribute to the Columbine killers, wore disruptive clothing and sometimes with the same slogan as the perpetrators: ' Natural Selection' and 'Wrath'.
A shooting like this in an archeological ruin has never happened before in Mexico. There’s a lot of scary noise about Mexico being a dangerous country, but mass shootings in places like this just don’t happen. Cartel crime and shooting is a rural phenomenon, and it doesn’t happen to civilians or tourists. I spent six weeks in Mexico and didn’t feel threatened or scared once.
To say that this upset the Mexican government would be a major understatement. President Claudia Sheinbaum devoted yesterday’s mañanera (morning press conference) to the shooting. With the World Cup less than two months away, the Mexican government is very interested in pointing out that they have thousands of security personnel to make sure that tourists are safe. With US hotels cutting prices because foreigners don’t want to travel here, Mexico has an opportunity to shine. Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey are all World Cup cities.
Security Minister Omar Carcia Harfuch — known as “Batman” by Mexicans— at yesterday’s mañanera.
Both Claudia and Batman announced that security at archeological sites would be boosted. This will, of course, suck. Before Monday, at Teotihuacan, you park in a dirt parking lot, queue up for a minute to pay an entrance fee, and walk in. Now I’m guessing there will be a ton of National Guard presence patrolling the ruins. And, tourists will be jittery, never mind that recent Shakira and Andrea Bocelli concerts in the Zocalo, the main square of Mexico City, attracted 400,000 and 300,000 fans without any major incidents.
The Teotihuacan incident overshadowed another security incident with US involvement: the death of two US security personnel who are rumored to be CIA in a car accident in teh northern state of Chihuahua. It’s against the Mexican Constitution and Mexican federal law to allow foreign agents in the country without approval of federal authorities. The politics of this are that Chihuahua is one of the few states in Mexico that is not governed by Morena, the party founded by AMLO and of which Claudia and most of the country is a member. Chihuahua’s governor is a member of the National Action Party (PAN):
We saw a lot of billboards like this when we were in Mexico a couple of months ago. The slogan is “Let’s Defend Mexico, homeland, family and liberty.”
So, it’s on-brand that the PAN governor of Chihuahua would make a side deal with US security, and it’s on-brand that the US would send CIA agents into Mexico without consulting with the federal government.
By the way, the Morena slogan is “La Esperanza de Mexico” — the hope of Mexico.
Morena party HQ in Loreto, Baja California Sur.
