Legislator Slain as Violence Rises Amid Mexico Drug Cartel Wars

Monday’s machine-gun slayings of a legislator and his assistant are the latest in a rash of violent deaths sweeping Mexico’s Sinaloa state, which is in the midst of a turf war between rival gangs of drug smugglers.

Human rights group Sinaloan Civic Front in Culiacan, the state capital, said Tuesday that there had been more than 240 killings this year, a 20% increase over the same period of 2004. Police have said that at least 80% of the slayings in Sinaloa are related to the illegal drug trade.

State lawmaker Saul Rubio Ayala of the National Action Party and his secretary, Omar Ruelas Garcia, were killed Monday as they drove through the city of Guasave in a sport utility vehicle. Gunmen in two vehicles overtook the pair and opened fire with 9-millimeter automatic pistols and large-caliber assault weapons.

Both men died at the scene. Their vehicle had been hit 90 times.

Rubio, a former mayor of a town also named Sinaloa, caused a stir in October when he attended the funeral of Miguel Angel Beltran Lugo, who law enforcement authorities say was a top aide to drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

When the media reported on Rubio’s attendance and speculated about his possible links to the cartel, the lawmaker held a news conference at which he burned copies of the local newspaper, El Debate.

Javier Valdez, a reporter for La Jornada newspaper in Mexico City, said Rubio was arrested in 2003 by the Mexican army for possession of an AR-15 assault rifle, whose use is restricted to the military.

Rubio told authorities that he carried the weapon for self-defense.

Rubio, who owned cattle and a chain of gas stations, was being investigated by the federal attorney general’s office in connection with his presence at the Beltran funeral, Valdez said.

Beltran was one of three alleged associates of Guzman, head of the so-called Sinaloa drug cartel, who were killed in the La Palma maximum security prison by rival gang members in 2004. Another of the victims was Guzman’s brother, Arturo Guzman Loera, who was shot by an inmate on New Year’s Eve in an area reserved for conversations between inmates and their lawyers.

The three killings led to the takeover of several federal prisons by Mexican army units in January and prompted debate about the government’s apparent inability to control its maximum security prisons.