You are here: Home » News » Crime » Seventeen Killed At Birthday Party Organized By LGBT Group In Mexico

Seventeen Killed At Birthday Party Organized By LGBT Group In Mexico

07/19/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
A birthday party in the Mexican city of Torreon ended in a bloodbath with seventeen women and men murdered and another eighteen injured. As musicians serenaded the guests and people were eating, drinking and dancing, gunmen blocked the exits and opened fire. It is one of the highest single-incident death tolls since the beginning of this latest wave of fighting in the Mexican drug war. So far, 25,000 people are dead. President Felipe Calderon launched a military-led offensive against the powerful narcotics cartels in December ‘06. The dead from the shooting were in their twenties and thirties. Some of the dead were related to each other.

The party was LGBT inclusive, and that has brought about some speculation that this may have been an anti-LGBT hate crime, but so far the tendency is to believe that it was drug smugglers sicne the state of Coahuila, where the city is located, is a prime trafficking site. Coahuila borders Texas. The party was organized through Facebook, and was set up by a gay group, though everyone was invited. The Facebook posting had directions and a map to the Italia Inn

Pictures from the scene show toppled white plastic chairs, scattered musical instruments and cups, plates and shoes strewn on the blood-splattered floor. Coahuila state Attorney General Jesus Tores said in a statement “The party was ongoing . . . when gunmen arrived in several vehicles, disembarked and, without uttering a word to those in attendance, opened fire.

The assailants fled, and it may be difficult to find them. Some 122 spent shells from high-velocity assault rifles were recovered.

Coahuila has been the site of a turf war between the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels as well as the paramilitary Zetas. Gunmen killed eight people in a bar in Torreon in May and a television station and the offices of a local newspaper were aalso attacked. Mass shootings at parties, bars and even rehab clinics have been on the rise across northern Mexico. Nineteen people were murdered when gunmen raided a drug-rehab center in the city of Chihuahua last month.

The violence across the border has been a justification for the kinds of anti-immigrant laws such as in Arizona even though violence in the United States has not spiked since this began, and in Arizona is down. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer even used the image of headless corpses being found in the Arizona desert to try and justify the draconian new law, but coroners across Arizona reported that none have been brought to their attention. Decapitation is a common form of warning for the drug cartels in Mexico.

The new law has lead to a spike in the number of deaths inside Arizona by people fleeing the fighting. Many are dying from exposure in the desert because they are now even more afraid to travel to any of the cities for fear of deportation. The new law in Arizona has done little to actually stem the tide of smuggling going through the state as Governor Brewer cut funds for law enforcement along the border.