SALAMANCA, Mexico –
Gunmen opened fire at a community soccer field in the central Mexican city of Salamanca on Sunday, killing at least 11 people and wounding 12, local authorities said. Ten victims died at the scene and one later at a hospital; among the injured are a woman and a child. Mayor César Prieto said the assailants arrived as the match ended. He described the attack as part of a “crime wave” and appealed to President Claudia Sheinbaum for federal help to control the violence. The Guanajuato state prosecutor’s office said it is investigating and working with federal authorities to reinforce security in the area. (abcnews.go.com)
A local massacre with national implications
The killings underscore the persistent gap between headline crime statistics and lived reality in Mexico’s most consistently bloodstained state. While the federal government says the country’s 2025 murder rate fell to 17.5 per 100,000 inhabitants-the lowest since 2016-independent analysts have urged caution in interpreting the figures, which rely on preliminary reporting and may be revised as cases are reclassified. Guanajuato nevertheless recorded the highest number of homicides in Mexico last year, reflecting entrenched organized crime battles that have proved resistant to shifts in federal security policy and to the deployment of military forces for public security tasks.
The episode also tests President Sheinbaum’s early pledge to deepen coordination between federal and state authorities under Mexico’s public security framework, which is anchored in the constitutionally created National Guard and oversight by the federal Public Security Secretariat. The Salamanca massacre illustrates how, for residents, the perceived legitimacy of these institutions is shaped less by macro‑level homicide trends than by whether local massacres are prevented, investigated and punished.
An industrial corridor at the heart of a cartel feud
Guanajuato’s violence has been driven for years by a turf war between the Santa Rosa de Lima criminal organization and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). Salamanca, home to Petróleos Mexicanos’ (Pemex) Ing. Antonio M. Amor refinery and crossed by key fuel pipelines, sits on this front line. U.S. authorities last month sanctioned the Santa Rosa de Lima group and its leader, citing fuel and oil theft as a primary revenue stream and linking the gang’s activities to cross‑border black markets. Pemex has documented significant past progress against fuel tapping in Guanajuato, but illicit siphoning-and the extortion and protection rackets it enables-continue to destabilize the region and expose infrastructure meant to serve the legal energy market.
Mexico’s federal energy and security regulators have for years struggled to contain “huachicoleo,” or fuel theft, despite strengthened penalties under national hydrocarbons legislation. The Salamanca attack highlights how these illicit economies can bleed into everyday life far beyond refineries and rights‑of‑way, as criminal groups diversify from pipeline tapping into territorial control of neighborhoods, local businesses and informal recreation spaces.
Sporting spaces, public spaces under fire
Mass attacks on local gatherings are a grim feature of the conflict. Guanajuato has previously witnessed large‑scale assaults on unregulated rehabilitation centers-most notably the July 2020 Irapuato massacre-while Salamanca itself endured a high‑profile 2021 bombing outside a restaurant. Security analysts say such public‑space attacks serve intimidation and territorial control, sending a message not only to rivals but to mayors, police chiefs and local business owners over whom criminal groups seek leverage. Sunday’s shooting extends that pattern to grassroots sport, amplifying fear in everyday civic life and eroding confidence in public authorities’ ability to safeguard even routine weekend activities.
“Unfortunately, there are criminal groups trying to subjugate authorities, something they are not going to achieve,”
the mayor said, vowing that local institutions would not cede to criminal coercion. His remarks place the attack squarely within an ongoing contest between elected municipal governments-responsible for first‑line policing and public spaces-and criminal organizations that use spectacular violence to shape local decision‑making and extract informal “taxes” from communities.
Federal-state response and the numbers behind it
After the attack, state prosecutors opened an inquiry and coordinated with federal forces to stabilize the area; security authorities said the National Guard and army joined operations to track the perpetrators. The episode arrives as President Sheinbaum’s administration touts a nationwide decline in homicides from late 2024 through 2025, driven, officials say, by tighter interagency coordination and continuity with the security model set out in Mexico’s current National Development Plan. Yet Guanajuato’s absolute homicide burden remains a national outlier, illustrating how localized criminal economies-fuel theft, extortion and protection rackets-can blunt aggregate gains and complicate the federal government’s effort to demonstrate that its security strategy is delivering safer streets.
For prosecutors, the Salamanca case is also a test of institutional capacity: whether the Guanajuato state attorney general’s office can move beyond opening an investigation to securing credible arrests and convictions, and whether federal investigators and financial‑intelligence units can trace any links between the gunmen, local fuel‑theft structures and previously sanctioned criminal networks.
Why it matters beyond Guanajuato
Guanajuato anchors Mexico’s “Bajío” manufacturing corridor and inventories critical energy infrastructure. Persistent mass violence in nodes like Salamanca poses risks that spill across borders: it disrupts regional supply chains, pressures internal displacement and migration, and complicates U.S.-Mexico cooperation on security and energy crime. For multinational firms with production facilities in the state, repeated high‑impact attacks can feed into corporate risk assessments, insurance costs and decisions about where to expand or contract operations.
Washington’s recent sanctions against the Santa Rosa de Lima network reflect growing bilateral use of financial tools to target fuel‑theft economies that straddle the legal energy market. These measures sit alongside Mexico’s own legal framework against organized crime, including the country’s Federal Law against Organized Crime and asset‑forfeiture mechanisms that allow authorities to seize properties and accounts linked to criminal groups. How effectively those tools are deployed in cases like Salamanca will help determine whether the region’s industrial boom can coexist with a sustainable reduction in cartel‑driven violence.
As of Monday, January 26, 2026, authorities had reported no arrests and the Guanajuato state prosecutor’s investigation remained active alongside federal security deployments, with local residents left to weigh official promises of reinforcements against the shock of another massacre in a public place. (english.news.cn)