A Mexican peasant leader in the southern state of Guerrero was shot four times and killed, officials and local media reported Saturday.
The chief prosecutor’s office in Guerrero said Organization of Peasants of the Sierra Sur leader Eusebio Vazquez Juarez was gunned down by unidentified assailants Thursday night as he bicycled to his home in the town of Tepexitla.
The prosecutor’s office said in a statement the evidence indicated a personal motive for the slaying, but newspapers, quoting family members and officials of the peasant group, said Vazquez was probably killed for political reasons.
“He denounced (the) police and (the) army. They were the only rivals he had because he defended the rights of peasants and denounced the government,” the dead man’s father, Bernardo Vazquez de la Cruz, told the left-wing La Jornada newspaper.
