Mayor's Couageous Challenge

We can be fearful but still engage in heroic acts for a cause we believe in. This is courage. The act elevates a person in the pursuit of what is right in life and how we can contribute.

Gisela Mota was thirty-three, dedicated, humble and an honorable hard-working woman. Attending protests from the age of twelve with her activist Mother, studying law at the university she then became an idealistic politician who believed it was worth risking her life. She accepted a political position in her home town to affect change, despite threats. Her objective, her passion, was to clean up the town’s corruption.

Her mother advised against it. Committed to assuming this challenging office, she shouted at her Mom, “If I don’t run for office, who will?”

The crime was not unusual in this part of the world, the small state of Morelos with a population of 1.9 million. It was a small village of Pueblo Viejo located south of the Mexican capital. It boosts a superb climate adorned by colonial cobblestone streets, but the fourth highest murder rate for kidnappings, extortion and rape according the NGO Citizen Council for Security and Criminal Justice. This is where the murder of a young brave woman occurred.

She had refused official security upon assuming the position as mayor empathic it was a waste of the limited public resources.

Her killing was just one day upon assuming office August, 2016. It was a violent crime by those who opposed her, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) who committed a wave of organized crime and oppression in the cities of Mexico.

Mota was asleep when the armed gang forced their way into her house during the early morning. Only her mother was awake to confront seven armed and masked gun toting men that demanded to know where the mayor was.

Family members were dragged out of bed, forced to lie face down with guns held to their heads with a demand to know where Mota was hiding. This was not a kidnapping as her mother had feared. This was death as she ran into the room identifying herself and was shot four times.

Police later killed two who shot her and two more accomplices were arrested. The fee paid for the men who were hired to enact this crime was a mere $29,000 for a human life.

Mexican crime runs rampant as one hundred mayors have been beaten and assassinated in Mexico. World-wide at least ten women have been killed in revenge for a woman challenging the male-dominated position in politics since 1984 in Iraq, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Somalia, Bagdad, India—even Sweden, Spain and London.

These are women with a resilient mission to make a difference and change a course they feel is unjust, defy corruption with a mission to light a future of personal justice in their countries, as they risk their lives through courage.