The widow of guerilla leader Lucio Cabañas was shot dead yesterday (July 3rd) along with her sister in the community of Xaltianguis in the state of Guerrero.
According to a police report, Isabel Anaya Nava and her older sister Reyna were gunned down at approximately 1pm on Sunday while leaving a church where they were selling food. Armed men opened fire on the sisters and then stole their cellular phones before fleeing in a blue vehicle.
Micaela Cabañas Anaya, the daughter of Isabel Anaya Nava and Lucio Cabañas Barrientos, received a threat via phone at 5pm from her murdered mother’s cellular number. Micaela Cabañas is part a group known as “Nacidos en la Tempestad“, an organization of children of people killed or disappeared during Mexico’s “Dirty War” against leftists in the 1960s and ’70s.
After Lucio Cabañas died in a military action in Guerrero’s mountains in late 1974, his teenage wife and newborn daughter were “disappeared” and held in Mexico’s military base Number One, along with members of the Cabañas family. They were released in mid-1976.
Micaela Cabañas wrote in an article that she and her mother only told those close to them of their relation to the famous guerilla leader who founded the “Partido de los Pobres”.
Two of Isabel Anaya’s sisters were killed in early 2011. Human rights groups warn that the theft of Isabel and Reyna Anaya’s telephones indicate their contacts may now be at risk.
Guerrero is one of Mexico’s poorest states. Decades of counter-insurgency against leftist campesino groups has dovetailed with a more recent explosion of drug war-related violence.