About six men with long guns walked into a pre-Christmas party in central Mexico early on Sunday and asked nobody’s permission. A witness told AFP that the roughly 100 young people inside quickly realized the men had not been invited. “When they were asked who they were, they started shooting,” he said.
Eleven people died. Authorities in Guanajuato state first put the toll at 12, then revised it down on Monday, and said 14 were wounded, according to AFP. The state prosecutor’s office had earlier reported a dozen injured.
A party in Salvatierra
The attack happened in the town of Salvatierra, reportedly at a hacienda that can be rented for festivities. The Tierra Negra foundation, which runs social projects in the area, said the victims were young people at “posadas,” religious gatherings tied to the Christmas story. Foundation member Carlos Silva called them “all young acquaintances, admired and very good people” and wrote: “It’s a horror what is happening in Salvatierra.”
Salvatierra Mayor German Cervantes condemned the violence in the community of San Jose del Carmen and said the town was cooperating fully with prosecutors. Governor Diego Sinhue Rodríguez promised that authorities would “find the whereabouts of those responsible.”
The town has a history here. Three years earlier, authorities found unmarked graves in the city of some 90,000 holding at least 50 bodies.
Two more attacks over the weekend
The party massacre was one of at least three mass shootings in Mexico that weekend. Late Saturday, about 30 miles from Salvatierra, attackers on motorcycles pulled up to a barber shop in Salamanca, also in Guanajuato, and killed four men, local officials said.
On Sunday, in the Caribbean resort of Tulum, three men were shot dead and four people wounded at a bar. Quintana Roo state prosecutors said a preliminary investigation pointed to a dispute over retail drug sales, adding that the safety of the public and visitors “was never at risk.” Tulum’s drug gangs have a record of catching tourists in their gunfire, though. In 2021, two tourists, a California travel blogger born in India and a German, were killed while eating at a restaurant in a crossfire between rival dealers. Early in the year, the U.S. State Department had advised travelers to “exercise increased situational awareness” at Mexico’s Caribbean beach resorts, Tulum among them, especially after dark.
Guanajuato topped Mexico’s homicide list that year with 3,029 killings so far, by official figures. CBS News noted that two feuding drug cartels operate in the state, and that one has fought the Jalisco cartel for years over control of it.
Sources
- 11 killed in mass shooting at Christmas party in Mexico: "When they were asked who they were, they started shooting"
- List of mass shootings in the United States in 2025
Sources
- 11 killed in mass shooting at Christmas party in Mexico – CBS News
- List of massacres in Mexico – Wikipedia
