Sign of the Times

Four Mexicans were killed when a dispute between two Tzotzil Indian families over a pothole in the street escalated into a full-blown shootout. I can’t imagine how a dispute over a pothole lead to gunfire but somehow it did.

As the story goes, one of the families closed off the cracked concrete and mud road in the town of Banelos in the poor southern state of Chiapas to fill in a hole left by heavy rain. That sounds like a reasonable excuse for closing off a round. Take the repair into your own hands.

However, the closing of the roadway angered a family with a transport business who needed to get their truck through.

When the first family refused to re-open the road, insults led to blows and finally the two families shot at each other using various caliber guns and a hefty AR-15 rifle. Shootings are not uncommon in Mexico’s little-policed indigenous regions, where many take the law into their own hands.

Something about this story sounds a little fishy to me. Where on earth did these families get all their gun power? Just what kind of transportation business did the second family run? I wonder.

The pothole has since been filled in with rubble to repair the original damage.