(Beth Clifton collage)
Three U.S. citizens identified among the dead
ZINAPECUARO, Mexico––Three U.S. citizens died and a fourth was critically wounded at an illegal cockfight on March 27, 2022 in Zinapecuaro, Michoacan state, Mexico, about halfway between Mexico City and Jalisco.
The four U.S. citizens were among the 20 dead and six reported survivors in killings that Mexican authorities told media were apparently undertaken as revenge for the masacre of 17 people at a funeral in nearby San José de Gracia on February 27, 2022.
The gunmen who conducted the San José de Gracia massacre took the bodies of the dead with them. The bodies have yet to be found.
Salvador Alvarez and his father, Jose Abiel Alvarez Sr., with cockfighting trophy.
Cockpit owned by Phoenix resident
Among the U.S. dead in the Zinapecuaro attack were Jose Abiel Alvarez Senior, of Phoenix, Arizona, 1,400 miles north.
Despite the distance from Zinapecuaro to Phoenix, Jose Abiel Alvarez Senior was identified by the Michoacán Prosecutor’s Office as owner of El Paraiso, the unlicensed cockfighting arena where the shootings occurred.
The name of the arena “The Paradise,” meaning that the victims went to Paradise before they died.
Salvador Alvarez.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Son died with father
Killed with Jose Abiel Alvarez Senior was one of his sons, Salvador Alvarez.
Salvador Alvarez identified himself on Facebook as “Organizador de Eventos at Palenque Rancho El Paraíso.”
Falling with the Alvarez father and son was self-identified cockfighter Daniel Stalin Martinez Equihua of Morelia, Mexico, who promoted his cockfighting activities on at least two Facebook accounts and was on Salvador Alvarez’s Facebook “friends” list.
“They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” posted Alvarez son and brother Jose Abiel Alvarez Jr.
Jose Abiel Alvarez Sr. at left, with other family members, including Salvador Alvarez (center).
“There for the holidays”
The third U.S. citizen killed in the Zinapecuaro cockfight massacre was Melissa Silva, 36, of Watsonville, California, 20 miles north of Salinas, a longtime U.S. cockfighting hotspot.
(See Wildfires, COVID-19, & cockfighting besiege Monterey County and More cockfighters than stars in Doris Day/Clint Eastwood country?
Critically injured was Melissa Silva’s younger sister, Arleth Silva, 16, of Chicago. Their brother Alex told media that they journeyed to Zinapecuaro “two or three times a year” on vacation to visit relatives.
“They were there for vacation to celebrate the holidays,” said the victims’ brother, Alex Silva. “They were there for a couple of months.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Watsonville victim left four children
Reported John Garcia of ABC-7 in Chicago, “The two sisters are the oldest and youngest of a family of nine children, who grew up in the western suburbs [of Chicago, specifically Warrenville.] They were in Mexico with their parents, who were considering moving back there.”
Melissa Silva “leaves behind four children ages 20, 17, 12 and 10,” reported Ricardo Tovar for KION-TV of Monterey, California.
Melissa Silva “was found dead by her parents moments after the massacre,” Tovar added.
“They arrived shortly after the bullets stopped and found my older sister was already dead,” brother Alex Silva told Telemundo Chicago. “A meter away was my younger sister on the floor as well, but she was still breathing. They got ambushed by a bunch of guys with high caliber weapons. And they had really nowhere to go. They just got surrounded.”
Invitation to a cockfight at El Rancho Paraiso.
“What’s going on with my little sister?”
Narrated Tovar, “Alex was also in Mexico at the time his older sister Melissa was killed and his younger sister Arleth was critically wounded in the mass shooting. He was told of his sister’s murder over the phone by their mother.”
Said Alex Silva, “She told me that, ‘Melissa… Melissa’s dead. Melissa’s dead. She’s right in front of me,’ I said ‘What are you talking about, she’s dead? What’s going on with my little sister?”
What was going on with both sisters is that they traveled 2,017 miles south from Watsonville and 2,050 miles south from Chicago, respectively, to attend an illegal cockfight, where by definition there are no innocent bystanders.
Nothing humans do involving animals is more often associated with murder than cockfighting, even where cockfighting is fully legal and openly practiced.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Cockfighting massacres nothing new
On January 23, 2016 for instance, “Two children ages 11 and 16 were among four people killed in Ensenada, Mexico, when gunmen stormed a crowd of several hundred spectators gathered to watch a cockfight,” reported Sandra Dibble for the San Diego Union-Tribune. “An additional 15 people were wounded in the attack,” which occurred at the Póker Palenque cockfighting arena.
The death toll from the Póker Palenque murders was exceeded several times over on November 9, 2015.
Recounted Allen Garcia for Agence France-Presse, “Twelve people were killed, including two minors, and five others were wounded when a gunfight erupted between armed civilians at a cockfight in Cuajinicuilapa, the state prosecutor’s office said.”
(See Why is cockfighting the blood sport most often linked to murder?)
(Beth Clifton collage)
Other victims
In the most recent case, the cockfight was in Michoacan state, scene of 2,732 reported murders in 2021, the third most in Mexico, and was held amid a multi-year gang war.
The others killed at the cockfight were partially identified by Michoacán Prosecutor’s Office as male victims José Andrés M.; Jose H.; Erik Salvador M.; Damian M.; Federico L.; Juan Pablo L.; Jesus Horacio L.; Miguel Angel M.; Alejandro Michel G.; Carlos Alberto M .; Jose Martin A.; John Ignatius G.; and Juan Jesus M.; Jennifer Karina T.; and Martha Elba P., plus a man known so far only as “El Chapo de Guatemala.”
Mexican media reported that the Zinapecuaro killings are believed by police to have been directed in particular against an alleged regional head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, a drug gang, who switched allegiances from his former affiliation with another drug gang called the Familia Michoacana.
Seven hours of cockfighting before people were killed
The El Paraíso palenque, or cockpit, opened at approximately 3:00 p.m. on the day of the killings.
“That day an event open to the public was held in which around 40 cockfights were held without betting and supervised by the National Section of Breeders of Fighting Birds, which was organized for genetic selection purposes,” reported the Reuters news service.
“After the palenque closed its doors to the general public,” more than seven hours later, “armed men entered the place aboard a Sabritas fried food truck, which had been stolen days before,” Reuters said.
“At the same time and in a coordinated manner, a bus, which had been hijacked, was used to maintain a blockade outside the building and thus prevent the victims from escaping from the scene.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Extortion
“After executing their victims, the assassins abandoned the vehicle in which they arrived and fled the scene in cars stolen from the victims.”
The gang war, erupting toward the end of 2020 and featuring many previous murders, may have begun with a dispute over control of an extortion racket that terrorized eastern Michoacán merchants.
Among the killings were a videotaped beheading in February 2021 and the March 25, 2022 murder of an alleged extortionist who charged poultry sellers in the village of Maravito a fee of five pesos for each kilo of chicken they sold.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Missing Philippine cockfighters still missing
The Zinapecuaro murders came a week after Philippine president Rodrigo Dutero announced that his government would not suspend “e-sabong,” or online betting on cockfights, despite the disappearance of at least 34 cockfighters between April 2021 and January 2022.
(See FBI raids alleged Kentucky cockpit; 31 cockfighters “disappear” in Philippines.)
Beth & Merritt Clifton
“All are alleged to have been involved in bout-fixing,” reported Philip Conneller for the web site Casino.org, “whereby the performance of one bird is sabotaged for the benefit of a gambling ring. All are believed to have visited cockpits owned by e-sabong operator Lucky 8 Star Quest before their disappearance.”
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Cockfighters and their supporters are violent people who put themselves in situations of danger to themselves. The only true victims, the only ones entitled to sympathy, are the birds. May the cockfighters and their allies NOT rest in peace.
Karen Davis, PhD, President, United Poultry Concerns. http://www.upc-online.org
The US needs to send its military INTO Mexico to exterminate every single Mexican gang member!
It would be rather hypocritical of the U.S., while rightly objecting to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, to invade Mexico on any pretext, notwithstanding that the U.S. has in fact invaded Mexico at least ten times since 1776, including General “Black Jack” Pershing’s failed attempt in 1916-1917 to “exterminate every single Mexican gang member” and capture Pancho Villa, who escaped.
Meanwhile, more than 340,000 Mexicans have already been killed over the past decade in partial consequence of the Mexican government’s own “war on drugs,” including those killed at the Zinapecuaro cockfight, at a facility owned and operated by U.S. citizens. Reality is that most of the Mexican drug traffic involves supplying U.S. demand for illegal drugs, and most of the guns and ammunition used in Mexican gang wars come from U.S. vendors. The appropriate U.S. response to the mayhem would be to vigorously eradicate our own contributions to perpetuating it, including activities on this side of the border––such as cockfighting––which help to fund it.
Very risky lifestyle and suffering all around. Senseless, tragic, and avoidable.
Sharing with gratitude.
What exactly was “tragic” here other than the organized chicken abuse that attracted the deserving-victims in the first place? There is only so much sympathy and compassion to go around in this world to foolishly waste it on trash.
Sympathy and compassion are not limited quantities. A central premise of humane work, in the Christian, Judaic, and Islamic traditions, is that sinners can redeem themselves through doing good deeds, and in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions, that one’s karma can be improved through doing good deeds, no matter what one’s past has been. A reality of humane history, meanwhile, is that many of the most effective animal advocates have themselves participated in various forms of animal exploitation and abuse before an awakening of some sort changed their outlook. The late animal rights philosopher Tom Regan, for instance, often reminded his audience that he had begun his adult life working as a butcher; Showing Animals Respect & Kindness founder Steve Hindi points out that at age 34, preceding his 33 years of dynamic activism against cockfights, rodeo, pigeon shoots, and much else, he was a trophy hunter and fisher. We do not know what the future of any of the people killed at the cockfight in Zinapecuaro might have been; what we do know is that no one will now ever know, that many of them had family & pets whom they appeared to love and care for, though their compassion did not extend to gamecocks, and that nothing is lost by mourning that their lives were wasted, as well as the lives of the birds they misused.
If one truly believes that, pardon me, naive worldview, then the worst criminals of history should have been pardoned and given a second chance. Who knows what good works a rehabilitated Bundy, Goering, Himmler, Heydrich, Mengele, or Pol Pot might have accomplished. Most were reportedly good family men and some owned pets.
If any person truly believes that a 16-year-old (or a 36-year-old) who attends a cockfight is in the same category of moral reprehensibility and possibility of redemption as serial killers and the worst mass murderers in history, that person has such a skewed perspective on human nature as to be incapable of persuading anyone to change any behavior. I am reminded of being told in the fifth grade at the Seventh Day Adventist school I attended that if one drank beer, one would go to hell. I got kicked out of class for observing that if the penalties for drinking beer & committing murder were the same, why should any beer drinker not commit murder too?
“. . .there are no innocent bystanders.” When you play with fire, you risk getting burned. These people knowingly placed themselves and their family members in danger, so it’s difficult to feel any sympathy for them; but I do feel sorry for all the birds who suffered and died for someone’s gain and entertainment. They weren’t there by choice.