The body of Zenyazen Roberto Escobar García — a 42-year-old federal deputy for Mexico’s governing Morena party — was found on Friday, September 4, 2026, inside his black Mercedes-Benz, pulled onto the shoulder of the Xalapa-Veracruz highway in the eastern state of Veracruz. He had a gunshot wound to the head, and a firearm lay between his legs. On September 10 Mexico’s federal Attorney General’s Office said its investigation pointed to suicide.
A motorist called in the car, stopped on the shoulder of Federal Highway 140 near Chichicaxtle, in the community of La Gloria, municipality of Puente Nacional. Forensic experts, prosecutors and Ministerial Police officers processed the scene. Veracruz state Attorney General Lisbeth Aurelia Jiménez confirmed the death and said the file was being compiled.
At a news conference, Veracruz Secretary of Government Ricardo Ahued Bardahuil said the lawmaker’s vehicle showed no signs of violence. “It wasn’t an attack, because the car is off to the side,” Ahued said, adding that he did not want to get ahead of an investigation still under way. Mexican news television broadcast images of a black firearm inside the Mercedes-Benz C-Class. Escobar was traveling without bodyguards, though he was usually accompanied because of his office.
What the Investigation Has Yet to Answer
Because Escobar held federal office, Mexico’s federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) took over the case, announcing the move on X. President Claudia Sheinbaum said she had asked the office to report as the investigation advanced. Several lines of inquiry were being pursued by investigators, Veracruz Gov. Rocío Nahle said on September 5, urging the public to wait for the FGR’s report; she declined to say why a security checkpoint previously installed in the Tamarindo area had been removed. Nahle returned to the subject on September 7, telling the local program “En Contacto” that the Mercedes-Benz had been locked from the inside, that a single bullet was involved and that one casing was recovered inside the car.
Medical examiners completed an autopsy in the early hours of Saturday, September 5, and for days the findings stayed unpublished while the FGR reached no conclusion about how Escobar died. Magistrate Liliana López Coronado, Escobar’s widow, said the family would hold off on discussing the circumstances until the autopsy findings arrived, telling local media she wanted her husband remembered for his work in the teaching movement.
Farewells in Xalapa and Río Blanco
Mourners gathered for Escobar on September 5 at the Bosques del Recuerdo funeral home in Xalapa, among them Nahle, former Gov. Cuitláhuac García Jiménez, relatives and party members. Nahle and Cuitláhuac García had not appeared publicly together since December 2024. Mourners set a white cowboy hat atop the casket — a nod to the one he wore in the Chamber of Deputies.
Rain fell over his burial on September 6 at the municipal cemetery in Río Blanco. Escobar belonged to Cuitláhuac García’s inner circle, and the former governor wrote on Facebook that he deeply mourned a friend and fellow party member with whom he had shared years of work for Veracruz. Ricardo Monreal, Morena’s floor leader in the Chamber of Deputies, sent condolences to Escobar’s family and staff, and the lower house urged judicial authorities to conduct a thorough investigation.
Monreal, who chairs the chamber’s Political Coordination Board, said on September 8 that leaders of the parliamentary groups had agreed against creating a special commission to investigate the death, choosing instead to wait for the FGR to establish what happened. A formal tribute followed in the chamber on September 9, opening with a minute of silence and closing with a minute of applause; Escobar’s widow, daughters, mother and sister stood at the foot of the rostrum. Sergio Gil Rullán, a Movimiento Ciudadano deputy who also represents Veracruz, told the floor that deaths in its ranks had made the 66th Legislature the most violent since post-revolutionary Mexico. PRI deputy Lorena Piñón said the death could not be left in the realm of versions and speculation.
From Telesecundaria Teacher to Federal Deputy
Escobar was born June 4, 1984. He took a degree in communication sciences at the Universidad de Sotavento and a master’s in education sciences, entered school supervision in the state telesecundaria system in 2007 and taught in Veracruz classrooms from 2009. A movement linked to the dissident teachers’ union CNTE, Educación, Resistencia y Dignidad Magisterial, took him in as a member in 2015, and he went on to lead the Movimiento Magisterial Popular Veracruzano, which opposed the federal education reform. He entered the Veracruz state congress in 2016 and coordinated Morena’s caucus there; Cuitláhuac García named him state secretary of education in December 2018. He won a seat in the federal Chamber of Deputies in 2024 for Veracruz’s 16th district, based in Córdoba.
On May 28, during an extraordinary session, he confronted Institutional Revolutionary Party deputy Carlos Gutiérrez Mancilla on the floor of the Chamber after Gutiérrez Mancilla shouted an insult at him; Escobar removed his hat and took a fighting stance before other deputies separated them, and the video spread widely online. Monreal denied that Escobar had been drinking and put the behavior down to exhaustion after the marathon session. The Chamber reported no sanctions.
Violence Ahead of the 2027 Vote
The death comes as Mexico heads toward elections on June 6, 2027, renewing mayoral, state legislative, city council and gubernatorial posts. A human rights organization recorded at least 30 incidents of “political-criminal violence” across 11 states in July, 14 of them homicides. Another member of the same legislature, Veracruz deputy Benito Aguas Atlahua, was shot in the Sierra de Zongolica in December 2024 and died hours later.
On the afternoon of September 10 the FGR said more than 150 investigative acts, inspections and expert reports — in medicine, criminalistics, ballistics, genetics, forensic chemistry, fingerprints and toxicology among other fields — had converged on the finding that Escobar took his own life on September 4. The office said the case stays open and that it has not ruled out other explanations.
