Zenyazen Roberto Escobar García, 42, a Mexican federal deputy for the governing Morena party, was found dead inside his black Mercedes-Benz on Friday, September 4, 2026, pulled onto the shoulder of the Xalapa-Veracruz highway in the eastern state of Veracruz, with at least one gunshot wound to the head. Mexico’s federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) addressed the case on September 10, saying the file remains open while its principal lines of investigation point to a death by suicide.
The first alert came from a motorist who saw the car stopped on the shoulder of Federal Highway 140 near Chichicaxtle. The body was found in the community of La Gloria, in the municipality of Puente Nacional, where prosecutors, forensic experts and Ministerial Police officers processed the scene. Confirmation of the death came from Veracruz state Attorney General Lisbeth Aurelia Jiménez Aguirre, who said the investigation file was being compiled but offered no further detail.
At a news conference, Veracruz Secretary of Government Ricardo Ahued Bardahuil said the lawmaker’s vehicle showed no signs of attack. “It wasn’t an attack, because the car is off to the side, there’s no sign the vehicle was fired on — it was internal,” Ahued said, adding that he did not want to get ahead of an investigation still underway, and that the federal Attorney General’s Office would lead it. A firearm was recovered inside the car. Bodyguards usually accompanied Escobar because of his office, but early reports noted he was traveling without them.
Open Questions in the Investigation
Because Escobar held federal office, the FGR announced on X that it was taking over. The agency, headed by Ernestina Godoy, said it had done so from the first moment because the case involved a sitting federal legislator. On a tour of San Luis Potosí, President Claudia Sheinbaum said she had asked the office to report as the investigation advanced. Veracruz Gov. Rocío Nahle said on September 5 that investigators were pursuing several lines of inquiry and urged the public to wait for the federal report. Two days later she told the local program “En Contacto” that the car had been locked from the inside, that a single bullet was involved and that one casing was recovered inside it.
Medical examiners completed an autopsy in the early hours of September 5. The FGR’s Veracruz federal office carried out more than 150 investigative acts, inspections and expert examinations in coordination with the state prosecutor’s office, drawing on a multidisciplinary team whose reports covered medicine, criminalistics, ballistics, genetics, chemistry and toxicology, alongside interviews with people close to Escobar. All of it pointed to suicide, the FGR said on September 10, though its own wording was careful: the principal lines of investigation advance, coincide and point toward a death by suicide, and it would not rule out other motives. The family would hold off on discussing the circumstances until the findings were in, Escobar’s widow, the family court magistrate Liliana López Coronado, told local media, asking that he be remembered for his work in the teaching movement.
Mourned in Xalapa and Río Blanco
Mourners gathered for Escobar on September 5 at the Bosques del Recuerdo funeral home in Xalapa — Nahle, former Gov. Cuitláhuac García Jiménez, family, party members and union groups among them. Nahle and Cuitláhuac García had not appeared publicly together since December 2024. On the casket, mourners placed a white cowboy hat, a nod to the hat Escobar wore in the Chamber of Deputies.
Rain fell on his burial on September 6 at the municipal cemetery in Río Blanco. A Facebook message from Cuitláhuac García, to whose inner circle Escobar belonged, said he deeply mourned a friend and fellow party member with whom he had shared years of struggle and work for the people of Veracruz. Ricardo Monreal, Morena’s floor leader and chair of the chamber’s Political Coordination Board, called the death a loss for the parliamentary group and the district Escobar represented, and said on September 8 that parliamentary leaders had agreed against a special commission and would wait for the FGR. A formal tribute filled that space in the chamber on September 9, opening with a minute of silence and closing with a minute of applause, while 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 the deaths in its ranks had made the 66th Legislature the most violent since post-revolutionary Mexico, and Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) deputy Lorena Piñón said the grief “admits no partisan argument and deserves our silence before our words.”
From Telesecundaria Teacher to Congress
Escobar was born June 4, 1984. He took a degree in communication sciences from the Universidad de Sotavento and a master’s in education sciences, supervised state telesecundarias from 2007 and taught in Veracruz classrooms from 2009. In 2015 he joined a movement linked to the dissident teachers’ union CNTE and emerged as leader of the Movimiento Magisterial Popular Veracruzano, which opposed the federal education reform. He entered the state congress in 2016 and coordinated Morena’s caucus there; in December 2018 Cuitláhuac García named him state secretary of education. In 2024 he won Veracruz’s 16th district, based in Córdoba.
A floor confrontation brought him national attention on May 28, when he faced off with PRI deputy Carlos Gutiérrez Mancilla in the Chamber during an extraordinary session and video of the scene spread widely online. Gutiérrez Mancilla shouted an insult; Escobar removed his hat and took a fighting stance before other deputies separated them. Monreal denied that Escobar was drunk, attributing his behavior to exhaustion after the marathon session. The Chamber reported no sanctions.
A Violent Backdrop Before the 2027 Vote
Mexico votes on June 6, 2027, to renew mayoral, state legislative, city council and gubernatorial posts, and the death comes as that campaign approaches. Votar entre Balas, a political violence monitor run by Data Cívica, México Evalúa and Animal Político, counted 30 attacks on political figures in July alone, 14 of them homicides. Veracruz deputy Benito Aguas Atlahua, of the same legislature, was shot in the Sierra de Zongolica in December 2024 and died hours later.
Asked about the case at her morning news conference on September 10, Sheinbaum said the prosecutor’s office would have to be the one to report and that it already had some results. “Our condolences to the family and to all the friends and colleagues,” she added. The FGR released its findings later that day.
Nahle returned to the case on September 14, dismissing unsigned reports that toll-booth cameras had shown Escobar accompanied and directing anyone with doubts to the FGR. Escobar’s alternate, Ángel Etiem Jiménez Castañeda, was sworn in the same day to serve out the District 16 term. Nothing further has been announced in the six days since.
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