ABC News tried to talk to Valles Garcia about how the job is going, but was unable to. A person who answered the phone said her presence in the office is unpredictable, for obvious reasons.
The downward spiral of drug violence in Mexico has touched nearly every community.
"[Drug-related violence] could deter leaders from taking government positions, a very pernicious development," said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a professor at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. "We have seen more than 20 mayors in Mexico killed over the past three years."
The list of the dead has also included government officials, journalists, and community leaders. It's part of a "very systematic strategy on the part of the drug trafficking organizations to undermine and intimidate government officials and to threaten the community's organizational capacity and sever links between the government and the community," Felbab-Brown said.
The government had been saying that it has sharply reduced violence in the state where Garcia Quinones was killed, Grayson said. "I'm just hypothesizing that Los Zetas killed her so that they could prove that they could kill anyone at anytime at any place. I deplore her killing, but I think she should certainly have had bodyguards with her."
Cartels in many drug-plagued parts of Mexico have killed or threatened police chiefs and their departments, buying off some officers and causing others to quit. Nationwide, 30,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the cartels. Recently, the assistant mayor of nearby El Porvenir and the mayor of Distrito Bravos were killed.
