Mexico’s Gay Mayor Has Been Murdered, And His Legacy Is… Complicated
Benjamín Medrano made history as Mexico’s first openly gay mayor. He also spent years opposing same-sex marriage, adoption by gay couples, and Pride. On 7 July 2026, he was shot dead while buying ice cream in Guadalajara. He was 59. His death has left the community he kept at arm’s length trying to work out how to remember him.
What Happened in Guadalajara
Medrano was hit by multiple gunshots to the face inside an ice cream shop in Guadalajara, Jalisco. Police have not named a suspect, confirmed a motive, or said how many attackers were involved. The investigation is ongoing.
For now, there is no evidence linking the killing to his sexuality, and nobody should assume one.
Medrano Quezada was elected mayor of Fresnillo, Zacatecas, in 2013, becoming the first openly gay man to run a municipality in Mexico. He went on to serve as a federal deputy for Zacatecas from 2015 to 2018 with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Before politics, he sang ballads and ranchera, and in 1994 he opened a gay bar. He entered public life as a Zacatecas councillor a year later.
On paper, that reads like a trailblazer. The reality was messier.
Medrano was openly gay and openly against much of what the LGBTQIA+ movement has fought for. He opposed same-sex marriage, adoption by same-sex couples, and Pride parades.
A practising Catholic, he told the newspaper El Universal in 2013: “Our idiosyncrasies do not allow it because we are not prepared for it. Not because we lack the capacity to do it, but we cannot go against doctrines and customs either.”
Read that again. This was the country’s first out gay mayor arguing against the rights of the people he was meant to stand for.
Questions That Outlived Him
His record carries other marks. In 2022, Medrano was accused of embezzling more than 60 million pesos, around 3.4 million US dollars, during his time heading the board of the National Fair of Zacatecas. A warrant was issued when he failed to appear in court, then reportedly overturned in 2025. His family says the case was political.
So how do we mark the death of a man who was both a first and a disappointment? At DNA, we think both things stay true at once. Medrano opened a door, then spent years telling other people not to walk through it.
He also let a lot of us down. His murder deserves answers, and his legacy deserves an honest accounting rather than a tidy one.
