An official at the Ministry of Development and Social Integration in Jalisco, Mexico, was fired after lamenting that the death toll in Sunday’s jihadist attack on the Pulse LGBT nightclub in Orlando, Florida, was lower than it could have been. “Too bad it was 50, not 100,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
José de Jesús Manzo Corona posted the update on his page shortly after the news became global that Omar Mateen, a jihadist who associated himself with the Islamic State terrorist group, killed 49 people and injured as many in a mass shooting at Pulse. He immediately received backlash from Facebook friends – one immediately calling himself an “ex-Facebook friend” – and replied by apologizing “if I offended someone.”
“I simply do not agree with gay ideology,” he added.
His original post included three emojis of faces crying with laughter in response to the killings.
Manzo Corona’s page does not publicly show this comment or its responses, indicating he either deleted the remark or made it private. Among his publicly viewable posts is one of a couple in wedding clothes protesting same-sex marriage and multiple videos of muscular men lifting weights.
The governor of Jalisco state issued a statement on Twitter condemning the remark, asserting, “My government promotes respect and inclusiveness.” He confirmed that Manzo Corona had been fired.
The majority of victims in the Sunday morning terrorist attack were of Latin American descent, though more than half were Puerto Rican. Only four Mexicans have been confirmed dead in the attack, along with Cuban Americans, African Americans, and a minority of whites.
President Enrique Peña Nieto has sent his condolences to the families of the Mexicans killed, and the government has vowed to help families bring their deceased loved ones back to Mexico for their burials. “In the name of Mexico and our society I want to express our strong solidarity with the families of the victims,” Peña Nieto said in a statement.
Mexican media have largely concentrated on the loss of Mexican nationals in the shooting. The newspaper Excelsior has even suggested the attack was an “anti-Mexican” statement, despite the small Mexican population both in the club and in Orlando relative to the number of Puerto Rican American nationals there. Even noting in its piece that “50.5 percent [of Orlando residents] are Puerto Rican,” compared to 13.9 percent of Mexicans, the outlet objects to The New York Times’ reference to most patrons of Pulse that night as “Caribbean or Central American” because “data proves that the seven nations in that subcontinent did not even represent altogether ten percent of the Latino population of Orlando and … is numerically inferior to Mexicans.”
That numerical analysis suggests that Excelsior did not include Puerto Ricans among the Latin American population of Orlando.
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