The Mexican government has deployed 690 Soldiers, including 90 special forces members, to Chihuahua state after an attack at a private horse racing track killed seven men and wounded several others on November 15, 2025. “Chihuahua will not give a millimeter to crime,” Chihuahua State Public Safety Secretary Gilberto Loya Chávez said.
Races at the Santa Teresa track in Parral, Mexico, were being broadcast live on social media networks, so dozens of videos captured the moment when the shooting began and panic broke out, the Proceso magazine website reported. Hundreds of spectators ran for cover.
A turf war between rival cartels led to the attack, Chihuahua Attorney General Cesar Jauregui said. Two cartels “are fighting over the area … they remain in conflict,” he said, according to the Border Report news website. Proceso reported that hitmen for La Linea, the armed wing of the Juárez Cartel, executed members of Los Salgueiro, a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel. La Linea and various Sinaloa Cartel cells have repeatedly clashed in Chihuahua over control of drug and migrant trafficking routes to the United States and other criminal activities.
Police initially deployed dozens of officers to rural communities in search of the gunmen and to urge residents to stay in their homes. The next day, a mutilated body was found in a plaza at the entrance to Parral. A message near the body claimed the killing was in retaliation for the racetrack massacre, a police official said.
Within days, the Mexican government sent the first contingent of 600 Soldiers to Chihuahua, and they were rapidly deployed around the cities of Parral, Jimenez and other areas, Jauregui said. A group of 90 special forces Soldiers landed on November 23 at Chihuahua International Airport on a Boeing 727 military transport plane sent from Mexico City, Mexico’s Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA) said in a social media post.
The special forces members were deployed to reinforce law enforcement and other military forces in “carrying out deterrence, prevention and patrol tasks,” SEDENA said. No arrests have been reported in the racetrack killings or in the death that followed the next day.
Loya said at his weekly news conference on November 24 that he was grateful for the military’s help and that state police are working closely with the Mexican Army and National Guard, the El Paso Times newspaper reported. He credited the enormous troop deployment to the strong relationship between Chihuahua Gov. Maria Eugenia “Maru” Campos and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
This is the second time in as many years that a fatal shooting broke out at a horse race, Loya said, according to Border Report. Last year, a racetrack owner and the leader of a musical group were killed in the nearby town of Maturana.