The mayor of a town in western Mexico was killed on Monday, the regional government said, barely 24 hours after Claudia Sheinbaum was elected the Latin American country's first woman president.

The Michoacan state government condemned "the murder of the municipal president (mayor) of Cotija, Yolanda Sanchez Figueroa," the regional interior ministry said in a post on social media.

The murder of the woman mayor comes after Sheinbaum's landslide victory injected hope for change in a country riven by rampant gender-based violence.

Sanchez, who was elected mayor in 2021 elections, was gunned down on a public road, according to local media. Her Facebook profile says she is "defined by my preparation and the desire to make Cotija a better place to live."