Acapulco’s Poor Neighborhoods Hit by Violence Again

(Acapulco, AN 10 January) Over the last weekend, 24 persons were “executed” in the poorer urban sections on the outskirts of Acapulco, and yesterday the number rose to a total of 33. Most of them were attributed (or claimed) by a Sinaloa drug cartel headed by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. This indicates that yet another drug gang is positioning itself to take over the Acapulco territory. Earlier in the year a fight between two other groups resulted in a similar string of “executions,” as the press calls them. The violence was widely reported and badly hurt Acapulco’s tourism industry, even though virtually all of the dirty work took place many miles from the tourist zone, in the more squalid neighborhoods outside Acapulco proper. Everything indicates that the arrival of the Sinaloa gang will cause a similar spate of internecine murders.

Most of the drug murders take place between 4 am and sunrise. Fifteen were attributed to one incident, in Coloso. Six more were found murdered in Renacimiento. Virtually all of them were young men between 17 and 30. The remainder were scattered around other locations. Four murders were reported in Acapulco itself, as opposed to the outlying communities: two were victims of a shooting in a cantina in one of the rougher neighborhoods on the edge of the town center; two policemen were killed near the Costera. The first of these incidents is not thought to be part of organized crime, but rather the result of a bar fight. The second is widely regarded as a drug “execution” when informants for one drug gang identify police who have allied themselves with a competing group.