The Mexican landscape is stained again with blood with a massacre in Guerrero

“They find a lifeless woman in the streets of Cancun”. “Brutal attack by a group of assassins in Guerrero.” “A businesswoman is assassinated in the city of Oaxaca.” Every day, the headlines of the Mexican newspapers become more chilling.

That endless violence is part of the Mexican landscape, but October is breaking bloody records. Just six days into the month, there have already been multiple shootings and murders in different parts of the Mexican Republic.

20 dead in Totolapan, including the mayor

The latest illustration of this deadly trend is the shooting in San Miguel Totolapan, in the state of Guerrero, this Wednesday, October 5. “There were 20 people victimized, among them the mayor of that municipality, Conrado Mendoza, and his father, also a former mayor,” said Ricardo Mejía, Mexico’s Undersecretary of Security.

That day, a group of gunmen broke into the municipal palace and shot dead the mayor and at least 19 other people, including several policemen. The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), a party to which the deceased mayor was a member, demanded justice from the authorities.

Shortly after, the attack was claimed on social networks by a cartel called “Los Tequileros”, despite the fact that the authorities had assured that the group was no longer active.

The Mexican police believe that the leader of the criminal group – known as “El Tequilero” – died in 2018, but Undersecretary Mejía acknowledged that the group had “broken in” again: “There is a dispute with a criminal group known like La Familia Michoacana”. Indeed, the murder of the mayor is suspected of being a threat to that other powerful drug cartel.

AMLO blamed for the wave of violence

That massacre, which has shocked the country for being one of the deadliest so far this year, occurs in the context of a criminal dispute between criminal groups in the region. Indeed, it is not the first time that San Miguel Totolapan has been the scene of this type of clash between cartels.

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This small city of 20,000 inhabitants is known as the bastion of organized crime, which disputes territory and traffic on the drug route that arrives from the Pacific.

That latest massacre shows the vulnerability of politicians to the violence of organized crime during the mandate of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, his critics denounce. According to the consulting firm Etellekt, since the president took office, 18 mayors have been assassinated, in addition to 31 aldermen and 11 trustees.

However, the president declared this Thursday that there will be no change in his security strategy: “We have to continue with the same, because it is giving results. Of course I would like events as unfortunate as those of yesterday not to happen, but it is rotten fruit of what they sowed for many years,” he assured in his morning conference.

In this sense, he blamed his predecessors: “The case of Totolapan, they are organizations that come from long ago, they did not emerge in this government, and we are seeking to address the causes,” he concluded.

But clearly Guerrero is not the only region where these attacks occur. This same Wednesday, October 5, the death of local deputy Gabriela Marín was also recorded, this time in Cuernavaca, Morelos. Shot to death after being attacked by gunmen on a motorcycle, the politician had only assumed the position of local deputy in July of this year. “A motive related to revenge or a political matter cannot be ruled out,” said the Undersecretary for Security.

Women, privileged victims of violence in Mexico

Another event that contributed to the climate of insecurity in the country was the murder of Blanca Esmeralda Gallardo, in Puebla. This 40-year-old woman was the mother of Betzabé Alvarado Gallardo, a young woman missing since 2021, who was murdered in the same neighborhood where Esmeralda Gallardo ended up dead.

Given the facts, the Office in Mexico of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN-DH) condemned the murder, and recalled that Esmeralda Gallardo had provided relevant information on different occasions about the disappearance of her daughter, who was not taken up in the investigation of the crime by the authorities in charge.

Guillermo Fernández-Maldonado, UN-DH representative in Mexico, pointed out that “this is a new painful reminder of the high risk and lack of protection in which many relatives of disappeared persons are forced to search for and demand justice.”

This is the fourth woman searching for her disappeared murdered in Mexico this year. And this figure supports another component of the violent Mexican reality: femicides.

Indeed, despite the authorities’ denial, Mexico is one of the most violent places in the world for women. Last year, Mexico registered 33,308 homicides, according to official figures, and almost 10% of the victims were women. NGOs and feminists denounce an average of ten femicides per day.

In other frightening news for Mexicans, a recent report by the organization Global Witness reported that the nation has become the most dangerous in the world for environmental defenders. While, in 2020, Mexico registered 30 homicides of environmental defenders, in 2021 this figure rose to 54 murders.

And about two-thirds of these murders were concentrated in the states of Oaxaca and Sonora, both with significant mining investments.

Between 350,000 and 400,000 internally displaced by violence

Mining, precisely, would be among the factors that would explain the exodus of thousands of Mexicans, along with crime and local conflicts. Last month, the UN special rapporteur Cecilia Jiménez-Damary exposed the figure of between 350,000 and 400,000 internally displaced persons in Mexico. She also estimated that among the thousands of people who were forced to abandon their homes, the indigenous were the most affected.

According to Jiménez-Damary, impunity and failures in the justice and security systems are factors that affect this displacement: “In some parts of the country, organized crime terrorizes territories and populations through intimidation; and investigations are rarely carry out,” he stressed.

Reinforcing this idea, a report presented this Wednesday by the México Evalúa analysis center affirms that only three out of every 100 intentional homicides are resolved in the Mexican criminal justice system.

With EFE, AFP and local media