HUITZILAC, Mexico ( AP ) — Tailed by trucks of heavily armed soldiers, four caskets floated on a sea of hundreds of mourners. As the group pushed past abandoned businesses, empty streets, and political strategy posters adorning the little Mexican town of Huitzilac, neighbors scurried anxiously from their homes.
Days earlier, military people in two vehicles sprayed a local store with shots,  , claiming the lives of eight men , who citizens say were sipping beverages after a football match. Fear then permeates the day-to-day life of occupants who claim the town is unafraid to be caught between two warring mafias.
More than 100 people were killed diplomatically- motivated, including about 20 candidates this yr, and Mexico’s expanding list of legal organizations are warring for carpet, terrorizing nearby communities like Huitzilac, as they see the June 2 vote as an opportunity to take control.
” The murder is always there, but there’s never been so many murders as there are now. One morning they kill two people, and the next they kill another”, said 42- year- aged mother Anahi, who withheld her whole name out of fear for her safety, on Tuesday. I’m concerned that something will happen to my children when my telephone rings.
Cartel assault is not a new phenomenon in Mexico, but according to government data, the country’s carnage has increased ahead of the election, making April the most devastating month this year.
But candidates are n’t the only ones at risk. Even before the vote, it was evident that cheerful President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had made pledges to relieve gang war, had done little more than regulate Mexico’s higher level of violence.
murders in April nearly doubled the previous high of 114 when López Obrador took office in 2018, despite replacing a crooked Federal Police with a 130, 000-strong National Guard and focusing on social issues that are influencing gang selection.
Authorities have frequently declined to undertake syndicate leaders. Cartels have seized control of a large portion of the nation and raked in cash, not just from illegal trade and migratory contraband. They’ve even fought with more , advanced tools , like weapon- dropping drones and improvised violent devices.
The candidates for Mexico’s future senator have so far only submitted proposals that would resemble more of the same.
” Criminal violence has become much more difficult to deal with now than it was six years ago. … You ca n’t expect a quick fix to the situation, it’s too deeply ingrained”, said Falko Ernst, a senior Mexico analyst for International Crisis Group. It will be even more difficult to calm now than it was when López Obrador took office.
Saturday’s mass shooting in Huitzilac came after tides of other problems, according to local press and people. Local media reported on three fatal shootings on the highway leaving area, three more fatal shootings outside a cafe in a local tourist town, and the death of a patient in a private hospital in Cuernavaca, according to local media.
Josué Meza Cuevas, Huitzilac’s municipal secretary general, said it was n’t clear what provoked the bloodshed, but many in the town attribute it to a turf war between the Familia Michoacana, La Unión de Morelos and other cartels, which has made the state of Morelos one of Mexico’s most violent.
Some people dared venture into the streets of Huitzilac on Tuesday, as businesses closed down and several dared to leave. Colleges canceled classes “until more see” amid demands from fearful parents.
One of the many families squatting down in their homes, afraid to leave the city, was Anahi, a long-time native, and her young kids.
Anahi claims she has long felt death ingrained down her neck, despite Cuevas ‘ claim that “nothing like this has ever happened.”
Huitzilac, which is less than an hour from Mexico City’s trendy bars and traveler hostels, established itself as a town that was within the bounds of the law.
For years, it’s been at the center of a yank- of- conflict between a rotating collection of cartels and gangs, making headlines in 2012 when police strangely pumped a U. S. Embassy car with 152 bullets. When Anahi’s car, her only means of work, was stolen from her garage last year, she said she did n’t dare report it because” they might do something to me”.
However, Anahi claims she has always felt as anxious as she has since the election of the local and national candidates in October.
We’re going to question that students hold classes remotely until the elections are over so that our children are n’t in danger, she said at the university meet. ” What may happen if there’s a fight and our children are it”?
On Monday evening, Anahi heard noises erupting from the neighborhood and observing armed men scurrying from her window. Weeks before that, her son’s friend who previously played at their house, was shot useless. Before that, her mother’s friend received death threats on her mobile.
For burst of violence are frequent before votes, especially in nearby races. At least 125 have been killed throughout the region this year in socially- determined killings, according to the political murder tracker Data Civica, while yet more have been threatened, attacked and kidnapped. A mayoral candidate in , the southern state of Chiapas , and five other were killed at a campaign rally on Thursday.
That goes “hand- in- hand” with cartels warring for territory and attempts to terrorize communities into submission, said Ernst, the analyst.
” Elections are a high- stakes game for criminal groups”, he said. These groups are attempting to position themselves as a more stable negotiating position in the run-up to elections, so you see upticks in violence.
Armed National Guard soldiers in Huitzilac were agitated on Tuesday as they defended the side of the road. Since the bloodshed that occurred last weekend, one soldier claimed that their units have been subject to numerous attacks. The small neighborhood bar where the eight men were killed was passed by an armored vehicle with candles and flowers laying on the ground below. The facade was damaged by bullets.
As marchers carried caskets through the town, protesters cried and prayed, but dozens of people approached by The Associated Press sat still and gazed at the ground when asked how they felt.
” This is happening right now to innocent people. And if you speak, they kill you, according to a middle-aged man wearing a cowboy hat as he sat outside a funeral for four of the deceased.
In the June 2 election, López Obrador’s political ally and front-runner Claudia Sheinbaum will face Xóchitl Gálvez, according to Victoria Dittmar, a researcher at Insight Crime, a non-profit organization tracking organized crime. The winner will inherit a puzzle that is more complicated than the governments that have existed before them. She noted that cartel-related extortion and forced disappearances were becoming particularly concerning.
” They’re going to have to dismantle these criminal organizations… but they’re more resilient and flexible, with more revenue streams”, Dittmar said.
Meanwhile, voters like Anahi living under the chokehold of those mafias feel disillusioned. Anahi claimed that she voted for López Obrador in 2018 because she hoped he would bring about a new era of economic prosperity and lessen violence in places like hers.
” With the violence, I do n’t know why my government, my president, do n’t come down with a heavier hand against these people”, she said, as she and her children sat trapped in their home. ” I feel disappointed. I expected more”.
