Unknown assailants murdered and decapitated the recently elected local mayor of a major city in southwest Mexico less than a week after he took office, highlighting the gargantuan task the country’s new president faces in tackling an increasingly dire public security situation.
Authorities found the severed head of Alejandro Arcos Catalán on October 6, lying atop a white vehicle on the east side of Chilpancingo, the capital of southwest Guerrero state. His body was left in the front passenger seat.
Arcos took office on September 30 after he was elected in June representing a coalition of opposition parties that unseated the ruling Morena party. Omar García Harfuch, the public security secretary appointed by President Claudia Sheinbaum, told reporters that Arcos was on his way, alone, to a meeting in Petaquillas, a town just south of the capital where criminal factions linked to the Ardillos gang maintain control.
His murder is just the latest outbreak of violence that has come to define the current political transition in the city. Armed gunmen shot and killed Francisco Tapia in broad daylight in the center of town on October 3, just three days after he began his municipal post as secretary general of the city council.
Days earlier, a commando of armed men murdered Ulises Hernández Martínez, the former director of the Guerrero state police’s special forces. Arcos had tapped him to serve as the head of public security for the municipality.
Arcos’ election victory had the potential to usher in a new era for the mayor’s office and redefine long-standing links between local politics and organized crime. Last year, security cameras captured Norma Otilia Hernández, the former mayor unseated by Arocs, meeting with a leader of the Ardillos, one of many crime groups with a long history in the region.
In his first public address, Arcos pledged not to make any pacts with criminal groups and to guarantee peace and security in Chilpancingo, which may have put him in the crosshairs of the region’s powerbrokers.
“Security requires everyone’s commitment,” he said after becoming mayor. “I call on the three levels of government, businessmen, civil society, and the families of Chilpancingo. I ask you, with my heart in my hand: help me fight and build peace, the peace that we all need.”
InSight Crime Analysis
The latest brutal murder of a local politician is the freshest example since President Sheinbaum took office of the crisis she must navigate as Mexico’s first female head of state.
“It’s a terrible sign from the criminal organization that did it, that they have the ability to do this, and they want to send a message to the person who will replace him,” said Romain Le Cour, a senior expert at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC).
Upon taking office, Sheinbaum outlined a number of key initiatives to address insecurity during her first 100 days. Her administration’s priorities included increased coordination and intelligence sharing, addressing violence in Chiapas and extortion in Michoacán, as well as creating specialized inter-agency task forces to help reduce insecurity in certain hotspots around the country.
The southern border state of Chiapas has become the major focal point of an ongoing battle between different criminal factions allied with the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG) that are battling over criminal economies like drug trafficking and migrant smuggling. Thousands have been displaced and hundreds killed in recent years in a once-peaceful state now wracked by internecine violence between local and national interests.
Hundreds of soldiers have been sent to help quell the violence, but many residents say they too are part of the problem. On the day Sheinbaum was sworn into office in Mexico City, a group of soldiers patrolling the state near the Mexico-Guatemala border shot at a group of 33 migrants, killing six and injuring a dozen others.
Mexico’s security concerns stretch far beyond its southern border region. The dead bodies of 12 people were recently found in central Guanajuato, the country’s most violent state. And further north in Sinaloa, warring factions of the Sinaloa Cartel have paralyzed nearly every major city in the state following the arrest of two top leaders in the United States at the end of July. Local authorities have recorded hundreds of forced disappearances and murders since the fighting began in September.
Sheinbaum is now the fourth Mexican president to face the country’s crisis of violence since ex-President Felipe Calderón declared war on organized crime in 2006. Some estimates suggest the drug war has left as many as 430,000 dead in the last two decades, and more than 100,000 have been reported missing during that period. Alliances brokered between political elites and organized crime groups have made achieving meaningful security gains impossible for past administrations that have consistently relied on a militarized approach.
“Right now we don’t see a rupture between [former president] AMLO and Sheinbaum’s security strategy, but it remains to be seen how she will react and adapt,” Le Cour told InSight Crime. “The war between different crime groups in Guerrero is strong, but has been a bit invisible over the last month with everything else happening across the country.”
Featured image: Chilpancingo mayor Alejandro Arcos Catalán addresses the crowd as he is sworn in as mayor. Credit: El Financiero
