HUITZILAC, Mexico (AP) — Schools and some businesses were closed and few people walked the streets of this town south of the Mexican capital Tuesday, hours after five people were shot dead on the same street where another the attack left eight dead just eight months earlier.
Huitzilac is at the center of a troubled area of Morelos state, home to competing criminal organizations and illegal logging. Those killed were apparently campaigning for local positions managing the community’s collective resources, such as the surrounding forest, ahead of elections scheduled for March.
Monday afternoon, like every afternoon in recent weeks, four men and a woman from one of the groups vying for the local elections for the management of communal lands and forests went door to door to campaign. They were intercepted by armed men in two vehicles and left dead on the main street of Huitzilac.
“I told them years ago not to participate, there are always problems,” said Blanca Delgadillo, whose son-in-law José Cuevas, a farmer, was among those killed.
Delgadillo, 70, said violence has gripped the farming community in recent years, forcing its 20,000 residents to live in fear.
Mayor César Dávila Díaz, who took office on January 1, condemned the attack and said such events “affect our municipality because they have always called us a hotbed of violence.”
The mayor denied the presence of drug cartels, dismissed the possibility of a political motive and said he did not know what that motive was.
Tuesday morning, traces of blood and five candles were visible on the sidewalk.
Two hundred members of the National Guard were arriving to support local and state police patrolling the area.
José Romero, a 53-year-old farmer who lives a few steps from the scene of the attack, said he was watching television when he heard the gunshots.
He said the city’s security varies depending on the presence of security forces. When the National Guard is not present, these types of attacks occur, Romero said.
Last May, an attack targeted men drinking beer after a soccer match, just two weeks before the Mexican presidential election.
President Claudia Sheinbaum, who won these elections hands down, took care of a complicated security situation.
Scores of criminal organizations are fighting for territory across Mexico, seeking to secure safe routes to smuggle migrants, drugs and weapons, but also, increasingly, to extort communities.
His administration showed himself more willing to attack criminal organizations than that of his predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, but the hot spots extend across the country. Sinaloa Cartel factions have been at war in the Sinaloa state capital for months.
The Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartels are fighting in a number of states ranging from central Michoacan to the southern state of Chiapas along the border with Guatemala.
Body parts of an unknown number of victims were found along a highway in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco on Tuesday, as that state’s governor announced the arrival of 180 troops to deal with the rise in violence.
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
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