The beheading of the mayor shows the security role of Mexico’s new president

Unknown assailants killed and beheaded the recently elected local mayor of a major city in southwestern Mexico less than a week after he took office, highlighting the Herculean task facing the country’s new president in tackling an increasingly dire public safety situation.

Authorities on October 6 found the severed head of Alejandro Arcos Catalán lying atop a white vehicle on the east side of Chilpancingo, the capital of the southwestern state of Guerrero. His body was left in the front passenger seat.

Arcos took office on September 30 after being elected in June as a representative of a coalition of opposition parties that dethroned the ruling Morena party. Omar García Harfuch, the public security minister appointed by President Claudia Sheinbaum, told reporters that Arcos was heading alone to a meeting in Petaquillas, a city just south of the capital where criminal groups linked to the Ardillos gang are in control retain.

His murder is just the latest outbreak of violence that has come to define the city’s current political transition. Armed gunmen shot dead Francisco Tapia in broad daylight in the city center on October 3, just three days after he started his municipal position as secretary general of the city council.

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Days earlier, a commando of gunmen killed Ulises Hernández Martínez, the former director of the special forces of the Guerrero state police. Arcos had asked him to serve as the city’s chief of public safety.

Arcos’ election victory had the potential to usher in a new era for the mayor’s office and redefine the long-standing ties between local politics and organized crime. Last year, security cameras captured Norma Otilia Hernández, the former mayor ousted by Arocs, meeting with a leader of the Ardillos, one of several crime groups with a long history in the region.

In his first public speech, Arcos pledged not to make a pact with criminal groups and to guarantee peace and security in Chilpancingo, which may have put him in the crosshairs of those in power in the region.

“Safety requires the commitment of everyone,” he said after becoming mayor. “I appeal to 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 we all need.”

InSight crime analysis

The latest brutal murder of a local politician is the latest example since President Sheinbaum took office of the crisis she must deal with as Mexico’s first female head of state.

“It’s a terrible sign of the criminal organization that did this, 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 uncertainty during her first 100 days. Her administration’s priorities included better coordination and intelligence sharing, tackling violence in Chiapas and extortion in Michoacán, and setting up specialized interagency task forces to help reduce insecurity in certain hotspots in the country .

The southern border state of Chiapas has become the main focal point of an ongoing battle between various criminal factions linked to the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG) competing for criminal economies such as drug trafficking and migrant smuggling. . Thousands have been displaced and hundreds killed in recent years in a once peaceful state now beset by murderous 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 in in Mexico City, a group of soldiers patrolling the state near the Mexico-Guatemala border shot at a group of 33 migrants, killing six people and wounding a dozen others.

Mexico’s security concerns extend far beyond the southern border area. The dead bodies of twelve 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 in late July. Local authorities have recorded hundreds of enforced disappearances and killings since fighting began in September.

SEE ALSO: A Cold War rages within the Sinaloa Cartel following the capture of El Mayo

Sheinbaum is now the fourth Mexican president to face the country’s violence crisis since former President Felipe Calderón declared war on organized crime in 2006. By some estimates, the drug war has killed as many as 430,000 people over the past two decades, killing more than 430,000 people. During that period, 100,000 were reported missing. Alliances between political elites and organized crime groups have made meaningful security gains impossible for past governments that have consistently relied on a militarized approach.

“Right now we don’t see a rift between (former president) AMLO and Sheinbaum’s security strategy, but it remains to be seen how she will respond and adapt,” Le Cour told InSight Crime. “The war between different crime groups in Guerrero is fierce, but has been a bit invisible over the past month while everything else was happening across the country.”

Featured image: Chilpancingo Mayor Alejandro Arcos Catalán addresses the crowd as he is sworn in as mayor. Credit: El Financiero