Mexico’s mayor ‘beheaded by drug gang’ just days after taking office

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The new mayor of a state capital in southern Mexico has been assassinated just a week after taking office, officials have confirmed.

The news comes after claims on social media that the decapitated head of Alejandro Arcos, who was sworn in as mayor of Chilpancingo last Monday, was left on a car in the street.

Chilpancingo is a city so violent that in 2023 a drug gang openly staged a demonstration, hijacked a government armored car and took police hostage to secure the release of arrested suspects.

Chilpancingo is the capital of the state of Guerrero, where Acapulco is located.

The prosecutor’s office issued a statement on Sunday confirming that Arcos was killed, but provided no details.

The official confirmation came after photos circulated on messaging app WhatsApp showing a severed head on a pick-up truck, which appeared to belong to Arcos. The photos could not be independently verified.

Alejandro Moreno, the national leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), lamented the killing of Arcos, saying that the newly installed secretary of the municipal council had also been killed three days earlier.

“They had been in office for less than a week,” Moreno wrote on his social media accounts. “They were young and honest public servants who were looking for progress for their community.”

Chilpancingo has long been the scene of bloody battles between two drug gangs, the Ardillos and the Tlacos. The battle has resulted in dozens of gruesome murders and several high-profile scandals.

A previous mayor was captured on video apparently holding a meeting with leaders of one of the gangs at a restaurant. She was subsequently expelled from her party.

In July 2023, federal officials said a demonstration held that month by hundreds of people in Chilpancingo was organized by the Ardillos gang to secure the release of two gang leaders arrested on drug and gun possession charges.

Protesters blocked largely all traffic on the highway between Mexico City and Acapulco for two days, fought security forces and commandeered an armored police car and used it to ram the gates of the state legislature building.

The protesters kidnapped ten members of the state police and National Guard, as well as three state and federal officials, and held them hostage to enforce their demands before releasing them.

President Claudia Sheinbaum will present her strategy to deal with the dire security situation in Mexico on Tuesday.

Sheinbaum, inaugurated less than a week ago as Mexico’s first female president, is expected to unveil a policy that will prioritize restoring law and order in the deadliest areas plagued by violence linked to drug cartels and organized crime. crime.

The first phase of Sheinbaum’s plan aims to reduce homicides and other serious crimes in 10 areas that account for at least a quarter of homicides linked to organized crime, including the dangerous cities of Colima, Tijuana, Acapulco and Celaya, according to a member of Sheinbaum’s plan. security cabinet that declined to be identified because it was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Arcos’ killing is under investigation to determine the motive and make “corresponding arrests,” Sheinbaum said Monday at her regular morning news conference. She added that her security plan would include better coordination with state governors and attorneys general. Sending the National Guard to the area was a possibility, she said.

Mexico is exceptionally deadly for political candidates and officials, who are routinely targeted by organized crime. The country’s most recent elections, in which Sheinbaum won the presidency, were the bloodiest in the country’s modern history. In the run-up to the June 2 elections, 37 candidates were murdered, some of them in brazen acts of public violence.

These murders, and most others in Mexico, rarely result in arrests and successful prosecutions.

“There is a problem with impunity in Mexico, and until that goes away, until those institutions are stronger, you simply cannot guarantee the safety of the candidates,” said Mike Ballard, director of intelligence at the international security firm Global Guardian. .

Mexico’s new government will need to actively arrest and prosecute more top cartel officials if it hopes to truly curb the power of these groups, Ballard said. He pointed to the American mafia and how its hold on society gradually diminished after a series of arrests, convictions and lengthy prison sentences in the 1980s and 1990s.