Mexican mayor ‘decapitated by drug gangs’ six days into job

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/mexican-mayor-decapitated-drug-gangs-144315752.html 

The mayor of a Mexican city plagued by gang violence has been murdered less than a week after taking office.

Photos circulating online showed what appeared to be the severed head of Alejandro Arcos on top of a pick-up truck and the rest of his body inside a car in the Villas del Roble neighbourhood in the east of Chilpancingo.

Mr Arcos was sworn in as the mayor of Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero province, last Monday. His death was confirmed by the authorities late on Sunday.

Local media reported that he had been decapitated, but state prosecutors offered no details when confirming his death.

The death provoked unease across Chilpancingo, which is no stranger to political violence, with residents choosing not to leave their homes after 9pm and schools suspending classes.

Alejandro Moreno, the national leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, called on the federal authorities to take charge of the investigation given Guerrero’s “ungovernability”.

Mr Moreno also revealed that Mr Arcos’s murder came just three days after the shooting of Francisco Tapia, the city government’s new secretary.

“They had been in office less than a week,” Mr Moreno said. “They were young and honest public servants who were seeking progress for their community.”

Chilpancingo has been home to violent turf battles between the Ardillos and the Tlacos, local drug gangs, for years.

The city is so violent that the Ardillos gang once organised a demonstration, hijacked an armoured government car and took 10 police officers hostage after its leaders were arrested for drugs and weapons possession.

Mr Arcos’s social media posts reveal that he had spent his first few days in office overseeing disaster relief after Hurricane John caused severe flooding in Acapulco, the beach resort, and its surrounding towns.

He had also spent time meeting relief workers and residents in the hours before his death, according to photos on his Facebook account.

In addition to the murders of Mr Tapia and Mr Arcos, at least six candidates running for public office were killed in Guerrero in the run-up to the June elections.

During the election campaign, Mr Arcos’s team accused his opponents of waging a “dirty war” against him by linking him to the Ardillos gang on flyers distributed to thousands of residents.

Mr Arcos won the election – his third attempt – by around 1,000 votes on June 2, the same day Claudia Sheinbaum was elected as Mexico’s first female president.

In the months leading up to the country’s general election, at least 37 candidates were killed, while dozens more dropped out after receiving death threats. Ms Sheinbaum has made “pacifying the country” one of her primary aims while in office.

A strategy presentation, seen by the Wall Street Journal, showed proposals to slash killings in the country’s 10 deadliest cities, including Acapulco.

“We are developing a programme for the municipalities that at this moment have the largest number of homicides,” Ms Sheinbaum said shortly after taking office on Oct 1.

Mr Arcos is the third mayor to be murdered in Guerrero this year, after the deaths of Copala’s Salvador Villalva Flores and Malinaltepec’s Acasio Flores Guerrero.