The mayor of a city in southern Mexico was assassinated less than a week after entering office, officials said on Sunday, the latest in a string of attacks on politicians in the violence-plagued Latin American country.
The shooting of Chilpancingo Mayor Alejandro Arcos “fills us with indignation,” Guerrero State Governor Evelyn Salgado posted on social media, without providing any other information about the circumstances.
Local media reported Arcos’ decapitation, but there has been no official confirmation.
Arcos was elected in June, representing an opposition coalition that included the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which condemned his assassination as a “cowardly crime” and demanded justice.
“Enough of violence and impunity! The people of Guerrero do not deserve to live in fear,” the PRI stated on X.
His murder came just days after the killing of another city official, Francisco Tapia, according to PRI president Alejandro Moreno.
“They had been in office for less than a week. Young and honest officials who sought progress for their community,” Moreno said on X.
Guerrero, one of Mexico’s poorest states, has seen years of violence caused by territorial warfare between cartels competing for control over drug manufacturing and trafficking.
Last year, 1,890 homicides were reported in the state, which includes the coastal resort city of Acapulco, a former playground for the wealthy and famous but is now plagued by crime.
More than 450,000 people have been killed in Mexico, with tens of thousands missing, since the government ordered the army to combat drug trafficking in 2006.
Politicians, particularly at the municipal level, are routinely subjected to the bloodbath caused by corruption and the multibillion-dollar drug trade.
One of the biggest issues Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first female president, faces is dealing with cartel violence, which has made murder and kidnapping a regular occurrence.
Sheinbaum, the former mayor of Mexico City who was sworn in on October 1st, has committed to follow her predecessor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s “hugs not bullets” strategy of employing social policy to address crime at its base.
She is scheduled to reveal her security strategy on Tuesday.
According to official data, at least 24 politicians were assassinated during the extremely violent political process preceding the June election, which the primary governing party figure won by a landslide.
