Mexico: Shock And Anger Over Beheading Of Newly Appointed Mayor (Facebook image @Alejandro Arcos Catalan)
Murder of the newly appointed mayor shook the Mexico government. Alejandro Arcos Catalán was sworn in as the mayor of Chilpancingo, the capital of the southern state of Guerrero on 30 September, a day before Mexico’s first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, took power.
Mexico is notorious for murders ever since crackdown on drug dealers were announced. Reportedly, last year alone, more than 30,000 murders were documented.
Less than a week into her presidency, the reports emerged of the 43-year-old city leader being slained the previous day. Speaking to the reporters, she said that “All the necessary investigations are taking place”.
The disturbing image of Arcos Catalán’s bloodied head, exhibited on the roof of a white vehicle while his body lay slumped inside, spread on social media.
The murder came after two of his close allies were shot dead in the early days of his short-lived administration. A secretary, Francisco Tapia, was shot dead on October 3, while Ulises Hernández Martínez, a former special forces police commander who was tipped to become Arcos Catalán’s security chief, was also gunned down on the eve of the mayor’s inauguration.
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Citizens – shocked – shared footage of an interview with the mayor before his death in which he said he wished to be remembered as a champion of peace and happiness. “I’ve lived here all my life … and it’s here that I want to die – but I want to die fighting for my city,” Arcos Catalán said.
The incident sparked unsettled the political landscape also. President of the mayor’s party, the Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI). People denounced what he called a grotesque “act of terror”.
“The fact that they have decapitated the mayor of such an important city should make us shudder. It is utterly unacceptable and we need to do something to ensure it stops happening”, told Ricardo Anaya to the reporters.
Reportedly, Mexico has witnessed more than 450,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderón launched his doomed “war” against the drug cartels in 2006.
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Sheinbaum promised to continue the so-called “hugs, not bullets” security policy of her predecessor and mentor, the 70-year-old nationalist Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Though López Obrador claimed to have achieved a modest reduction in Mexico’s murder rate in the later stages of his presidency, there is consensus among security analysts that his attempts to “pacify” the country failed.
As per Instituto Igarape, thinktank, Mexico has 11 of the world’s 50 most dangerous cities in 2023. In 2015, it was only three. Chilpancingo was one among the 11 cities.
Identity of the mayor’s killers remained bleak. However, in recent years the city has witnessed a bloody squabble between two criminal groups called Los Ardillos (the Squirrels) and Los Tlacos.
