The mayor of a state capital in southwestern Mexico was killed on Sunday, less than a week after he took office. The public official’s death was the second in days in Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero state, and echoed some of the most gruesome days of the country’s drug war.
Alejandro Arcos Catalán, 43, was sworn in last Monday as mayor of Chilpancingo. Just before he took office, the region was drenched by heavy rains and battered by the winds of Hurricane John.
On Sunday, Mr. Arcos Catalán visited some affected communities, bringing water and other supplies to residents. “We are working nonstop to reopen the roads to the communities affected,” he said on social media. “Together we will rebuild Chilpancingo.”
Hours later, his assassination was confirmed by the attorney general’s office in Guerrero and other state authorities. He had been beheaded, according to a public official with knowledge of the case who was not authorized to speak publicly. His head was left on top of a white pickup-up truck; the rest of his body was inside the vehicle, the official said.
No one has claimed responsibility for Mr. Arcos Catalán’s murder.
Days before he took office, a group of armed men gunned down his intended security minister, a former head of the special forces unit of the Guerrero police. And last Thursday, the City Council’s secretary general was shot and killed in broad daylight.
Mr. Arcos Catalán’s case is so far the most gruesome killing of a Mexican politician since the inauguration of President Claudia Sheinbaum last week. It brought back memories of the tactics used in the darkest days of Mexico’s drug war, when criminals publicly displayed dismembered bodies to terrorize the population.
Ms. Sheinbaum inherits many challenges from her mentor and predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with cartel violence perhaps the most pressing, though she has repeatedly minimized the issue during the campaign trail and since taking office.
“This idea that there is widespread violence in the country, we do not share it,” she told her supporters earlier this year as cases of slain candidates began to pile up ahead of June’s general election.
A total of 41 aspirants to public office were killed, making it one of the most deadly election cycles in Mexico’s recent history.
The first days of Ms. Sheinbaum’s administration have already been marked by violence.
Last week, Mexican soldiers shot and killed six migrants after seemingly mistaking them for cartel members. And government data shows that so far in October, an average of 81 people have been killed per day across the country. If the trend continues, this could become the country’s most violent month on record in the past few years.
In Sinaloa state, a war between rival factions of the powerful Sinaloa cartel has led to a spike in deaths and kidnappings in northwest Mexico, though Ms. Sheinbaum has responded by saying the state does not have the highest number of homicides. Instead, she has called attention to Guanajuato, a state governed by the opposition where battles between two cartels over extortion operations and territory has led to brutal mass killings.
Ms. Sheinbaum is scheduled to announce her national security plan on Tuesday, and is expected to place a major emphasis on an approach rooted in enhanced intelligence and investigation.
Her predecessor, Mr. López Obrador, relied heavily on the military and the National Guard to patrol the country’s most troubled regions, though that rarely led to direct confrontations with criminal groups. Ms. Sheinbaum has vowed to continue that strategy.
For the past few years, Chilpancingo has been at the center of deadly clashes between rival cartels fighting each other to infiltrate and control the local economy. The city was governed by the president’s Morena party until Mr. Arcos Catalán, a candidate of a coalition of opposition parties, was voted in.
On Sunday night, after his killing was confirmed, the streets of Chilpancingo emptied out. Some schools suspended classes for Monday.
“We have always talked about a peace project. It has been our banner, our proposal. And that is what we aspire to,” Mr. Arcos Catalán said in a radio interview after the killings of his colleagues, asking for state and federal authorities to protect him and his team. “We need them. We need them to be able to move forward.”
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