Crime in Acapulco: Dismembered bodies found after a confrontation in Acapulco

Federal and state security forces found four dismembered bodies inside a pickup truck after a gun battle with members of a criminal gang in the streets of Colonia La Cima in Acapulco. The confrontation, which lasted several minutes and included a chase by the Army, Navy, and State Police against the group of armed civilians.

Witness accounts indicate that around 10:30 p.m. on Thursday, the military, marines, and state police were traveling along the Acapulco-Chilpancingo federal highway, near Colonia La Cima. The security forces noticed that there were several civilians in two vehicles who were stopped for an inspection but were met with gunfire.

The security forces immediately responded to the aggression and a chase ensued, causing panic among the people walking in the area and motorists. The criminals managed to escape and left behind a van in which four dismembered bodies were found. Unofficially, it is said that one person walking along the road was wounded during the crossfire.

During the night and early hours of Friday morning, shootings were reported between opposing groups of criminal groups that have controlled Acapulco for years. Clashes were reported in Caleta and other areas of Acapulco.

This new incident of violence in the streets of Acapulco occurred eight days after Governor Evelyn Salgado Pineda and the Secretary of the Navy, José Rafael Ojeda Durán, launched Operation Reinforcement 2021 with the arrival of 200 marines in Acapulco, Chilpancingo, and Iguala. However, violence in these three municipalities has not been contained. The state government did not report on the events in Acapulco.

Security operations reinforced in the tourist area

Due to the acts of violence that have occurred in the tourist area, authorities from the Acapulco Pacification Coordination Group approved the strengthening of public security measures throughout the hotel zone. Spokesperson Ernesto Manzano Rodríguez pointed out that they will be concrete and efficient actions in which public security corporations from the three levels of government will participate.

"The strategies that will be implemented will not be disclosed in detail, because they are actions that are intended to prevent more acts of violence, but there will be a greater presence of security elements that will be traveling throughout the city. tourist strip, "he indicated. He stated that the operations aboard units will continue, as well as tours on foot and checkpoints in some points of the Miguel Aleman coast.

Manzano Rodríguez said that the points of the Costera where there have been cases of violence such as the one that occurred last week where two people were killed aboard a vehicle, will be more monitored with the new security actions that will be taken through corporations. The also Secretary-General of the City Council said that each act of violence that occurs in the city is analyzed within the coordination group. He added that security will be being reinforced not only in the tourist area but throughout the city, especially in the places where the peaks have occurred.

Organized crime disputes Acapulco

For more than 10 years, when the so-called "war against drug trafficking" began in Acapulco, Guerrero was one of the cities hardest hit by violence: the famous port lived its darkest days that plunged it into a serious tourist, economic, but above all, security crisis. Although the levels of criminality, mainly that derived from organized crime, are not the same, the strategy to stop the wave of insecurity has not yielded results. According to the newspaper Reforma, in the last 21 months, at least 16 criminal cells have submerged Acapulco in a wave of violence, which has left more than 1,300 deaths in the city (figures from the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System).

According to an internal report of the municipal Public Security Secretariat (SSP), the city is disputed by cells of hitmen that are splits of the Independent Cartel of Acapulco (CIDA), an armed arm of what was once the organization of the Beltran Leyva led by Edgar Valdez Villarreal, "La Barbie". The report details that CIDA is currently the strongest cartel in the tourist port since it controls the distribution of drugs and the collection of business fees for all commercial transfers. It operates in the Costera Miguel Alemán, the center of the city, and more than 80 colonies in the western area, in addition to the Las Cruces prison.

"Los Virus," the second-largest group, controls part of the Diamond Zone and Puerto Marques and part of the Miguel Aleman Coast, according to the report. The other 14 criminal cells, referred to in the report as "atomized gangs," act on their own in suburban neighborhoods and rural communities.

Reforma details that these organizations also charge weekly fees to public transportation and when a criminal group suffers the detention of one of its members by the authorities, they force the drivers to carry out blockades. Businessmen and transporters assure that the battle to the death between these criminal groups has accentuated the collection of floors, kidnappings, and homicides.

Alejandro Martínez Sidney, the leader in Acapulco of the Federation of Chambers of Commerce, said that those who have their businesses in the Coast, Center, Diamond Zone, Puerto Marqués, continue to pay fees to criminal groups to work. Faced with the situation of unstoppable violence and lack of security, in several neighborhoods residents have imposed a kind of "curfew" at night to avoid being victims of crime. Although the authorities have well identified the leaders of each sector at the service of the cartel and its modus operandi, they have not been able to reverse the effects of narco-violence.