(Mexico City) Alejandro Arcos Catalan, the mayor of Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero state in southern Mexico, was assassinated six days after taking office, local authorities announced on Sunday.
The 43-year-old elected official was decapitated and his head left on the roof of a car, according to local media. The macabre photo was shared on social networks, subsequently blurred.
“I strongly condemn the homicide of the president of the municipal council of Chilpancingo, Alejandro Arcos Catalan, which the State Attorney General’s Office has confirmed,” indicated on X the governor of the state of Guerrero Evelyn Salgado, elected from Movement for National Regeneration (Morena, left) in power.
The State Attorney General’s Office announced in a press release the opening of “an investigation file for the crime of homicide committed against Alejandro “N” for the events that occurred in Chilpancingo”.
PHOTO FROM FACEBOOK, PROVIDED BY REUTERS
Alejandro Arcos Catalan, the mayor of Chilpancingo, was assassinated.
The public prosecutor’s office reiterated its commitment to “access to justice and against impunity”, in a country where most crimes remain unpunished.
The mayor was assassinated “barely three days after the secretary of the same town hall, Francisco Tapia,” lamented the president of the PRI (opposition), Alejandro Moreno. “They had been on the job for less than a week.”
“Fragmentation of organized crime”
The three official sources do not mention the beheading, which several information sites do such as La Jornada, close to power, or Reforma, very critical of the government in place.
Alejandro Arcos Catalán won the town hall of Chilpancingo (283,354 inhabitants in 2020 according to official figures) in the June 2 election under the label of the PRI-PRD-PAN opposition alliance.
Dozens of candidates were assassinated during the electoral process before the June 2 elections (34, according to the NGO DataCivica).
Cartels, bands or gangs seek to “impose candidates” and let others know that they “do not have the right” to run, explained the prosecutor for electoral crimes, Victor Serrato, during an AFP report in May in Michoacan, neighboring Guerrero.
On the highway between Mexico City and the beaches of Acapulco, Chilpancingo like the rest of the state of Guerrero is the scene of rivalry between local mafias who fight for control of trafficking (drug trafficking from the port of Acapulco to the United States, poppy cultivation in the mountains, extortion).
“The fragmentation of organized crime, the presence of several criminal economies, criminal governance and corruption” explain the violence in the state, summarizes the think tank Insight Crime.
Chilpancingo is 16 km from the Ayotzinapa Normal School, where 43 students disappeared ten years ago after a night of violence, an emblematic case of the approximately 100,000 disappearances recorded in Mexico.
The assassination comes five days after the inauguration of President Claudia Sheinbaum, who is due to present her national security plan on Tuesday.