(México) The Mexican government sent 25,000 troops to Acapulco after the resort was hit by the hurricane Otis on October 25, but that apparently did not stop the violence from occurring this week.
Acapulco’s main business chamber reported that gang threats and attacks have caused about 90 percent of the city’s vans to shut down, affecting the resort’s main means of transportation. The chamber said the violence forced businesses to close early Thursday and Friday.
“Organized groups of people without conscience or attachment to Acapulco committed criminal acts in broad daylight, threatening civilians with direct armed attacks, which caused the closure of 90% of public transportation,” wrote Alejandro Martínez Sidney, president of the National Chamber of Commerce and Tourist Services in Acapulco.
“If this situation continues, we will be forced to close businesses,” he wrote in a press release on Thursday. The problem continued Friday, with few vans or buses seen on the streets.
Mr. Martínez Sidney was apparently referring to attacks in recent days against privately owned and operated vans. Local media reported that at least three vans were burned, a practice gangs often use to extort daily protection payments from van drivers.
The category 5 hurricane killed 52 people and left 32 missing, in addition to seriously damaging almost all of the resort’s hotels.
The government has committed to building about three dozen barracks for the quasi-military National Guard in Acapulco. But even with crowds of soldiers in the streets, the drug gang violence that has beset Acapulco for nearly two decades appears to have continued.
Acapulco’s economy depends almost entirely on tourism and there are relatively few visitors to the city, partly because only about 4,500 hotel rooms have been repaired, a small fraction of the tens of thousands that the city had formerly.
Additionally, because the government has also sent approximately 3,000 federal employees to assist with reconstruction and repair efforts, they are occupying many hotel rooms.
Violence is nothing new in this once-prestigious seaside resort, and even in the first hours after the hurricane hit, nearly every department store in town was ransacked, as police and police looked on. soldiers.