Mexico: Cartel Gunfights Mean No More Fun in Acapulco
Mexico’s beautiful west coast city of Acapulco used to be a safe and pleasant place for Americans to vacation...
But in recent years, tourists have been avoiding Acapulco because of worsening cartel violence. On Sunday night, gunmen attacked a police station in the city — is that crime or civil war?
In addition, a local journalist, Francisco Pacheco Beltran, who reported on cartel violence, was murdered a few days ago. According to Reporters without Borders, Mexico is the deadliest country in the Western Hemisphere for journalists.
The map of Mexico’s drug cartels is a patchwork of crime.
Build that wall, President Trump!
Acapulco paralyzed by fear after gunfights between police and gang members, Los Angeles Times , April 26, 2016
The Pacific city of Acapulco remained gripped by fear Tuesday with thousands of businesses and many schools shuttered following two brazen attacks on federal authorities — the latest round of bloodshed in the city’s long fall from storied vacation paradise to Mexico’s murder capital.
Gov. Hector Astudillo of Guerrero state pleaded for a return to “normalcy” after Sunday night’s attacks by suspected drug gangs on a police station and a hotel that housed federal police.
The attacks were apparently reprisals for the arrest Saturday of Fredy del Valle, alias “El Burro,” head of the Independent Cartel of Acapulco, the governor said.
Though the casualties were limited to one dead attacker and a wounded policeman, prolonged gunfire transformed several blocks into a war zone and left residents in a state of shock. City streets, including the Costera Miguel Aleman beach side road, were largely deserted Tuesday amid fears that violence could erupt again.
“Today we haven’t had any business,” Esmeralda Rios, a 23-year-old waitress at El Fogon restaurant, said Tuesday. “The few tourists who have stayed don’t want to leave their hotels.”
The decline of Acapulco, with a population of roughly 800,000, been underway for at least a decade as the city, its port and Guerrero state have taken on increasing strategic importance as way stations for South American cocaine destined for the United States.
With 903 murders last year, more than any other Mexican city, Acapulco had 111 killings for every 100,000 people. That is more than double the rate in the deadliest U.S. city — St. Louis — in 2014, the most recent year for which the federal government has published statistics...