In 2024, the population of Guerrero was shaken by criminal violence. Classes, commerce and transportation were suspended, and three fairs were canceled.
In the state governed by Evelyn Salgado of Morena, at least 12 massacres were recorded, the last one was committed on December 29 in Zapotitlán Tablas when four members of a family, including a minor, were ambushed and murdered.
Until November of this year, 1,637 intentional homicides were accumulated, according to figures from the federal government. Since 2019 – during the government of the PRI member Héctor Astudillo – there has not been such a high figure for this crime with 1,715 murders.
January opened with a massacre in Buenavista de los Hurtado, a community of about 30 inhabitants, in the mountains of Heliodoro Castillo.
On the 4th, the criminal organization La Familia Michoacana resumed an offensive in mountain towns where other criminal groups are present, one of them being Los Tlacos or Cartel de la Sierra.
The region has mining concessions, forests where the exploitation of fine woods continues, cattle, water and fertile land for the planting of drugs.
On February 20, another confrontation in Las Tunas, municipality of San Miguel Totolapan, left 16 gunmen dead.
La Familia Michoacana and the Cartel de la Sierra announced a truce, but the population that was caught in the middle of the bullets remained with the schools closed, without food and dozens of families were forced to move.
On January 6 – Three Kings’ Day in the Catholic calendar – two massacres were committed on the Costa Grande and the lower Mountain.
At night, in a palenque in Petatlán, hitmen entered and shot those present, reported municipal authorities.
The result: 13 people dead, including two women and two 16-year-old students.
At the same time in Chilapa, three women, two of them chicken sellers and a worker from the Guerrero Education Secretariat, were shot dead while they were lifting the Child Jesus outside a home.
At the end of January, violence against drivers and transporters broke out in Acapulco, Taxco and Chilpancingo.
On January 27, urban bus operators in Acapulco suspended service due to insecurity and extortion by organized crime.
In Taxco, transport service was suspended following the murder of a van driver and a passenger.
The measure forced the suspension of tourist activity and classes in the municipality.
The United States embassy in Mexico issued an alert for its staff not to travel to Taxco de Alarcón.
In the midst of the crisis, on January 22, the then municipal president Mario Figueroa Mundo, now a fugitive accused of forced disappearance and organized crime, traveled to the International Tourism Fair in Spain.
Seven months later, on August 28, state police, the Army and the National Guard arrested 10 municipal police officers accused of kidnapping. The corporation was dissolved and public security was taken over by the state government with the support of federal forces.
Two of Mario Figueroa’s sons, Mario N and Marco N, were arrested and face criminal proceedings for drug dealing and forced disappearance.
In Chilpancingo, attacks against taxi and minibus drivers resurfaced, as well as the burning of their units. For about 10 years, the state government has distributed concessions to the criminal organizations Los Tlacos and Los Ardillos that operate in the municipality, according to transport leaders.
Wave of violence
For nine days the state capital was paralyzed, with no classes or work or commercial activities.
On February 6 in Iguala, the then mayor David Gama cancelled the Flag Fair after he and businessmen received pressure and threats from organized crime.
On February 14 in Chilpancingo, Bishop José de Jesús González reported in an unprecedented way that an attempt at a truce that they sought with criminal leaders to pacify the state had failed.
On the night of March 7, police from the Centauro Immediate Reaction Group provoked a political crisis in the government of Evelyn Salgado.
The agents shot at students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School who tried to avoid a checkpoint at the entrance to Chilpancingo, on the old bypass that leads to Tixtla.
The attack killed Yanqui Kothan Gómez, which led to radical protests such as the burning of National Guard patrol cars and the burning of cars and offices of the Government Palace.
In addition, the dismissal of the secretaries of government and security, Ludwing Reynoso and Rolando Solano, as well as the removal of the prosecutor Sandra Luz Valdovinos.
On April 11 in Acapulco, the director of the traffic police in Acapulco, Eduardo Chávez, was shot dead when he left his home in the Infonavit Alta Progreso neighborhood.
On April 29, it was revealed that the bishop emeritus Salvador Rangel had been kidnapped. That day he was found unconscious in a hospital in Cuernavaca, Morelos.
The commissioner of Public Security in the state of Morelos, José Antonio Ortiz, hinted that the prelate had entered a hotel of his own free will accompanied by another person and that he tested positive for cocaine and the sedative benzodiazepine.
Since the Astudillo government, Salvador Rangel was a harsh critic of the security strategy. The same with the government of Evelyn Salgado and the federal government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO).
The religious leader constantly recommended the government to make pacts with criminal groups to pacify the entity and revealed his meetings with bosses to unblock conflicts, kidnappings or extortions against the population as in Taxco.
The bishop emeritus is part of a group of well-known PRI members in the entity, among which the former governor Rubén Figueroa stands out.
Rangel Mendoza was the target of a media lynching by followers of Evelyn Salgado and AMLO. His activism was neutralized.
On the morning of March 28 in Taxco, the kidnapping and murder of the girl Camila who had gone to a friend’s house to play was announced.
Relatives, neighbors and the population surrounded the house where the minor disappeared and where the alleged perpetrator Ana Rosa and three of her children were.
After waiting more than 12 hours for the authorities to arrest the accused, a crowd that included members of the criminal gang violently broke into the house in the La Florida neighborhood.
In the presence of tourists and in the middle of Holy Thursday, the woman and two children were lynched on Plateros Avenue.
Axel Alejandro and Juan Alfredo, who survived the brutal beating, are in prison accused of kidnapping and femicide.
On July 22, at least seven UPOEG police officers were massacred in an ambush near Tierra Colorada.
On the night of August 8, an ambush on two luxury vans left seven people massacred, members of a family, on a highway in Olinalá, in the Guerrero Mountains.
At the beginning of September, the authorities announced the suspension of the fair in Chichihualco, Leonardo Bravo municipality, in the Centro region.
The decision was made as a result of the acts of violence that the population has been experiencing for more than a year due to the presence of three criminal organizations outside the action of authorities and police corporations.
The war between criminals has affected commerce, transportation and above all the education of children and young people.
On September 26, 10 years have passed since the forced disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa without any justice to date and Hurricane John hit the Costa Chica and its rains remained in the state for five days.
More blood
On October 3 and 6, the general secretary, Francisco Gonzalo Tapia, and the municipal president of Chilpancingo, Alejandro Arcos Catalán, were murdered. With this episode of violence never before seen in the state, a new crisis opened in the capital.
In this same year, the former mayor of Atlixtac, Marcelino Ruiz, and his wife Guzmán were murdered; Abraham Ramírez, founder of Morena and father of the candidate for mayor of Huamuxtitlán, Rosalba Ramírez; and Alfredo González, PT candidate for mayor of Atoyac.
Tomás Morales and Antonio Crespo, Nahua candidate for mayor and councilor of Chilapa; Anibal Zúñiga, candidate for councilor in Coyuca de Benítez and his wife Rubí N; and José Alfredo Cabrera, PRI-PRD-PAN candidate for the presidency of Coyuca de Benítez.
Esmeralda Campos, councilwoman and promoter of Morena in Tixtla; Salvador Villalva, mayor-elect of Copala by Mexico Avanza; and Acacio Flores Guerrero, mayor of Malinaltepec.
On the morning of October 24, in the town of Técpan de Galeana, a convoy of a cell of La familia michoacana broke in to fight members of the criminal group that has political, criminal and economic control of that region, Los Granados. The result was 17 hitmen and two municipal police officers dead.
Most of the dead and the 13 gunmen arrested later were and are from Guatemala.
The violence spread to Coyuca de Benítez, Atoyac de Álvarez and San Jerónimo, municipalities with a presence of organized crime. The population was left without classes and transportation service for at least two weeks.
Another case that shook the state was the disappearance of 17 merchants and residents of the town of Chautipan from October 21 to 27 in the towns of El Epazote and Tlanicuilulco, in the municipalities of Chilapa and Quechultenango.
On the night of November 6, the dismembered bodies of 11 of the 17 people were left near the El Parador del Marques hotel in the south of the city.
The state government offered a reward of 1 million pesos for their location and hours before the discovery, the commander of the 35th military zone, Jorge Pedro Nieto, announced a deployment of troops and special forces that was unsuccessful. The military command blamed the criminal organization Los Ardillos for the kidnapping.
The whereabouts of six residents of Chautipan are still unknown.
On November 20 in Chilpancingo, four transporters who were preparing to protest were shot to death in the south of the city.
On December 29, the anti-kidnapping commander of the state prosecutor’s office, Juan Carlos N., was assassinated in Acapulco.
On December 11, outside the Caleta courts, also in Acapulco, the former president of the Judiciary in Guerrero, Edmundo Román Pinzón, was shot dead. Two people were arrested for their alleged responsibility, the state prosecutor’s office reported on December 30.
On Sunday, December 16, in Tixtla, in the Centro region, the businessman, Julián N., his wife and a teacher, dedicated to the organization of dances and the sale of beer at rodeos, were murdered in a house.
Three days later, the teacher’s son, Mario, of the same name, was shot dead.
On December 25, when he was preparing to lead the traditional Teopancalaquis parade in the San Mateo neighborhood, the president of the Patronato de la Feria de Navidad y Año Nuevo de Chilpancingo, Martín Roberto Ramírez Ruiz, was assassinated.
The bullets hit the master of ceremonies of the same board, José Vidal Nava, and injured a woman and a child.
After 199 years, the most important fair in the state was suspended due to the violent dispute for the control of the businesses and the incompetence of the authorities.
Source: proceso
