Police, soldiers swarm Mexico’s Acapulco as killings continue, writes Mark Stevenson
Along with beach towels or sandals, there’s a new popular beach accessory that says a lot about the violence gripping this once-glamorous resort: a small black leather tote hanging from the neck or shoulders of some men. It’s not a man-bag, exactly – it holds a pistol.
Death can strike anywhere in Acapulco these days. A sarong vendor was slain on the beach in January by a gunman who escaped on a Jet Ski.
Another man was gunned down at a seaside restaurant. In the hillside slums that ring the city, a 15-year-old girl’s body was found chopped into pieces and wrapped in a blanket, her severed head in a bucket nearby with a hand-lettered sign from a drug gang.
The surge in killings has made Acapulco one of Mexico’s most violent places, scaring away what international tourism remained and recently prompting the US government to bar its employees from travelling there for any reason.
In response, Mexico has lined the city’s coastal boulevard with police and soldiers, turning Acapulco into a high-profile test case for a security strategy that the government has used elsewhere: When homicides spike, flood the area with troops.
Today it’s almost easier to find a truck full of soldiers, a federal policeman or a gaggle of local tourist cops than it is to find a taxi along the costera, the seaside boulevard that runs through the hotel zone.
Marines patrol the beach, while federal police watch over the breakwaters.
“This area has been made bulletproof,” Guerrero state prosecutor, Xavier Olea, said.
Except it hasn’t. Gunmen shot dead three young men in broad daylight two blocks away from a restaurant where they met an underworld figure.
Two of the bodies lay on the concrete just off the beach, and one bled out on the sand. Two were waiters, and the third a roving coconut oil vendor.
On a recent day, further down the beach, a black bag hung around the neck of a man nicknamed “the lieutenant”.
He works as a bodyguard for a man with underworld connections who agreed to discuss the security situation. He spoke on condition of anonymity.
“There are 300 paid killers on the costera,” the underworld figure said. At least one other bodyguard was nearby.
“A decent killer makes about 5 000 pesos (R4 300) a week.”
Experts say Acapulco shows the limitations of the government’s security strategy. Federal police, almost none of whom are from the city, quickly get lost once they leave the boulevard and ascend into hillside neighbourhoods.
Their heavy weapons are ill-suited to urban policing and they’re hampered as well by Mexico’s unwieldy judicial system and a lack of investigative training.
Last week, two men were shot on the street a block from the popular Caleta beach.
Police showed up, but when no ambulance arrived, relatives or friends simply bundled the men into private vehicles to take them to the hospital.
Police marked spent shell casings with cut-off plastic cooldrink bottles, but there was no sign of any in-depth investigation.
“It’s the same problem in Guerrero, the same problem in Tamaulipas, in Michoacan,” security analyst, Alejandro Hope, said, referring to three states where homicides have spiked.
“Suddenly there’s an emergency, they send troops to where the problem is and in the short-term crime drops.
“But then there is an emergency somewhere else, and then the troops have to leave, and they have not developed local law-enforcement capacity.”
Acapulco’s latest wave of killings began on April 24, when gunfire broke out along the boulevard. It was the first time such sustained shooting had been seen there since the darkest days of 2012, when the murder rate in this city of 800 000 hit 146 per 100 000 inhabitants.
It has since fallen to about 112 per 100 000.
Olea and the underworld figure agree the conflict started late last year between the Beltran Leyva gang, which used to control the city, and the Independent Cartel of Acapulco, or Cida, which arose after the death of cartel boss, Arturo Beltran Leyva, in 2009.
The Beltran Leyva family, now supported by Mexico’s fastest-rising cartel, the Jalisco New Generation gang, tried to reassert control in November, calling themselves La Empresa, or “The Company”, and employing a small group of professional killers known as the Russians.
The Beltran Leyvas quickly antagonised the Cida by cutting pay in half for enforcers and dealers, resulting in an open war. It is suspected that the waiters and the coconut oil vendor killed last week were innocents with no drug connections, allegedly slain by the Russians.
Street-level drug dealing may well be second only to Acapulco’s much-diminished tourism industry for the amount of money involved. A so-called Oxxo – local slang for a drug retail house – can do an estimated 150 000 pesos in business in a single night.
The underworld figure said there were about 50 such “stores” in Acapulco, meaning that drug sales probably amounted to about 7.5 million pesos a day.
That pays for a lot of hit men.
The April 24 shoot-out came just after mysterious text messages circulated among city residents warning of a bloody weekend, prompting many to stay off the streets and keep their kids home from school.
State authorities initially described it as a direct attack on police installations, but as more information emerged it seemed to have resulted from an attempt by unknown attackers to rob a drug gang payroll of about 50 bundles of cash.
After the first shots were heard on the boulevard, police in their underwear began firing from a nearby hotel where they were staying.
Further down the road, another hotel had its façade sprayed with bullets.
The police reaction, captured in online videos of loud gunfire, worsened the public perception of violence in Acapulco.
About 1 600 businesses in the city had already closed because of security problems, said business chamber leader, Alejandro Martinez.
“There is a lot of mystery about what happened (in the shoot-out), but whatever they did, they did it badly,” Martinez said of security forces. “That was an error on the part of the federal government that cost us a lot.”
He added that the drop-off in tourism has hit business owners already dealing with extortion demands from the gangs.
“First they send text messages,” Martinez said. “Then come the phone calls, and if you don’t pay, they come to your business, four or five men, asking for the owner.”
There have been targeted killings of business owners, and also collateral damage.
One waiter at a restaurant was killed by a stray bullet during a gun battle.
Joaquin Badillo, who runs Acapulco’s leading private security firm, estimated that 95% of the killings in the city were linked directly or indirectly to criminal gangs.
“Somebody didn’t live up to a deal, somebody didn’t pay, somebody didn’t deliver, somebody was given (drugs) to sell and didn’t, somebody else went to work for the competition,” Badillo said. “None of these people are doing Acapulco any good.”
But that’s little comfort to residents of Acapulco’s slums, who still suffer the worst of the violence despite the high-profile tourist-quarter killings.
New police chief, Max Sedano, said he thought the gangs “have retreated up into the colonias, or slums”, where few tourist dollars ever arrive.
In one, Ciudad Renacimiento, soldiers in battle gear guarded the chained gates of the Gabriela Mistral grade school on a recent day while mothers waited outside to pick up their kids.
Like many schools in Acapulco, security was stepped up after gang members demanded teachers hand over year-end bonuses or a cut of their pay cheques.
A few steps away, Pedro Ramirez, 71, sat at the street stall where he sells kitchenware. Gesturing toward the soldiers, he said all was quiet during the day but the danger began as soon as they left.
“It’s like there is a curfew, nobody goes out at night anymore,” said Ramirez, who has lived in the slum since its beginnings in 1980.
“In the morning, dead people turn up on streets.”
AP