ViZIHtando Guerrero Bronco

The Costa Grande of Guerrero awoke this Thursday to alarming news of violence between rival criminal gangs in Técpan de Galeana, the municipio just south of our neighbor Petatlán. Due to this and other circumstances, I strongly discourage anyone from traveling down the coast beyond Papanoa for the time being until things simmer down.

A person I know was supposed the see a physician from Acapulco in Zihuatanejo this Monday. The appointment was cancelled because it was deemed too high risk for the physician to travel because of reported violence in both Técpan and Coyuca de Benitez.

We are coming up to the Days of the Dead, a time when many people travel to visit cemeteries where departed are buried. I wonder whether this will limit peoples’ ability to commune as usual.

It most definitely will. No matter what measures the federal government takes, the municipios have no professional police of their own, and their public security remains in the hands of people in offices hundreds of kilometers away. A recipe for failure. The events are national news, and I'm already seeing people decide not to visit Guerrero for their vacations. A damn shame, but it's the same old problem that politicians keep trying to sweep under the rug. Sheinbaum insists she's not going to have a war on the narcos, totally ignoring the terrorist organizations that they now represent thanks to decades of insufficient measures and thanks in large part to corruption.

Hmmm. We've been thinking of jumping in the car and heading down from Canada. Time to reconsider?