The mayor of Chilpancingo, the capital of Mexico’s violence-hit state of Guerrero, was alone at a meeting outside the city before he was killed, Mexico’s security minister said Tuesday in a killing that has shocked the country.
Alejandro Arcos of Mexico’s main opposition coalition had taken office only six days earlier. Photos circulated via WhatsApp and Mexican media outlets on Sunday showed a severed head, which appears to be Arcos’s, atop a pick-up truck.
The horrific act came just days before new President Claudia Sheinbaum was to unveil her security strategy aimed at tackling violent crime.
Security Minister Omar García Harfuch said at a news conference that the investigation showed that Arcos had left Chilpancingo in his pickup truck without a driver or escort toward the nearby town of Petaquillas.
García Harfuchs said that Arcos had not requested security protection from the federal government.
García Harfuchs said, “We know he was going to a specific meeting, there was no one with him. There was a communication breakdown in a community, and … hours later the mayor’s body was found.”
Asked by a journalist who Arcos was meeting with, the minister declined to provide details, saying it was an open investigation.
“There is a lot of information on this subject that we must preserve for investigation,” Harfuchs said.
The Mexican newspaper Reforma, citing federal government sources, reported that Arcos had met with members of Los Ardillos, a criminal group operating in Guerrero state, a few hours before his death.
Arcos was cremated on Monday, with mourners lining the streets and throwing rose petals as his coffin was wheeled through the city.
Similar gruesome killings involving beheadings that have plagued Guerrero – including Chilpancingo – have in the past been a method cartel members used to send messages of threats and control.
As recently as 2023, violence from warring gang factions paralyzed public transportation and closed businesses in Chilpancingo. After Arcos’s assassination, classes in local schools were suspended.
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