TULA, Mexico\u00a0\u2014\u00a0When bombs fell from and bullets ricocheted off her concrete floors, 74-year-old Mar\u00eda Cabrera and her family fled into the night-cloaked mountains of central Mexico with only the clothes on their backs.<\/p>\n
A week later, Cabrera picks through the charred scraps of her life, salvaging pots, woven cloths and a small wooden cross. She knows it\u2019s the last time she\u2019ll return to her home of 60 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, God, why have you abandoned me?\u201d she said through sobs, wandering past burned ashes of what was once her mattress in a small room with a collapsed roof and a melted refrigerator just through the door. \u201cHow are we going to rebuild? We don\u2019t have money, we don\u2019t have anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
She joined a growing number of people in conflict-torn regions of Mexico forced to flee their homes. Experts have described the displacement phenomenon as an invisible crisis with long-term humanitarian consequences \u2014 there are few official figures on the number of displaced people, who have almost no resources to turn to once violence forces them to leave.<\/p>\n
\u2018We can\u2019t live here anymore\u2019<\/p>\n
Cabrera fled her small town Friday after years of mounting cartel violence in Tula. This town of around 200 native N\u00e1huatl people is among many in the central state of Guerrero ravaged by decades of fracturing rival criminal groups warring for territorial control.<\/p>\n
Last weekend, a group known as Los Ardillos attacked her town and a few others with drone-fired explosives, opened fire on community police forces, killed livestock and burned to a crisp many homes like Cabrera\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Cabrera carefully handed bags of belongings to soldiers escorting a small group of families returning home to gather their things. She prayed as armed men in camouflage loaded her possessions into the back of a truck. As she wandered through her garden for the last time, she begged forgiveness from the dogs and chickens she was forced to leave behind.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want to abandon them,\u201d she said. \u201cBut we suffered through everything. We can\u2019t live here anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scattering across Mexico<\/p>\n
A local human rights group, the Indigenous and People\u2019s Council of Guerrero-Emiliano Zapata, or CIPOG-EZ, estimated that at least 800 people, including children and the elderly, were forcibly displaced, and three community police officers \u2014 groups often formed to protect themselves in the absence of state law enforcement \u2014 fighting back against the cartel gunmen were killed.<\/p>\n
The official numbers are far lower: Mexico\u2019s government said Tuesday that 120 people were forced to flee, and it confirmed no deaths. One community leader sleeping at a basketball court Friday told a local government official that in their town alone they estimated around 280 people had been forced to flee.<\/p>\n
Some families ran into the mountains, not looking back. Hundreds sought shelter at the basketball court, hoping it might be safe to eventually return home. Others \u2014 some wounded by gunfire \u2014 took to cars, buses and trucks, scattering to different regions of Mexico.<\/p>\n
Videos published on social media this week show groups of crying women and children pleading for help.<\/p>\n
The images pushed the government to deploy 1,200 military and police officers to the region. Officials say they have provided aid to those displaced, largely contained the violence, established a \u201csafe corridor\u201d for humanitarian aid to enter and paved the way toward defusing the region\u2019s convoluted conflict.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we do not want is a confrontation that would affect the civilian population. Above all, we must preserve people\u2019s lives,\u201d Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said at a news conference.<\/p>\n
\u2018No more life in these communities\u2019<\/p>\n
Critics say it was the latest example of government inaction and efforts to downplay the depth of the displacement crisis in Mexico. Unlike Colombia, Mexico doesn\u2019t have a comprehensive registry of displaced people. Government figures are often cited as being insufficient by entities such as the United Nations refugee agency, human rights groups, and researchers documenting the crisis.<\/p>\n
A 2025 government National Survey of Victimization and Public Security Perception estimated that nearly 250,000 households were forced to flee in 2024 alone to protect themselves from crime.<\/p>\n
Between 2024 and 2025, the Ibero-American University documented at least 44,695 people who had fled their homes to other parts of Mexico. Many more migrate to the U.S.<\/p>\n
In a May report, the university noted that forced displacements are on the rise in Mexico at a time when Sheinbaum\u2019s government has sought to highlight security gains \u2014 such as sharp dips in homicides \u2014 in an effort to offset threats by the Trump administration to take military action on Mexican cartels.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no more life in these communities,\u201d said Prisco Rodr\u00edguez, a local representative for CIPOG-EZ. \u201cThe government says people have already returned to their houses, but there\u2019s no one here. People don\u2019t say where they\u2019re going out of fear … and the majority never appear.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cabrera and her 75-year-old husband, Alejandro Venancio Bruno, were scrambling to figure out where they would go. Cabrera said her children plead with her to come live with them in Mexico City, about 220 miles from their home, or the state of Queretaro, and rebuild their lives.<\/p>\n
But Venancio said that he\u2019s spent his life working his land, and without money, a home or his most valuable possessions \u2014 his goats \u2014 any other life outside of Tula seems unfathomable.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like starting from zero,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Janetsky and Pesce write for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TULA, Mexico\u00a0\u2014\u00a0When bombs fell from and bullets ricocheted off her concrete floors, 74-year-old Mar\u00eda Cabrera and her family…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[3409,133303,133302,1431,405,7244,1073,48,52,51,8844,1637,47,50,49,133301,2457,592,40264,6187,16220],"class_list":["post-319307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-child","tag-conflict-torn-region","tag-displacement-crisis","tag-family","tag-government","tag-group","tag-home","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-last-time","tag-life","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-maria-cabrera","tag-mexico","tag-people","tag-town","tag-truck","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}