Extortion in Mexico<\/a> is a multibillion-dollar racket that cuts across economic sectors and is linked to organized crime.<\/p>\nPolice have arrested five suspects, at least two of whom may have participated in the killings, authorities said. There was no official word on who ordered the hits or the motive.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of army troops, special forces soldiers and police officers were dispatched across the state after the slayings. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhoever ordered and committed this barbarism will pay for it,\u201d vowed Zacatecas Gov. David Monreal, a member of Mexico\u2019s ruling Morena political bloc. \u201cThere will be justice, not impunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
For many, official pledges of justice ring hollow in a country where few gang slayings are resolved beyond what critics call token arrests, typically of low-level hit men and not the masterminds.<\/p>\n
Zacatecas has long been the site of bloody turf battles between Mexico\u2019s Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa cartels. But authorities boast that the state has lately become a model for reducing mob mayhem \u2014 an assertion that many find suspect.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe in Zacatecas live in terror because we can be disappeared, murdered, kidnapped, and the authorities do nothing,\u201d said Rosa Carmona Rosales, a domestic worker who is a part of a search group seeking \u201cdisappeared\u201d victims, including daughter Adriana, a mother of three who vanished in 2017. \u201cThere is no justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several business leaders contacted were hesitant to speak on the record, citing vulnerability to retribution and a general climate of fear and uncertainty.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course we pay extortion, and the demands aren\u2019t always from organized crime,\u201d said one construction executive who declined to give his name. \u201cMany times it comes from local governments. … It\u2019s an open secret that, in Zacatecas, the government and organized crime are in collusion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two days after the bodies were found, a video began circulating on social media featuring a masked figure reading a statement in front of an array of gunmen in tactical gear. The killings, he said, were payback from a faction of the Sinaloa cartel. The man accused state officials of breaking a \u201cpact\u201d with the cartel and warned that similar, or worse, fates awaited others who double-crossed the mob.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere, betrayals cost lives,\u201d the masked figure warned.<\/p>\n
Authorities label the video fake and deny any deal or cooperation with the cartels.<\/p>\n
The massacre comes as the federal government has hailed its national security crackdown as a major success. President Claudia Sheinbaum has credited her administration\u2019s efforts with reducing homicides by almost 50% in less than two years.<\/p>\n
But many Mexicans remain unconvinced, a skepticism only reinforced by a steady stream of high-profile killings across the country.<\/p>\n
In the days after the Zacatecas slayings, a mayor was assassinated in his office in the central state of Morelos and a journalist was shot dead in Oaxaca, in the south. Those crimes were unrelated to the slaughter in Zacatecas, authorities said, but again demonstrated how mob violence continues to wreak havoc throughout Mexico.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened in recent days in Zacatecas is one more indication that … criminality remains present, dominating territory, with links to local governments,\u201d wrote columnist Carlos Puig in Mexico\u2019s Milenio news outlet.<\/p>\n
All 10 bodies were found outside Zacatecas city, the state capital and a major tourist draw, featuring colonial-era churches and other attractions. Visitors are advised to not wander far from the heavily policed capital.<\/p>\n
In Mexico, Zacatecas is renowned for its long history of silver mining and for being the site of a signature 1914 battle during the Mexican Revolution, in which the insurgent forces of Gen. Francisco \u201cPancho\u201d Villa routed government troops.<\/p>\n
The U.S. State Department gives Zacatecas its highest risk advisory rating \u2014 Level 4, meaning \u201cDo Not Travel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zacatecas has traditionally been a major source of immigrants to the United States, especially to California. Many U.S. residents with Zacatecas roots regularly visit relatives in the state, especially during holiday seasons.<\/p>\n
In 2022, Jos\u00e9 Guti\u00e9rrez, a Mexican-born architect and U.S. citizen who lived in Ohio, was in Zacatecas while visiting his fiancee for the Christmas holidays. The couple went missing. Weeks later, Mexican authorities found four bodies in a pit on a ranch in Zacatecas. <\/p>\n
The remains were identified as those of the Ohio architect, his fiancee, her sister and a female cousin.<\/p>\n
McDonnell is a Times staff writer. S\u00e1nchez Vidal is a special correspondent. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MEXICO CITY\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Residents of Mexico have become accustomed to a regular ledger of horrors \u2014 assassinations, kidnappings, \u201cdisappearances\u201d and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[165272,6577,135070,2789,165274,405,5686,48,52,51,47,50,49,1555,165273,2457,29386,3231,64547,225,165271],"class_list":["post-412766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-apparent-victim","tag-authority","tag-bad-day","tag-body","tag-cartel-execution","tag-government","tag-killing","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-man","tag-massacre","tag-mexico","tag-organized-crime","tag-site","tag-slaying","tag-state","tag-zacatecas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412766","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=412766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}