Zirándaro, Guerrero: Due To CJNG and LFM Violence Thousands of Residents Have Been Displaced

Already more than 30 dead in the community of "El Chivo". Additionally, more than 3 thousand displaced by violence leaving 40 ghost towns---

Federal and State governments have ignored our request to install 3 security points, laments the mayor

▲ The Morenista mayor Gregorio Portillo Mendoza, of the municipality of Zirándaro, Guerrero, showed yesterday the truck in which at least 14 people were burned last weekend.

Zirándaro, Guerrero -  A confrontation between alleged members of the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) and La Familia Michoacana forced the displacement of around 1,200 people from the towns of El Chivo, La Calera and La Estancia, among others; with them they add more than 3 thousand displaced people from 40 communities since November 2019, equivalent to 30 percent of the population of the municipality of Zirándaro, said the Morenista mayor Gregorio Portillo Mendoza.

The morning of this Friday, in the town of El Chivo, with support from the National Guard and the State and Municipal Police, the mayor led a tour of the damaged houses and had a talk with the few settlers.

The owner of a house, who requested anonymity, narrated the terror he lived with his wife on February 8: “We have a little store, that's what we live on; We were eating shortly after 3 in the afternoon when we suddenly saw people running and then armed men went into the house shooting.

“My wife and I got under the bed, the bullets passed nearby us. So we were stuck like this for more than three hours when suddenly, before 7 pm, the shooting ceased and we told the gentlemen who were inside (the gunmen), maybe about 10, that for the love of God they would let us go, that we had no problems with anyone and we went out a back door to another family house.

"Then the confrontation resumed until at about three in the morning. Once the government (the Army) arrived, we were able to move to (the municipal seat of) Zirándaro."

On all the walls of the house there are hundreds of pockmarks that were left over from the gunfire of the Barret machine gun, .50 cal, the AK-47 and the AR-15, some even went through the concrete. Due to the confrontation in El Chivo, some residents said that about 60 people died.

The confrontation occurred on Saturday, February 8, they said, when members of the CJNG arrived in three armored vehicles, at about 3:30 p.m., and caught by surprise the bosses of the Familia Michoacana who were paying the weekly salary to their members. One of the armored vehicles, which had been stolen from a home company in Huetamo, Michoacán, was cremated with at least 14 people inside, they said.

Mayor Portillo Mendoza said he could not confirm the figure of 60 dead, because neither the state nor the federal government has the exact information of the casualties on both sides, but it is said that there were more than one hundred civilians armed.

Almost at the end of the tour, the entourage visited the house of Don Faustino N, who showed the traces of the bullets on the tin roof and on the walls of his humble dwelling, but also on trees and banana bushes broken by the bullets.

Here you can no longer live

"I'm leaving," the farmer said disconsolately, "here I leave part of my life, my animals, we go with my wife and my children to Zirándaro, here you can no longer live, I planted two hectares of corn, but now I no longer have nothing."

At the end of the visit in El Chivo, where he accompanied the villagers to collect part of their belongings, Mayor Portillo Mendoza mentioned that the displaced are “600 from La Calera and another 500 from Acuyan, La Estancia, El Chivo, El Reparo, La Ciénega and Cambio.

He regretted that neither the state nor the federal government meets the demand to install three checkpoints: one in the municipal seat of Zirándaro, to prevent the entry of the CJNG; another in La Calera, to control access to Ciudad Altamirano and the mountains; and one more in Cuatro Caminos, for the control of access to Zihuatanejo. With these three filters, the rate of violence would undoubtedly decrease, because it would reduce its logistics, ”said the mayor.

On the operations he commented: How is it possible that three armored vehicles entered from Huetamo. There is an erroneous (government) strategy because they have not heard us, there has even been refusal to receive me at the State Coordination Board, they will hardly attend me on Monday.

We need to prevent criminals from continuing to use the population as hostages. This terror could have been avoided if the government had heard our demand to install these three security points, he concluded.

In Acapulco, residents of the communal assets of Cacahuatepec requested before the Executive Commission of Attention to Victims in the state to expedite their request to return to their localities.

They said that 30 families have been displaced since 2014 “due to the establishment of the community police headed by the spokesman of the Council of Ejidos and Opposition Communities to the La Parota Dam, Marco Suástegui Muñoz. He explained that there are displaced people from Las Parotas, Rancho Las Marías, Parotillas and La Concepción communities.

Mauro Gallegos Salgado, from the town of Parotillas, explained that this day they came to collect information from Mexico City, 15 days ago we already had a videoconference.

Among those displaced, he explained, there are followers and opponents of the construction of the La Parota hydroelectric dam on the Papagayo River, a project that has been undertaken without success by the Federal Electricity Commission for more than 15 years in the rural area of Acapulco.

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