This scene I’ve found among the hardest to digest in a decade in&out of Michoacán

Reenacting an execution was this veteran sicario’s sense of humor – but it reflects a cruel reality

That of the nearly half million people killed or disappeared in🇲🇽since 2007, and his role in it The pic’s from November

I was back on the ground, spending time with 3 armed group leaders, sicarios & civilians navigating meandering frontlines

The result: A journey into what keeps Michoacán’s armed conflict spinning & where it’s headed

facesofconflict.crisisgroup.org/on-the-front-l…

8 persons reported beheaded in Aguililla, Michoacán 🇲🇽

Other sources say total death toll is 26

This is primarily the effect of self-interest-based politics & collusion so far undermining any notion of progress in the field of security

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animalpolitico.com/2021/04/enfren… This area's been the main front line in Jalisco Cartel v Cárteles Unidos battle for years

All levels of gov are well aware of it, also of the humanitarian crisis incl. hundreds of displaced civilians

But none has an interest to make this a story, esp. vis-à-vis 6 June elections

El Aguaje, where 14 police were killed today, is two decades of Michoacán’s lethal conflict in a nutshell.

A rural village in Tierra Caliente, it's been smack in the middle of a long history of violence. Today was but the latest episode.

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tinyurl.com/yxfc4bl6 El Aguaje sits on a key overland road connecting the Hot Land region w/ the Sierra Madre, and was once a stronghold of the Milenio Cartel, big-time coke runners in the 90s/early 2000s. They had built modernist narco-mansions here, very untypical w/out the usual greco-roman kitsch