The mayor of a Mexican city plagued by gang violence has been murdered less than a week after taking office.
Photos circulating online among locals showed what appeared to be Alejandro Arcos’s severed head on top of a Volkswagen pick-up truck and the rest of his body inside a car in the Villas del Roble neighbourhood, east of the city.
Arcos was sworn in as the mayor of Chilpancingo, Guerrero, last Monday, and his death was confirmed by authorities late on Sunday.
Local media reported that Arcos had been decapitated, but state prosecutors offered no details when confirming his death in a statement on Sunday.
His death provoked unease across Chilpancingo, a city which is no stranger to political violence, with residents choosing not to leave their homes after 9pm and schools suspending classes.
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Alejandro Moreno, the national leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, called on federal authorities to take charge of the investigation given Guerrero’s “ungovernability”.
Mr Moreno also revealed that Arcos’s murder came just three days after the shooting of Francisco Tapia, the city government’s new secretary.
“They had been in office less than a week,” Mr Moreno said. “They were young and honest public servants who were seeking progress for their community.”
Chilpancingo, the capital of the Guerrero province, has been home to violent turf battles between the Ardillos and the Tlacos, two local drug gangs, for years.
It is a city so violent that the Ardillos group once organised a violent demonstration, hijacked an armoured government car, and took 10 police officers hostage after its gang leaders were arrested for drugs and weapons possession.
Arcos’s social media posts reveal he had spent his first few days in office overseeing disaster relief after Hurricane John caused severe flooding in beach resort Acapulco and its surrounding towns.
He had also spent time meeting with relief workers and residents in the hours before his death, according to photos posted on his Facebook account.
In addition to the murders of Tapia and Acros, at least six candidates running for public office were killed in Guerrero in the run-up to the June elections.
During the election campaign, Acros’s team accused his opponents of waging a “dirty war” against him by linking him to the Ardillos drug gang on flyers which were distributed to thousands of residents.
Arcos went on to win the election – his third attempt – by around 1,000 votes on June 2, the same day Claudia Sheinbaum was elected as Mexico’s first female president.
In the months leading up to the country’s general election, at least 37 candidates were killed, while dozens more dropped out after receiving death threats.
As a result, Ms Sheinbaum has made “pacifying the country” one of her primary aims while in office.
A strategy presentation seen by the Wall Street Journal showed proposals to slash killings in the country’s 10 deadliest cities, which includes Acapulco.
“We are developing a programme for the municipalities that at this moment have the largest number of homicides,” Ms Sheinbaum said shortly after taking office on Oct 1.
Acros is the third mayor to be murdered in Guerrero this year, after the deaths of Copala’s Salvador Villalva Flores and Malinaltepec’s Acasio Flores Guerrero.
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