A popular Mexican band has been fined more than $36,000 for performing songs glorifying drug cartels, authorities in the northern city of Chihuahua announced Wednesday.
At a Los Tucanes de Tijuana performance on Saturday, nearly a third of their songs were “narcocorridos” glamorizing drug traffickers, according to city official Pedro Oliva.
The songs “glorified crime or alluded to the perpetrators of illegal acts,” Oliva said in a television interview.
Los Tucanes were banned from performing in their home city Tijuana from 2008 to 2023 for alleged shoutouts to two drug traffickers during a concert.
Los Tucanes de Tijuana attend The 23rd Annual Latin Grammy Awards at Michelob ULTRA Arena on November 17, 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Denise Truscello/Getty Images for The Latin Recording Academy
Several states across the country have imposed restrictions on the controversial subgenre of regional music, which is growing rapidly, even beyond Mexico’s borders. In April, the ban sparked a riot during a concert after a singer refused to perform some of his most popular songs.
Peso Pluma, who blends corridos with rap and hip-hop, was the seventh most-streamed artist in the world in 2024, according to Spotify.
President Claudia Sheinbaum has rejected the idea of banning “narcocorridos,” preferring to launch a music competition “for peace and against addictions” to counter the influence of drug culture among young people.
Two months ago, the United States revoked the visas of the band Los Alegres del Barranco for showing images of a wanted drug lord during a concert.
“I’m a firm believer in freedom of expression, but that doesn’t mean that expression should be free of consequences,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said at the time. “The last thing we need is a welcome mat for people who extol criminals and terrorists.”
At the end of May, members of Grupo Firme canceled a concert in the United States, saying their visas were under “administrative review” by the U..S embassy.
Musicians in Mexico sometimes get caught up in cartel violence themselves. Last month, the bodies of five Mexican musicians from the band Grupo Fugitivo, were found in Reynosa along the Texas border. At least nine alleged cartel members were arrested and later drugs and weapons were seized in connection to the murders.
In January this year, a small plane was reported to have dropped pamphlets on a northwestern city threatening around 20 music artists and influencers for alleged dealings with a warring faction of the Sinaloa drug cartel.
In 2018, armed men kidnapped two members of the musical group “Los Norteños de Río Bravo,” whose bodies were later found on the federal highway connecting Reynosa to Río Bravo, Tamaulipas.
In 2013, 17 musicians from the group Kombo Kolombia were executed by alleged cartel members in the northeastern state of Nuevo Leon, allegedly because of links to a rival gang.
Five police officers died Monday after they were ambushed by an armed group in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala, local officials said.
The attack happened in the town of Frontera Comalapa, where the Chiapas state police officers were on patrol when they were ambushed.
“Members of the state police were attacked and ambushed,” the governor of Chiapas, Eduardo Ramirez, said on social media.
Ramirez identified the slain officers as Guillermo Cortés Morales, Jesús Sánchez Pérez, Joel Martínez Pérez, Brenda Lizbeth Toalá Blanco and Pedro Hernández Hernánde.
The local Security Secretariat said it had deployed more than 1,000 officers to “attend to the situation and guarantee security in the area.”
Five police officers died Monday after they were ambushed by an armed group in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala, local officials said.
Chiapas State Governor Eduardo Ramirez
The agency also shared an image of the slain officers’ charred patrol vehicle after it was completely engulfed in flames on a roadway.
Later, the agency announced on social media they had arrested a man in connection to the murders. Authorities said the suspect was hiding in the weeds about half a mile from the crime scene, carrying an AK-47 rifle and a backpack with military uniforms. Officials did not immediately give information about other possible suspects.
In recent months, Chiapas has been shaken by a bloody turf war between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation cartel — the country’s two most powerful criminal organizations. Chiapas has been described by the InSight Crime think tank as “a major smuggling hub of both drugs and migrants.”
In December, authorities said they recovered more than 30 bodies from pits in Chiapas.
Three suspects in the kidnapping and murder of Mexican musicians in Tamaulipas state along the Texas border were arrested during a series of raids, officials said on Monday.
The five members of local band Fugitivo had been hired for a weekend performance in the crime-wracked northeastern city of Reynosa, but arrived to find a vacant lot. Their bodies were found several days later after their families reported receiving ransom demands.
“An operation was carried out on three properties” in Reynosa, the public security office said in a statement, adding that the three suspects had been arrested there.
Investigators said the musicians had been kidnapped on May 25 while driving to a private event. Nine alleged cartel members were arrested last week, with authorities announcing another sting on Monday.
Prosecutors said the nine people arrested last week were believed to be part of a faction of the Gulf Cartel, which has strong presence in the city, but they did not indicate if the three new suspects arrested had the same links.
During the newest operation, weapons, weapons cartridges, cocaine and methamphetamines were also seized, the ministry added.
Mexican Army members stand guard at the scene where, according to Mexican authorities, the members of the musical group Grupo Fugitivo were found dead, in Reynosa, Mexico May 29, 2025.
Stringer / REUTERS
Reynosa is a Mexican border city adjacent to the United States and has been plagued by escalating violence since 2017 due to internal disputes among groups vying for control of drug trafficking, human smuggling and fuel theft.
The U.S. State Department has revoked visas of a number of Mexican musicians for playing music that it says glorifies cartel violence. Last week, the popular Mexican regional music band Grupo Firme announced that it was canceling a performance in a music festival in California after the United States government suspended the musicians’ visas.
In April, the U.S. State Department revoked the visas of members of the band Los Alegres del Barranco after they projected the face of a drug cartel boss onto a large screen during a performance.
Musicians targeted in Mexico
Mexican regional music, which encapsulates a wide range of styles including corridos and cumbia, has in recent years gained a spotlight as it’s entered a sort of international musical renaissance. Young artists sometimes pay homage to leaders of drug cartels, often portrayed as Robin Hood-type figures.
It was not immediately clear if Fugitivo played such songs or if the artists were simply victims of rampant cartel violence that has eclipsed the city.
Mexican musicians have previously been targeted by criminal groups that pay them to compose and perform songs that glorify the exploits of their leaders.
Such performers often live in close proximity to their drug lord patrons, and can at times get caught up in gang turf battles.
“Narcocorridos” are a controversial sub-genre of music in Mexico, and the songs have caught the attention of President Claudia Sheinbaum, who recently launched a music contest “for peace and against addictions,” seeking to counter the popularity of the music among young people in Mexico and the United States.
Several regions in the country have banned “narcocorridos,” sparking a recent riot during a concert after a singer refused to perform some of his most popular songs.
In January this year, a small plane was reported to have dropped pamphlets on a northwestern city threatening around 20 music artists and influencers for alleged dealings with a warring faction of the Sinaloa drug cartel.
In 2018, armed men kidnapped two members of the musical group “Los Norteños de Río Bravo,” whose bodies were later found on the federal highway connecting Reynosa to Río Bravo, Tamaulipas.
In 2013, 17 musicians from the group Kombo Kolombia were executed by alleged cartel members in the northeastern state of Nuevo Leon, allegedly because of links to a rival gang.
A fire in a drug rehabilitation center in the violence-plagued Mexican state of Guanajuato killed 12 people and injured at least three others, authorities said Sunday.
The fire broke out early Sunday in the town of San Jose Iturbe, where the municipal government said it was still investigating what caused the deadly blaze.
“We express our solidarity with the families of those who have been killed while they tried to overcome addictions,” the municipal government said in a statement, adding that it will help to pay for the funeral expenses of those killed.
Mexican media outlets reported that the victims of the fire had been locked up inside the rehab center.
A woman lits candles at the rehabilitation center where 12 people died due to a fire in San Jose Iturbide community, Guanajuato state, Mexico on June 1, 2025.
MARIO ARMAS/AFP via Getty Images
Mexico’s privately run drug rehabilitation centers are often abusive, clandestine, unregulated and underfunded. They have been the targets of similar attacks in the past.
The industrial and agricultural state of Guanajuato has for years been the scene of a bloody turf battle between the Jalisco New Generation cartel and a local gang, the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel. Guanajuato has the highest number of homicides of any state in Mexico.
Just last month, investigators found 17 bodies during a search for missing persons in an abandoned house in Guanajuato. Days before that, seven people, including children, were gunned down in the same region.
Mexican drug gangs have killed suspected street-level dealers from rival gangs sheltering at rehab facilities in the past. Officials also believe cartels sometimes execute patients who refuse to join their ranks.
In April, gunmen shot up a drug rehab clinic in the troubled Sinaloa state, killing at least nine people.
In July 2022, six people were shot dead at a drug rehab center near the western Mexican city of Guadalajara. Two years before that, heavily armed men stormed a drug rehab center in the central city of Irapuato and killed 27 people.
In 2010, 19 people were killed in an attack on a rehab center in Chihuahua, a city in northern Mexico. More than a dozen other attacks on such facilities occurred in the decade between those massacres.
The bodies of five musicians, members of a Mexican regional music group who had gone missing, were found in the northern city of Reynosa along the Texas border, authorities said on Thursday.
The musicians from the band Grupo Fugitivo, which played at parties and local dances in the region, had been reported missing since Sunday.
Tamaulipas state prosecutors, who had been investigating their disappearance, said the men were kidnapped around 10 p.m. that night while traveling in a SUV on the way to a venue where they were hired to play. Their bodies were found on the fringes of Reynosa. Prosecutors said nine suspects believed to be part of a faction of the Gulf Cartel, which has strong presence in the city, have been arrested.
Authorities were not immediately able to say why the men were slain, and did not deny reports by local media that the bodies had been burned.
The vehicle belonging to Mexican musical group Grupo Fugitivo is seen outside the Specialized Unit for the Investigation of Forced Disappearances, after Mexican authorities confirmed that five members of the band were found dead, in Reynosa, Mexico May 29, 2025.
Stringer / REUTERS
Relatives had reported receiving ransom demands for the musicians, aged between 20 and 40 years old. The band was hired to put on a concert but arrived to find a vacant lot, according to family members.
The genre they played – Mexican regional music, which encapsulates a wide range of styles including corridos and cumbia – has in recent years gained a spotlight as it’s entered a sort of international musical renaissance. Young artists sometimes pay homage to leaders of drug cartels, often portrayed as Robin Hood-type figures.
It was not immediately clear if the group played such songs or if the artists were simply victims of rampant cartel violence that has eclipsed the city. But other artists have faced death threats by cartels, while others have had their visas stripped by the United States under accusations by the Trump administration that they were glorifying criminal violence.
The last time the musicians from the band Grupo Fugitivo were heard from was the night they were kidnapped, when they told family members they were on the way to the event. After that, nothing else was heard of them.
Their disappearance caused an uproar in Tamaulipas, a state long eclipsed by cartel warfare. Their families reported the disappearances, called on the public for support and people took to the streets in protest.
On Wednesday, protesters blocked the international bridge connecting Reynosa and Pharr, Texas, later going to a local cathedral to pray and make offerings to the disappeared.
Mexican Army members stand guard at the scene where, according to Mexican authorities, the members of the musical group Grupo Fugitivo were found dead, in Reynosa, Mexico May 29, 2025.
Stringer / REUTERS
Reynosa is a Mexican border city adjacent to the United States and has been plagued by escalating violence since 2017 due to internal disputes among groups vying for control of drug trafficking, human smuggling and fuel theft.
Musicians sometimes get caught in cartel turf wars
Mexican musicians have previously been targeted by criminal groups that pay them to compose and perform songs that glorify the exploits of their leaders.
Such performers often live in close proximity to their drug lord patrons, and can at times get caught up in gang turf battles.
“Narcocorridos” are a controversial sub-genre of music in Mexico, and the songs have caught the attention of President Claudia Sheinbaum, who recently launched a music contest “for peace and against addictions,” seeking to counter the popularity of the music among young people in Mexico and the United States.
Several regions in the country have banned “narcocorridos,” sparking a recent riot during a concert after a singer refused to perform some of his most popular songs.
In April, the U.S. State Department revoked the visas of members of a Mexican band after they projected the face of a drug cartel boss onto a large screen during a performance in the western state of Jalisco. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, who was U.S. ambassador to Mexico during the first Trump administration, said on social media that the work and tourism visas of members of Los Alegres del Barranco were revoked.
The controversy broke out in late March when the face of Nemesio Rubén “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes layered over flames was projected behind the band, originally hailing from Sinaloa, during the concert.
Oseguera is the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which has been connected to a ranch authorities say was used to train cartel recruits and possibly dispose of bodies in Jalisco, where searchers found human bone fragments, heaps of clothing and shoes. The U.S. government has offered a $15 million reward for information leading to Oseguera’s capture. In November, his son-in-law was arrested in California after U.S. officials say he faked his own death to “live a life of luxury” north of the border.
The Jalisco cartel is among other criminal groups in Mexico that have been designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the Trump administration.
While the image was met by applause during the concert, Jalisco prosecutors quickly announced they were summoning the band to testify in an investigation into whether they were promoting violence, a crime which could result in a penalty of up to six months in prison
In 2018, armed men kidnapped two members of the musical group “Los Norteños de Río Bravo,” whose bodies were later found on the federal highway connecting Reynosa to Río Bravo, Tamaulipas.
In 2013, 17 musicians from the group Kombo Kolombia were executed by alleged cartel members in the northeastern state of Nuevo Leon, allegedly because of links to a rival gang.
An explosive device killed six soldiers and wounded two others in a western Mexican region wracked by drug cartel violence, an official military report seen by AFP on Wednesday said.
The blast late Tuesday near a town in Michoacan state destroyed the armored vehicle in which the troops were traveling, according to the internal document.
Military planes and helicopters were deployed to help the casualties, it said.
President Claudia Sheinbaum described the deaths as “deplorable” and expressed solidarity with the victims.
Warring criminals in the region have a history of planting improvised landmines and attacking security forces with explosive-laden drones.
Several soldiers have been killed in similar explosions in the past.
Criminal violence, most of it linked to drug trafficking, has claimed around 480,000 lives in Mexico since 2006 and left more than 120,000 people missing.
U.S. President Donald Trump has designated six Mexican drug trafficking groups terrorist organizations, fueling speculation that he might order military strikes against them.
Michoacan, where the deadly bombing took place, has been plagued by violence as a turf war rages between the influential Jalisco New Generation drug cartel and local criminal groups.
Last month, gunmen seized cargo trucks and set them on fire on a highway connecting Mexico City to Guadalajara, before police reported at least 18 similar cases in the neighboring states of Michoacan and Guanajuato. A Michoacan police source told AFP on condition of anonymity that the attacks were a reaction by Jalisco New Generation to a military operation in the area.
Last August, Michoacan’s chief prosecutor confirmed that gunmen linked to drug cartels shot to death seven members of the community police force in the town of Coahuayana.
The influence of cartels has also infiltrated communities in the area. In December, a sign in a town in Michoacan was posted thanking a cartel leader — who has a $15 million bounty on his head in the U.S. — for holiday season presents for children. The message at a Christmas fair thanked Jalisco cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera — better known by his nickname “El Mencho” — for the gifts.
Investigators found 17 bodies in an abandoned house in a central Mexican region plagued by cartel violence, the state prosecutor’s office said.
The remains were discovered when the property in Irapuato in Guanajuato state was searched as part of a missing persons investigation, according to a statement released late Monday.
Five of the victims have been identified as missing persons, it said.
Guanajuato is a thriving industrial hub and home to several popular tourist destinations, but it is also Mexico’s deadliest state, according to official homicide statistics.
The violent crime is linked to conflict between the Santa Rosa de Lima gang and the Jalisco New Generation cartel, one of the most powerful in the Latin American nation. The cartel is one of several that has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the Trump administrarion.
Guanajuato recorded the most homicides of any state in Mexico last year, with 3,151, 10.5% of murders nationwide, according to official figures.
Since 2006, when the military launched an anti-drug operation, Mexico has tallied about 480,000 violent deaths.
Recent violence in Guanajuato
Innocent bystanders and police officers are often casualties amid cartel turf wars in Guanajuato.
Earlier this month, officials said gunmen opened fire and killed seven people, including children, in Guanajuato, and officers found two banners with messages alluding to the Santa Rosa de Lima gang. Messages are often left on victims’ bodies by cartels seeking to threaten their rivals or punish behavior they claim violates their rules.
In February, five women and three men were shot dead in the street in Guanajuato. The month before that, security forces clashed with gunmen in the state, leaving 10 suspected criminals dead and three police officers injured.
Last December, eight people were killed and two others wounded after gunmen pulled up to a roadside stand in Guanajuato and opened fire on customers.
Two months before that, the bodies of 12 slain police officers — all bearing signs of torture and left with messages by cartels — were found in different areas of the region. The state prosecutor’s office also said the perpetrators left messages in which a cartel claimed responsibility.
The bodies were found less than 24 hours after gunmen attacked a residential center for people suffering from addictions in the same municipality, killing four people.
A leader of a notorious Mexican drug cartel who had a bounty on his head in the United States has died in a clash with army troops, authorities said Saturday.
Sinaloa state, where the powerful cartel of the same name is based, is enduring a war between two rival factions that has left some 1,200 people dead since September.
Jorge Humberto Figueroa — who went by the nickname “El Perris” — was shot and killed Friday in a raid carried out to arrest him, public safety secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch wrote on social media.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had been offering up to $1 million for information leading to his arrest on suspicion of fentanyl trafficking and money laundering.
Figueroa was one of the masterminds of an infamous clash with the authorities in 2019 in the city of Culiacan, Harfuch said.
Jorge Humberto Figueroa
DEA
In that case, cartel members fought security forces who had arrested Ovidio Guzman, a son of Sinaloa cartel co-founder Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Mexican authorities controversially released Ovidio Guzman at the time, saying they wanted to avoid further bloodshed. But he ultimately was re-arrested in 2023 and extradited to the United States, where he remains in custody.
Earlier this month, Harfuch confirmed that 17 family members of cartel leaders crossed into the U.S. recently as part of a deal between Ovidio Guzman and the Trump administration. El Chapo’s ex-wife, Griselda Lopez Perez, and her daughter were among the family members to enter the U.S., local media reported.
Mexican press reports said Figueroa belonged to a Sinaloa cartel faction run by the sons of the older Guzman, who is serving a life sentence in the United States.
This group has been fighting another faction led by heirs of cartel co-founder Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, who was lured to the United States in a sting operation in 2024 and arrested.
The newspaper Reforma said Figueroa was head of security for the faction led by Guzman’s sons — known as the Chapitos. According to a 2023 indictment by the U.S. Justice Department, the Chapitos and their cartel associates used corkscrews, electrocution and hot chiles to torture their rivals while some of their victims were “fed dead or alive to tigers.”
Clashes between two armed groups left six civilians dead near Mexico’s crime-plagued beachside city of Acapulco, authorities said Tuesday.
The violence erupted on Monday night in a town called Kilometro 30 located on a highway to Mexico City, the Guerrero state prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
The victims were five men and an elderly woman who were caught in the crossfire, said municipal commissioner Adan Casarrubias. Three people were injured.
Soldiers and police found weapons in an armored vehicle in the town, where several cars were set ablaze.
Armed men in at least three vehicles were involved in the confrontation, which terrified residents, Casarrubias said.
“Even if it’s with pans, sticks, or whatever, we’re going to fight for our town,” he said.
Officials said a long-barreled weapon, magazines, cartridges, seven vehicles (including an armored truck), tire-puncturing weapons and five improvised explosive devices were seized during the investigation.
Once-thriving beach resort now blighted by violence
In its heyday in the 1950s and 60s, Acapulco was a playground of the rich and famous. Today the city once known as “the pearl of the Pacific” is engulfed by violence linked to drug cartels.
On Thursday, the administrator of a Facebook news page was gunned down in Acapulco.
Lst December, a judge was shot dead in his car outside an Acapulco courthouse.
In May 2024, 10 bodies were found scattered around the city. A month before that, the head of traffic police was shot to death when assailants opened fire on him on a street relatively far away from the resort’s beaches.
In February 2024, two men were found dead on a popular beach in Acapulco, and prosecutors said the men’s bodies bore “signs of torture around the neck.” That same month, three people were shot dead on beaches in Acapulco, one by gunmen who arrived — and escaped — aboard a boat.
Acapulco is part of the state of Guerrero, one of the worst affected by drug trafficking in the country. It is among six states in Mexico that the U.S. State Department advises Americans to completely avoid, citing crime and violence.
A pack of veterinarians clambered over hefty metal crates on Tuesday morning, loading them one by one onto a fleet of semi-trucks. Among the cargo: tigers, monkeys, jaguars, elephants and lions — all fleeing the latest wave of cartel violence eclipsing the northern Mexican city of Culiacan.
For years, exotic pets of cartel members and circus animals have been living in a small animal refuge on the outskirts of Sinaloa’s capital. However, a bloody power struggle erupted last year between rival Sinaloa cartel factions, plunging the region into unprecedented violence and leaving the leaders of the Ostok Sanctuary reeling from armed attacks, constant death threats and a cutoff from essential supplies needed to keep their 700 animals alive.
The aid organization is now leaving Culiacan and transporting the animals hours across the state in hopes that they’ll escape the brunt of the violence. But fighting has grown so widespread in the region that many fear it will inevitably catch up.
“We’ve never seen violence this extreme,” said Ernesto Zazueta, president of the Ostok Sanctuary. “We’re worried for the animals that come here to have a better future.”
Violence in the city exploded eight months ago when two rival Sinaloa Cartel factions began warring for territory after the dramatic kidnapping of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the leader of one of the groups, by a son of notorious capo Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán who then delivered him to U.S. authorities via a private plane.
Since then, intense fighting between the heavily armed factions has become the new normal for civilians in Culiacan, a city that for years avoided the worst of Mexico’s violence in large part because the Sinaloa Cartel maintained such complete control.
“With the escalating war between the two factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, they have begun to extort, kidnap and rob cars because they need funds to finance their war,” said security analyst David Saucedo. “And the civilians in Culiacan are the ones that suffer.”
A lioness is carried to a transport cage at the animal refuge Ostok Sanctuary, on the outskirts of Culiacan, Mexico, Monday, May 19, 2025.
Felix Marquez / AP
Animals scared by cartel fighting
Zazueta, the sanctuary director, said their flight from the city is another sign of just how far the warfare has seeped into daily life.
This week, refuge staff loaded up roaring animals onto a convoy as some trainers attempted to sooth the animals. One murmured in a soft voice as he fed a bag of carrots to an elephant in a shipping container, “I’m going to be right here, no one will do anything to you.”
Veterinarians and animals, accompanied by the Mexican National Guard, began traveling along the freeway to seaside Mazatlan, where they planned to release the animals into another wildlife reserve.
The relocation came after months of planning and training the animals, a move made by the organization in an act of desperation. They said the sanctuary was caught in the crossfire of the warfare because of its proximity to the town of Jesús María, a stronghold of Los Chapitos, one of the warring factions.
During intense periods of violence, staff at the sanctuary can hear gunshots echoing nearby, the roar of cars and helicopters overhead, something they say scares the animals. Cartel fighting regularly blocks staff off from reaching the sanctuary, and some animals have gone days without eating. Many have started to lose fur and at least two animals have died due to the situation, Zazueta said.
Complicating matters is the fact that an increasing number of the animals they rescue are former narco pets left abandoned in rural swathes of the state. In one case, a Bengal tiger was discovered chained in a plaza, caught in the center of shootouts. Urban legends circulate in Sinaloa that capos feed their enemies to pet lions. The U.S. Justice Department alleged in an indictment released in 2023 that the sons of “El Chapo” and their cartel associates fed some of their victims “dead or alive to tigers.”
Diego García, a refuge staff member, is among those who travel out to rescue those animals. He said he regularly receives anonymous threats, with callers claiming to know his address and how to find him. He worries he’ll be targeted for taking away the former pets of capos. Zazueta said the refuge also receives calls threatening to burn the sanctuary to the ground and kill the animals if payment isn’t made.
“There’s no safe place left in this city these days,” said García.
That’s the feeling for many in the city of 1 million. When the sun rises, parents check for news of shootouts as if it were the weather, to determine if it’s safe to send their kids to school. Burned houses sit riddled with bullets and occasionally bodies appear hanging from bridges outside the city. By night, Culiacan turns into a ghost town, leaving bars and clubs shuttered and many without work.
“My son, my son, I’m here. I’m not going to leave you alone,” screamed one mother, sobbing on the side of the road and cursing officials as they inspected her son’s dead body, splayed out and surrounded by bullet casings late Monday night. “Why do the police do nothing?” she cried out.
“What are we doing here?”
In February, while driving a refuge vehicle used for animal transport, García said he was forced from the car by an armed, masked man in an SUV. At gunpoint, they stole the truck, animal medicine and tools used by the group for rescues and left him trembling on the side of the road.
The breaking point for the Ostok Sanctuary came in March, when one of the two elephants in their care, Bireki, injured her foot. Veterinarians scrambled to find a specialist to treat her in Mexico, the United States and beyond. No one would brave the trip to Culiacan.
“We asked ourselves, ‘what are we doing here?'” Zazueta said. “We can’t risk this happening again. If we don’t leave, who will treat them?”
An elephant stands in a transport trailer at the animal refuge Ostok Sanctuary, on the outskirts of Culiacan, Mexico, Monday, May 19, 2025.
Felix Marquez / AP
The concern by many is that Mexico’s crackdown on the cartels will be met with even more violent power moves by criminal organizations, as has happened in the past, said Saucedo, the security analyst.
Zazueta blames local government and security forces for not doing more, and said their pleas for help in the past eight months have gone unanswered.
Sinaloa’s governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request comment.
The sanctuary made the move without any public announcement, worried that they might face repercussions from local officials or the same cartels forcing them to flee, but they hope the animals will find some relief in Mazatlan after years of conflict.
García, the sanctuary staff member, is not so sure. While he hopes for the best, he said he’s also watched cartel violence spread like a cancer across the Latin American country. Mazatlan, too, is also facing bursts of violence, though nothing compared to the Sinaloan capital.
“It’s at least more stable,” he said. “Because here, today, it’s just suffocating.”
Cartel violence is also frequent in the central state of Guanajuato, Mexico’s most deadly state. This week, gunmen opened fire and killed seven people, including some minors, in a plaza in the city of San Felipe, police said. The violent crime is believed to be linked to conflict between the Santa Rosa de Lima gang and the Jalisco New Generation cartel, one of the most powerful in Mexico.
