04/01/2021
Source: El País USA
Sometimes Mariano Rosales has just enough time to lower his grocery store’s metal shutters and lock himself in the cellar with his wife. But there are moments when the bullets start firing so close that the couple just hit the aisle floor, their eyes trained on packs of Doritos. In his 12 years running his store in Fresnillo, in Mexico’s Zacatecas state, Rosales has never been more afraid. “We are scared to death. We spend all day praying to Christ,” said the shopkeeper.
His fears are hardly unfounded. Fresnillo recently received the unwelcome accolade of being named the least safe place in the country according to its own residents, in a survey for Mexico’s national statistics agency. Inter-cartel violence is the top of the city’s concerns as elections loom on June 6.Three weeks ago in front of Rosales’ store, a group of sicarios – hired cartel assassins – killed the city’s deputy director of urban development while he was standing in the door of his own home. A few days earlier a lawyer was shot dead on the same street as he was leaving his office. And one week ago, three more neighbors were shot a couple of blocks down the street. The day the city official was shot dead, 14 other people were murdered in this city of 250,000 souls. Little surprise then that the survey found 95 percent of Fresnillo residents feel living in their city is unsafe.
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