The capital of the Mexican state of Baja California Sur is named La Paz, or Peace, and it’s garnered a reputation over the years for its tranquility, whale watching, and sunset dining in restaurants along the coastal boardwalk. For a long time it seemed like La Paz was immune to the drug violence that has plagued the nearby states of Sinaloa and Sonora — across the Gulf of California — or further north in the border city of Tijuana.
Not any more.
“La Paz is no longer La Paz, it lost its name after these events,” said Gerardo Zúñiga Pacheco, the La Paz correspondent for the Tijuana-based weekly magazine Zeta, renowned for it’s coverage of the drug war.
Zuñiga was referring to a 14 month period during which there were at least 183 murders in La Paz, culminating with 23 dead in August 2015, and 29 more in September. The city of around 200,000 people was used to a maximum of about one or two murders a month.
The problem, it appeared, lay in who controlled the transit of illegal drugs through the city which had long been in the hands of the Sinaloa cartel but had become a matter of competition following the capture of the group’s leader — Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán — in February 2014. It got even worse after he escaped in July this year.
Read the Remainder at Vice News
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