'Can't fight evil with evil': Life in Mexico's most murderous town

By Tom Phillips

Incoming president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has pledged to overhaul Mexico’s militarized assault on the drug cartels that has left 200,000 people dead

Here in Mexico’s most murderous municipality the bodies appear with nauseating frequency – or at least, parts of them do.

Some are stashed in bin bags or hammocks; others in blood-soaked rucksacks. Some are dumped in bike lanes or canals; others left on street corners or football pitches – severed, shredded and stomach-churning symbols of the country’s failing war on drugs.

“Sometimes we don’t even know who they are,” admitted Arturo Bautista, the silver-haired administrator of Tecomán’s cemetery and the final custodian of the victims of this Pacific beach town’s relentless killing machine.

In few places can the ferocity and futility of Mexico’s war on drugs be felt more than Tecomán, a once tranquil coastal community. Last year its murder rate of a reported 172.51 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants resembled that of a war zone.