Fresnillo, Zacatecas: 'We're Living in Hell': Inside Mexico's Most Terrified City [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

By Sol Prendido 8/03/2021 09:25:00 PM
"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

Fresnillo feels to residents overrun by violence and paralyzed by fear, a testament to the failure of Mexico’s government to tackle organized crime.



In Fresnillo, 96 percent of residents say they feel unsafe — the highest percentage of any city in Mexico.


The violence was already terrifying, she said, when grenades exploded outside her church in broad daylight some five years ago. Then children in town were kidnapped, disappearing without a trace. Then the bodies of the executed were dumped in city streets.

And then came the day last month when armed men burst into her home, dragged her 15-year-old son and two of his friends outside and shot them to death, leaving Guadalupe — who didn’t want her full name published out of fear of the men — too terrified to leave the house.

“I do not want the night to come,” she said, through tears. “Living with fear is no life at all.”

For most of the population of Fresnillo, a mining city in central Mexico, a fearful existence is the only one they know; 96 percent of residents say they feel unsafe, the highest percentage of any city in Mexico, according to a recent survey from Mexico’s national statistics agency.

The economy can boom and bust, presidents and parties and their promises can come and go, but for the city’s 140,000 people, as for many in Mexico, there is a growing sense that no matter what changes, the violence endures.

. . .

(New York Times)

Much more:
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/08/fresnillo-zacatecas-were-living-in-hell.html