Mayor is found decapitated with his severed head placed on top of his car six days after taking office
A mayor has been decapitated less than a week after he took office in the southwestern Mexico state of Guerrero.
Alejandro Arcos was found dead inside a pickup truck in the municipality of Chilpancingo on Sunday afternoon.
Disturbing photos on social media showed Arco’s severed head lying on top of the vehicle.
The-43-year-old’s murder came as Chilpancingo was still reeling from last Thursday’s killing of its newly appointed city council secretary.
‘They have murdered our mayor of Chilpancingo, Alejandro Arcos, and just three days ago the secretary of this same City Council, Francisco Tapia,’ Alejandro Moreno, the national leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Moreno said both men were ‘young and honest officials who sought progress for their community.’
Alejandro Arcos, the mayor of the southwestern Mexican city of Chilpancingo, was killed and decapitated Sunday afternoon. Authorities had not made any arrests as of Monday afternoon
Authorities in Chilpancingo, a city in the southwestern Mexico state of Guerrero, place the pickup truck where the body of murdered Mayor Alejandro Arcos was found murdered. The 43-year-old severed head was found on top of the vehicle
Just hours before his death, Arcos visited the Chilpancingo neighborhoods of Plan de Ayala and Yerbabuena and met with residents whose homes were damaged by the passing of the Hurricane John two weeks ago.
‘Our priority is to protect those living in vulnerable areas and ensure that the necessary measures are taken,’ he wrote on Facebook. ‘My commitment is clear: we will continue working hand in hand with society to reestablish basic services in the affected neighborhoods. Together we will get ahead.’
On Friday, Arcos appeared on Radio Formula and told veteran journalist Ciro Gómez Leyva to call on the federal government to increase the presence of security forces in Chilpancingo and expand protection for city government staffers after Tapia’s murder.
‘We will continue working, we will continue fighting for our community,’ Arcos said. ‘We have always talked about a peace project, it has been our banner, our proposal and that is what we aspire to. We are not people of conflict.’
The late Mayor Alejandro Arcos (right) leaves behind a wife and a son. The 43-year-old politician was murdered just six days after he was sworn in as mayor of Chilpancingo, a city in the southwestern Mexico state of Guerrero
Investigators and forensic personnel work at the crime scene where remains of Chilpancingo Mayor Alejandro Arcos were found in a vehicle Sunday
Dr. Gustavo Alarcón, who was chosen as the alternate candidate by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, may replace Mayor Alejandro Arcos, who was murdered Sunday
Under Article 24 of the Law on Electoral Institutions and Procedures of the State of Guerrero, the duties of mayor will fall on Gustavo Alarcón, a surgeon, who was appointed as the alternate candidate by the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
Alarcón, who ran for mayor in 2021 under the National Action Party, has not stated whether he will accept the post.
Arcos ran under a coalition ticket that included the Institutional Revolutionary Party, National Action Party and the Party of the Democratic Revolution and vowed not to enter into agreements with criminal organizations, a shot at his eventual predecessor, who was filmed in an alleged meeting with Celso Ortega, the leader of the Ardillos drug gang, which has feuded with its rival Tlacos.
Three videos leaked in July and August 2023 showed former Mayor Hernández sitting across from Ortega at a restaurant.
She was expelled from the ruling Morena party in last month, just three weeks before her term came to an end.
Hours before he was murdered Sunday, Mayor Alejandro Arcos visited neighborhoods in Chilpancingo that were affected by last month’s Hurricane John
Also in July 2023, federal officials said a demonstration held by hundreds of people in Chilpancingo that month had been organized by the Ardillos gang to win the release of two gang leaders arrested for drugs and weapons possession.
The demonstrators largely blocked all traffic on the highway between Mexico City and Acapulco for two days, battled security forces and commandeered a police armored truck and used it to ram down the gates of the state legislature building.
The demonstrators abducted 10 members of the state police and National Guard, as well as three state and federal officials, and held them hostage to enforce their demands before releasing them.
