Tourist Magnet Los Cabos Is No Longer a Haven from Mexico’s Drug War Kate Linthicum and Cecilia Sanchez - The Los Angeles Times
go to original September 4, 2017

Mexican soldiers patrol Palmilla Beach, where three men were killed by a group of men with automatic weapons in San Jose del Cabo (Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)

On a recent balmy afternoon in Los Cabos, as tourists and locals frolicked in the sparkling blue sea, a group of men toting automatic weapons stormed onto a crowded beach.

By the time the attackers fled, three men lay dead beneath a grove of palm trees — another sign that the violence roiling other parts of Mexico has arrived at one of the country’s most prized and protected tourist resorts.



Los Cabos, a municipality that encompasses the cities of Cabo San Lucas, San Jose del Cabo and the 20 miles of beachfront resorts between them, has morphed into a battlefield since the arrest last year of drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel was once so firmly planted in the state of Baja California Sur that he and other cartel leaders vacationed here safely — along with more than a million American tourists each year. But since Guzman’s arrest and extradition to the U.S., the cartel has fragmented into warring factions, who are fighting each other as well as gangsters aligned with the emergent Jalisco New Generation cartel.

Although none of the recent violence has explicitly targeted tourists — the only known American victim was wounded in the leg by a stray bullet in March — the U.S. State Department last week warned Americans to take extra precautions when visiting Los Cabos. The department also issued a travel warning for Cancun, which this year was the site of a nightclub shooting in which several foreigners died.

Baja authorities say drugs, firearms and trained hit men have been arriving by ferry from Sinaloa state, just across the Sea of Cortez, fueling record levels of killings in what is still one of Mexico’s most sparsely populated states, despite a steady stream of Mexican migrants who come to work in the resorts and escape violence or poverty in their home states.

... The vast majority of the violence is playing out in the poor desert hillside communities that house resort workers, far from the beaches that have made this region a magnet for business moguls and Hollywood stars.

Read the rest at The Los Angeles Times

Related: 7 Killed in Acapulco Amid Ongoing Wave of Violence (NBCBayArea)

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