Mexico: Acapulco's Other Side

To the outside world, Acapulco is a swingers' paradise filled with sunshine and golden people. Splashy new hotels and motels are sprouting up like beach umbrellas; old ones like Las Brisas, which includes a private pool and candy-striped Jeep with every bungalow, are adding new space. All over town, from the Tequila a Go-Go to the Paradiso, night life is a throbbing pandemonium. But there is another side to Aca pulco that the gay, sunny travel posters ignore: the resort city is one of Mexico's worst centers of crime.

Acapulco has spawned a thriving underground traffic in "Acapulco gold," the local marijuana that hippies believe gives the world's best high. Prostitution, vice and corruption abound, and guns are as common as palm trees. Moreover, Acapulco is the largest city in mountainous and jungle-clad Guerrero, Mexico's most lawless state. Guerrero has become such a problem that last week the Mexican army was embarked on a massive drive to round up all the arms in the state.

Call for Help. Guerrero averages more than 200 murders a month, 60 in Acapulco alone. Last November, when a new bride refused to dance with one of her wedding guests in Tunas, guns came out and eleven persons were killed. A few weeks later, in a cemetery near Acapulco, another murder victim was no sooner in the ground than guns started blazing among the mourners; two people were killed. Six more died recently after a shoot-out over a land dispute. The incident that finally brought the arms crackdown came last month when two rival union factions shot it out in Acapulco, leaving 33 persons dead and 27 others near death with critical injuries. One woman caught 67 bullets in the back.

Acapulco's squalid, crumbling jail is so overcrowded that local authorities fear a breakout, have called in the army to help keep an eye on the city's 519 prisoners. Northern hippies who came south for Acapulco gold (maximum penalty for possession: six years) were jammed in with hardened characters like Félix Radilla, wanted for 85 murders, and Constáncio ("Black Animal") Hernández García, whose gang gunned down 18 soldiers a few months ago. The prisoners pay a price for everything: a cot to sleep on, half-decent food to eat, "protection" from the other prisoners, a few hours of privacy with a wife or girl friend. Many who can afford it simply buy their way out.

Long Way to Go. Tax money that should go for law enforcement in Guerrero often finds its way into someone's pocket. One day recently, almost 20% of Acapulco's 120-man police force quit because it had not been paid for 70 days. The state police force has dwindled from an original 140 men a year ago to ten; the policemen quit or get killed off faster than they can be replaced.

The army's roundup of weapons should make the life of an Acapulco cop somewhat easier. The arms collection has already yielded more than 3,000 assorted rifles, pistols and machine guns. There is obviously a long way to go. In the middle of the roundup, two campesinos smashed their way into the home of Acapulco's assistant police chief and began shooting up the place. During a bloody exchange of fire, one campesino was killed on the spot, and the other was lucky—or unfortunate—enough to end up a prisoner in the Acapulco jail.