Acapulco Struggles to Rebound: Is Mexico's Most Violent City Starting to Improve? Nathaniel Parish Flannery - Fox News Latino
go to original September 15, 2013

Juan Carlos Alvarado, the Operations Chief of Acapulco’s Tourist Police, stands in front of his police truck. (Nathaniel Parish Flannery)

ACAPULCO, Mexico –  After nightfall in Acapulco, a once-celebrated Pacific coast vacation destination that is better known today for being one of Mexico’s most violent cities, Juan Alvarado, the wide-shouldered 39-year-old director of the city’s police division focusing on protecting tourists, peered out of the window from the front seat passenger seat of his police pick-up truck. He gazed toward a row of shuttered storefronts. His assault rifle jiggled on his lap. Two other police officers sat in the back of the truck, also carrying machine guns.

Although Mexico’s Federal Police and army have reduced the presence of organized crime groups, violent thugs continue to operate in Acapulco. During the course of the week leading up to Alvarado’s interview with Fox News Latino, the corpse of a taxi driver was found showing signs of torture. Much of his face had been sliced away. El Sol de Acapulco, one of the local newspapers, reported that the city’s tortilla makers had launched a tax boycott until the police helped them confront the city’s extortionists. In the same week, a man was found with his arms and legs cut off inside his home and several armed attacks - on the street and one inside a taco restaurant - ended up with fatalities.

Gesturing out through the police truck’s windshield, Alvarado pointed up at a large hotel on a cliff in the distance, a remnant of an earlier and more peaceful chapter in the city’s history. Back in the 1950s, “it was known as the hotel of the Hollywood Gang,” he said. He pointed to another hotel. “That’s the Hotel Mirador, it’s the oldest one here,” he said.

Once a hideaway for the clique of Hollywood stars led by John Wayne, Cary Grant and Liz Taylor, Acapulco has more recently become home to a different type of gang.

Read the rest at Fox News Latino

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