Photo: Pedro Pardo / AFP / Getty Images
By: The Opinion Updated 24 Dec 2022 , 11: 60 am EST
On 11 November This year, the lives of the residents of El Durazno, a community located in the municipality of Jerez, Zacatecas, changed, since from that day on they were forced to abandon their homes.
The reason? Dozens of trucks with armed men broke into the town to threaten its inhabitants, after they were reported to the authorities.
“ We have already arrived at El Durazno, sons of la chin#$%, so that keep denouncing us with the National Guard,” the hitmen shouted 11 of November. According to the newspaper El Sol de Zacatecas, said incursion was in retaliation for an operation carried out on November 4, in which they were arrested 24 gunmen at the hands of the National Guard.
Days later, on 24 of November, the hitmen murdered three young men and carried out at least two attacks with fragmentation grenades on private homes.
One of these attacks occurred in the home of an elderly man who recently arrived in Jerez, later of living several years in the United States. According to testimonies from the neighbors, the criminals shot him in the head and later destroyed his home with explosives
.
This second event ended up driving away the few remaining inhabitants of El Durazno, turning the place into a ghost town.
Although elements of the Mexican Army and the National Guard have already begun to arrive in that region, the residents, around 80, refuse to return to their homes and businesses, for fear of a new reprisal by organized crime.
Only a few inhabitants have dared to return to their homes, but only to take their belongings, as documented by the site La Silla Rota, which managed to interview some of these people, who pointed out that even the parish priest of the place and some parishioners went to the temple of San José del Durazno, to take assemble the image of the patron saint and temporarily protect it in another parish close to the community.
You may also like:
– The Sinaloa Cartel caused chaos in Zacatecas to try to free several inmates from a prison.
– An armed command ambushed police officers in Zacatecas and killed two officers.