The 14 October massacre that left 13 state police dead was just one extreme episode of violence in a recent litany of horrors

At first glance, the human skull lying beside the road looked like a piece of rubbish. Once spotted, it was impossible to ignore: charred, broken and punched through with a bullet hole.

Around it, a carpet of bullet casings was scattered across the street which runs through the middle of the village of El Aguaje in Mexico’s western state of Michoacán.

Bones and bullets bore witness to the intensity of a ferocious cartel ambush which two days earlier had killed 13 state police officers and wounded nine.

“It was crazy to send them here like that,” said a young mother who lives a block away from the ambush and asked not to be named. “They were sent to the slaughter.”

And the fact that – more than 48 hours after the attack – human remains and ballistic evidence still lay in the open suggested that any investigation of the crime scene had been cursory and carried out in a state of panic.

The 14 October massacre was just one of the most extreme episodes of violence in the recent litany of horrors from Mexico’s drug wars. Four days later, gunmen from another cartel mounted an even bigger show of firepower in the northern city of Culiacán, rescuing a son of the jailed drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán after he was captured by troops.

Play Video 2:01 Violent clashes erupt between cartel gunmen and police in Mexico – video report

But the ambush has shone a spotlight on Mexico’s local police forces, which – under the hands-off security strategy of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador – have been saddled with the fight against organized crime groups in many of the country’s most dangerous regions.

Quick guide Mexico's evolving war on drugs Show Hide Calderón sends in the army Mexico’s “war on drugs” began in late 2006 when the president at the time, Felipe Calderón, ordered thousands of troops onto the streets in response to an explosion of horrific violence in his native state of Michoacán. Calderón hoped to smash the drug cartels with his heavily militarized onslaught but the approach was counter-productive and exacted a catastrophic human toll. As Mexico’s military went on the offensive, the body count sky-rocketed to new heights and tens of thousands were forced from their homes, disappeared or killed. Kingpin strategy Simultaneously Calderón also began pursuing the so-called “kingpin strategy” by which authorities sought to decapitate the cartels by targeting their leaders. That policy resulted in some high-profile scalps – notably Arturo Beltrán Leyva who was gunned down by Mexican marines in 2009 – but also did little to bring peace. In fact, many believe such tactics served only to pulverize the world of organized crime, creating even more violence as new, less predictable factions squabbled for their piece of the pie. Under Calderón’s successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, the government’s rhetoric on crime softened as Mexico sought to shed its reputation as the headquarters of some the world’s most murderous mafia groups. But Calderón’s policies largely survived, with authorities targeting prominent cartel leaders such as Sinaloa’s Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. When “El Chapo” was arrested in early 2016, Mexico’s president bragged: “Mission accomplished”. But the violence went on. By the time Peña Nieto left office in 2018, Mexico had suffered another record year of murders, with nearly 36,000 people slain. "Hugs not bullets" The leftwing populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador took power in December, promising a dramatic change in tactics. López Obrador, or Amlo as most call him, vowed to attack the social roots of crime, offering vocational training to more than 2.3 million disadvantaged young people at risk of being ensnared by the cartels.

“It will be virtually impossible to achieve peace without justice and [social] welfare,” Amlo said, promising to slash the murder rate from an average of 89 killings per day with his “hugs not bullets” doctrine. Amlo also pledged to chair daily 6am security meetings and create a 60,000 strong "National Guard". But those measures have yet to pay off, with the new security force used mostly to hunt Central American migrants. Mexico now suffers an average of about 96 murders per day, with nearly 29,000 people killed since Amlo took office.

Cowed, outgunned and enmeshed in alliances with criminal groups, Mexico’s state and local police are clearly not up to the job.

The scale of the challenge facing officers was captured in recordings of police radio traffic during the Michoacán ambush, in which officers can be heard begging for reinforcements.

'They were sent to the slaughter': Mexico mourns 13 police killed in cartel ambush Read more

“Please, hurry up, there are wounded,” says one officer over a background of automatic gunfire and cries of agony. At another point in the recordings, which were circulated on social media, a male voice is clearly heard declaring: “I’m dying.”

Help reportedly took about an hour to arrive – by which time the gunmen and their armoured vehicles had left the scene.

“They never stood a chance,” said a friend of one of the murdered officers during a hastily organized memorial service in the state capital Morelia that buzzed with discontent in the ranks.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A soldier stands by a charred truck that belongs to Michoacán state police, after it was burned during an attack in El Aguaje, Mexico, on 14 October. Photograph: Armando Solis/AP

One trooper complained that officers are forced to buy their own bullets. He pointed to the wide gaps down each side of his bullet-proof jacket and said regulation helmets were cheap and flimsy.

“We don’t have the means to defend ourselves,” he said. “We don’t have the support we need to take on any criminal group.”

The 14 October ambush was claimed by the Jalisco New Generation cartel, or CJNG, a fast-growing group currently attempting to dominate the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán.

Though the CJNG is aggressive, well-funded and particularly well-equipped, it faces smaller local groups which are deeply embedded in the area and reputedly maintain better relations with local politicians and police chiefs.

Another set of audio recordings which circulated after the ambush in El Aguaje suggest that the ambush was explicitly designed to disrupt such local alliances.

In one of the recordings, which purportedly captured cartel radio communications, a CJNG commander is heard telling his underlings to post messages threatening officers with links to rival factions.

'The only two powerful cartels left': rivals clash in Mexico's murder capital Read more

“We want the people and the government to know why we hit them,” he barks.

For the residents of El Aguaje, the ambush merely confirmed what they had suspected.

“This is Jalisco territory now. It was the territory of other groups before,” the young mother explained. “The police are with another group so they don’t usually come here without an army escort.”

She dismissed the official version that the police convoy had been sent to serve a warrant over a case in the family courts and speculated that the police chiefs had made a deal to sacrifice low-level officers.

For those who live amid the ever-shifting frontlines of Tierra Caliente’s cartel wars, understanding which faction controls which patch of territory is vital information. And that includes keeping a close eye on which side the police are on at any given moment.

“If you are [state police] operating in one of these areas there is no way you are going to be doing straight-up law enforcement,” said Falko Ernst, senior analyst with the International Crisis Group who studies the conflict in Michoacán. “You are always going to be seeking some kind of accommodation with the criminal world. It’s part of the game.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A cap of one of the state police officers who were shot or burned to death in their vehicles, in El Aguaje, Mexico. Photograph: Marco Ugarte/AP

Corruption among the ranks is also encouraged by dismal salaries from which officers are not only expected to buy their own bullets, but often their own uniforms as well. Several families of officers who died at El Aguaje refused attend the memorial service, in protest at the paltry financial support given to the dependants of officers who die on the job.

And now, said Ernst, the crisis in the region is intensifying because of President López Obrador’s “hugs not bullets” security strategy.

In the name of correcting the heavy-handed militarized approach of his predecessors, the president has given orders to avoid direct confrontations with the cartels.

Peace will come, he promises, once new social programmes provide crime-free routes out of poverty, and Mexicans start to abide by his frequent exhortations to “make the nation moral again”.

Meanwhile, the president insists that his newly formed militarized national guard will enforce the law, but so far the new force has been busier blocking migrants from reaching the United States than pursuing organized criminals.

Sitting in his office in the regional capital of Apatzingán, Bishop Cristobal Asencio García scrolled through WhatsApp messages from relatives of kidnap victims and expressed skepticism at the government’s tactics.

“No, no, no, no, no, it can’t be like this. The authorities have to act against impunity,” he said.

The bishop said this also meant acting against corruption. “The stuff that happens here couldn’t happen without at least the tacit acceptance of the authorities.”

But while Mexico waits for justice, a new generation is growing up that has only known life amid a multi-sided conflict where there are no clear good guys.

A stone’s throw from the site of the ambush in El Aguaje, a nine-year-old girl took a break from sweeping the front porch to recount what she had witnessed.

“It was very loud,” she said, gesticulating wildly as she described how the family had rushed to take cover in a rear bedroom until the sound of gunfire and explosions finally died away. “I thought it would go on forever.”