For fans of the Netflix show Narcos, it is the sale of the century. On Sunday 45 lots of items confiscated from Mexican drug traffickers will be sold – cars, homes, boats and watches, some of them belonging to Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman – with the proceeds going to help impoverished children in the country.

For ordinary Mexicans, however, it is yet another sign of the hollow pledges made by their president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

He took office a year ago, elected on a platform of “hugs, not bullets”, and a plan to address the societal causes of the drug violence that has killed an estimated 200,000 people since the government declared war on the cartels in 2006.

Yet this week’s massacre of nine Mormon women and children with dual US-Mexican citizenship – ambushed on the road and gunned down, the youngest victim only eight months old – has put that promise, and his policies, in an uncomfortable spotlight.

The auction, for all its feel-good intentions, is an uncomfortable reminder of the harsh reality confronting many citizens. Mexico’s murder rate refuses to decline: this year it is on track to be one of the most violent in the country’s recent history.