The violence detonated last year. A growing number of people from Ayahualtempa were murdered when they ventured outside the village: one man shot in his car, another kidnapped, a boy shot dead in broad daylight. Luis’ uncle was also killed. “They hid it from me, but I learned he had been found dismembered,” Luis said.

“They hid it from me, but I learned he had been found dismembered.”

Ayahualtempa had never received much government support, but now it was a target as the local cartel tried to take control. The number of murders in the six miles around the village more than doubled in 2019 from a year earlier, said Chris Kyle, a professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who studies violence in the region.

The community went on virtual lockdown. Kids stopped going to school. The women halted their weekly trips to the nearby city to do their shopping and sell their beans and squash. The men ventured out only in convoys with a dozen armed companions for fear of being ambushed.

“If we leave town, we might get kidnapped,” Luis said.