Official: A dozen drug gangs fighting for Caribbean coast
PUERTO MORELOS, MEXICO >> The shooting of two suspected drug dealers at a resort on Mexico’s Caribbean coast is part of a fight among about a dozen gangs to carve up the lucrative market of selling drugs to tourists and locals, an official said Friday.
The chief prosecutor of the coastal state of Quintana Roo said that two main gangs are fighting for control of Puerto Morelos, just south of Cancun. Thursday’s shooting occurred on a beach just yards from luxury hotels.
About 10 gangs are fighting over streetlevel drug sales in Tulum, a beach town farther south. A Bay Area woman and a German tourist were killed in the crossfire of a gang shootout two weeks ago, and three other tourists were wounded.
“In Tulum we have about 10 groups of drug dealers and here in Puerto Morelos there are two groups fighting each other,” prosecutor Oscar Montes de Oca told the Imagen Radio station.
Montes de Oca said the commando of about 15 masked drug gang gunmen arrived in vehicles and stormed the beach in Puerto Morelos by entering through a hotel parking lot; not coming by boat, as Gov. Carlos Joaquin had said the evening before.
Montes de Oca said Friday that they fled in a boat they commandeered after the attack.
The dramatic shooting attack sent tourists scrambling for cover at the beach in front of the Azul Beach Resort and the Hyatt Ziva Riviera Cancun.
Montes de Oca said the presence of more than 20 million tourists every year in the coastal state provided a strong draw for retail drug sales.
“We are facing an issue of supply and demand for drugs,” he said.
Cartels fighting for the area’s lucrative retail drug trade include the Jalisco cartel and the a gang allied with the Gulf cartel.
Montes de Oca said one of the men targeted in the attack fled into one of the hotels before dying. The other was killed on the beach. One person suffered nonlife-threatening injuries in the attack, but authorities could not immediately determine whether that person was a hotel employee or a guest.
Joaquin called the attack “a serious blow to the development and security of the state ... putting the image of the state at grave risk.”
The shootings were the latest chapter in drug gang violence that has sullied the reputation of Mexico’s Caribbean coast as a once-tranquil oasis.
Guests at both resorts posted social media images of tourists hiding or nervously milling in the lobbies.
Keith Jackson, a tourist from London left the beach just before the shooting. But he said Friday, “We’re not sure we would come back. We’re not sure we would come back after this.”