Mexico town fears festival shooting is sign of impending drug cartel war

While authorities investigate what set off a deadly shooting at an electronic music festival event, residents said it came amid a growing and increasingly open drug scene in this resort town that has long been spared the violence of Mexico’s cartel wars.

Concerns that violence may be creeping into Playa del Carmen were voiced as people attended a Monday evening vigil in front of the Blue Parrot nightclub, where five people died and 15 were wounded or injured in the chaos before dawn.

“This is a sign of what has been happening,” said Lenin Amaro, a local business owner and politician.

“It has reached us,” Amaro said of the country’s drug violence. “We were living in what you could call a bubble.”

Investigators were trying to determine the motive of the shooting, but Quintana Roo state Attorney General Miguel Angel Pech said the gunfire erupted when security tried to stop a man from entering the club with a gun. He ruled out any terrorist intent.

Three of those killed were part of the security detail at the 10-day BPM electronic music festival, Pech said. The gunman apparently fled and no arrests have yet been made.

Governor Carlos Joaquin attributed the shooting to “the intolerance and conflict of interests between two people,” referring to it as “a personal conflict” between two people who exchanged gunfire. He did not specify what the conflict was.

On Monday, officials released a list of the dead, who included one Canadian, one US citizen, two Mexicans and one Italian. Fifteen people suffered injuries, including at least two Canadians and two US citizens.

One man who was inside the club said he hid in a storeroom with four others until the shooting stopped. He said he is a local resident and veteran of the club scene, and he agreed to speak about it only if granted anonymity because of fears for his safety.

He said that the Zetas cartel controls all drug dealing in the resort and that in the big clubs it has multiple people selling drugs, usually out of the bathrooms. He said drug dealing has become more open in recent years.

“All the clubs here, every club here is controlled,” he said. “The businessmen, the people in nightclubs, they cannot do anything. They (the Zetas) can burn your building.”

The Blue Parrot’s management did not immediately respond to requests for an interview.

REBECCA BLACKWELL / ASSOCIATED PRESS Local residents gather to place candles and banners in a vigil calling for peace and unity outside the Blue Parrot club, where several people were killed in early morning gunfire in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, on Monday.