Revenge Rules in Mexico’s Wild West : Violence: Slaughter of 24 just one example of lawlessness in region.

TLACOTEPEC, Mexico —  Long before 24 men in the Pena family were gunned down in a gruesome ambush last week, Mayor Pedro Moreno Chapa had complained to state authorities of the murder and lawlessness in his mountain town.

The Pena murders may be the worst case of revenge to hit this heavily armed farm community in the southern Sierra Madre, but it is certainly not the only one. Why, just a year ago, Moreno Chapa recalled, a dozen people were shot dead in a dispute over a 12-year-old girl who had run off with her boyfriend. The shooting started when she repented and tried to return home.

Before that, there were the killings of four state police officers. Folks resented the police for threatening them and extorting money. When the four were shot, the rest of the force left town.

“It’s hell being the authority out here,” Moreno Chapa conceded to the Mexican newspaper El Sol de Chilpancingo.

And to foreigners he added, “The problem is guns and ignorance.”

Tlacotepec is Mexico’s Wild West, a mean part of Mexico in the western state of Guerrero far from the modern country that President Carlos Salinas de Gortari wants to integrate into a North American Free Trade Agreement.

Guerrero is a state where powerful bosses run politics and business. Ruben Figueroa, the ruling party’s candidate for governor in next Sunday’s election, is the son of a former governor who founded the biggest trucking and transportation businesses in the state.

Retired army officers are said to manage a lucrative black market for weapons such as the high-powered rifles and pistols used to slaughter the Penas last Tuesday.

Nobody is telling who runs the Sierra Madre’s narcotics-trafficking business. To say that these fir tree-covered mountains hide crops of marijuana and heroin poppies is “like saying there are stars in the sky,” Moreno Chapa said. But the mayor denies rumors that he might be one of the drug bosses.

The people born in these rugged mountains marry young and have large families and little schooling. A gun is a symbol of manhood in a land where resentments seem to grow and ferment in the sun.

It would seem that drug money has helped to pay for the plethora of expensive weapons--AK-47 and R-15 rifles and 9-millimeter pistols--in Tlacotepec. The government has tried to take the guns away in “depistolization” campaigns, but officials said it was like trying to take hairs out of a cat.

Clearly the Penas and their rivals, the Garcias, had no trouble getting hold of high-powered weapons, although both are poor families.

Problems between the Pena and Garcia families apparently began at a wedding last May when, in the heat of drink, two young men began to brawl, first with fists and then, inevitably, with guns. Reinaldo Pena was shot in the foot and crippled. A Garcia was shot in the stomach but recovered.

Officials are unaware if anything transpired between the two families in the last nine months. The next they heard of the feud was on the afternoon of Feb. 6, when three Penas were gunned down on a dirt road outside of town. The Penas blamed the Garcias.

The Penas had just returned from burying their dead when the men were ambushed in a cargo truck on a dirt road about 1 1/2 hours outside of Tlacotepec.

According to Georgina Pena, 39, who lost three sons and a brother in the two attacks, the Pena women and children were accompanying her home after the burial that included one of her sons.

She said the men were heading back to their homes when the ambush began.

“There was a rain of bullets, and we were on our chests on the floor,” said a distraught Pena.

She claims the Penas were unarmed but admits the shooting went on for nearly two hours--rather a long time for a one-sided barrage.

Police hypothesize that the Penas may have planned to go after the Garcias but were surprised by an ambush first. They say they found an ammunition belt on one of the bodies and cartridges beneath several others.

The Penas were outnumbered by 40 to 50 Garcias, officials say. Two unidentified Penas survived but have fled into the mountains for fear of reprisals. Georgina Pena said her father and brother were in hiding. She said witnesses told her the assailants wore blue uniforms like state police.

The bodies were riddled with up to 20 bullets each, and police found about 500 spent cartridges in the area. But, although they are searching with scores of officers, they have not found the Garcias.

The shooting left dozens of widows and fatherless children. Many of them crowded into the mayor’s office Friday seeking help in paying for the caskets and burial costs.

“How are we going to live now?” asked Petra Sanchez, who lost the father of her seven children.

Routine killings in Tlacotepec may go unsolved, but the murder of 24 people exceeds the limits of what can be ignored.

“It is a challenge to the power of the state, especially during a gubernatorial campaign,” said Noe Mondragon, a reporter for El Sol de Chilpancingo from the state capital.

A week before the ambush, the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s candidate, Figueroa, had been in Tlacotepec, promising to pave the only road into town. During another campaign stop that week he had declared Guerrero in a state of “social peace.”

Tlacotepec residents watched the crowd of outsiders suspiciously. They don’t like official investigations, autopsies and other formalities of that sort. If a family member has been killed, let him rest, they say. He’s dead. Bury him. Then take care of business. Those who talk of revenge are the ones least likely to carry through.

Asked about the reputed violence of Tlacotepec, one shop woman pointed to the closed offices of the state police, its walls pocked by at least 50 bullet holes. “There’s the proof,” she said.

That wasn’t even the attack that took the lives of four officers in September, 1991, and finally caused police to flee, residents said.

After the police left town, Moreno Chapa complained to state officials and the press about frequent killings over drug trafficking and personal problems.

Finally last summer, the government sent in an army unit to guard the town, and things had seemed to calm down. Until the Pena murders.

“The killings are going to continue,” Mondragon said. “The families aren’t going to sit with their arms crossed.”