TAXCO, Mexico – The quaint and cobblestoned streets of the colonial silver town Taxco ran crimson on Thursday. A burst of blistering communal rage descended like a guillotine’s blade, claiming the life of a woman in a torrent of stomps, kicks, and blows. The shocking public execution played out in broad daylight – a brutal mobcrime unleashed mere hours before solemn Holy Week rituals began.
It was the tragic disappearance and murder of an 8-year-old girl named Camila that set this barbaric chain of events into motion. The young child vanished without a trace on Wednesday, her fate unknown to loved ones. But by early Thursday morning, her small lifeless body was discovered crumpled along a roadside just outside Taxco’s limits.
Chilling security footage appeared to capture the suspected perpetrators – a woman and man stuffing a bundle, likely the girl’s remains, into the back of a taxi cab like ditching garbage. As news of the child’s horrific death roared through town, a raging fire was stoked within the citizenry. A furious mob congregated around the alleged female killer’s home, thirsty for retribution.
Despite attempts by hopelessly outnumbered municipal police to protect the suspect, the impassioned horde descended like wolves. They swarmed a police truck where the woman had been temporarily detained, ripping her out and unleashing a relentless beatdown upon her body.
“This is the result of the bad government we have,” spat a female mob member giving only the name Andrea, eyes smoldering with resentment. “This isn’t the first time this has happened, but this is the first time the people have done something. We are fed up. This time it was an 8-year-old girl.”
The sickening assault continued unabated as the shrieking woman was pummeled to the pavement, clothes torn and skin purpling under a flurry of fists, feet, and fetid community contempt. Bloodstains slowly spread across the street as her motionless body lay before the savage crowd. Though police eventually recovered her, the Guerrero state prosecutor’s office would later confirm the unimaginable – the victim had died from the injuries.
Taxco’s mayor Mario Figueroa was aghast at the incident, condemning the child’s murder while lamenting his powerlessness against the venting of citizen fury. “Unfortunately, up to now we have not received any help or answers,” he lamented of the municipal force’s feeble response.
In addition to the slain woman, the throngs of outrage also extracted ruthless street justice upon two other men linked to the girl’s abduction and killing. The savagely beaten suspects were ultimately wrestled away to hospitals by police, their current condition unknown.
This archaic act of vigilantism marks an astonishing social nadir for Taxco, a former mining town whose ornate mansions and tree-canopied lanes have made it a coveted tourist destination. But the gem of a city has found its reputation besmirched by the twin cancers of kartel violence and unchecked local desperation.
Drug cartels have increasingly turned Taxco into their battleground zero, extorting businesses and citizens through intimidation and bloodshed. Just last month, Mayor Figueroa’s own armored car came under brazen gunfire in an attempted assassination. Despite its idyllic veneers, civilization has started slipping away.
Yet as dusk fell on Thursday, a spark of civility pulsed through Taxco’s heart. The town’s ancient Good Friday processions carried on despite the day’s horrors – a solemn ritual marking the suffering of Christ. Hooded penitents marched in mournful silence, whipping their backs raw and carrying thorny bundles in pious penance.
Many participants bore white ribbons signifying their mourning for young Camila. “I never thought that in a touristic place like Taxco we would experience a lynching,” said school teacher Felipa Lagunas, shaken by the day’s barbarism. “I saw it as something distant, in places far from civilization…I never imagined my community would see this on such a sacred day.”
As throngs kneeled before altars adorned in purple cloth, the dichotomy was striking – salvation’s rituals abutting man’s Most primordial transgressions. While judgement awaited both the murdered child’s killers and the mobsters who dealt fatal justice, all shared a crucible of sorrow on this darkest of evenings in Taxco.
Across Mexico’s rural obscurities, spasms of vigilante violence have become grizzly norms as the public’s exasperation with lawlessness and ineffectual authorities reaches vaporization point. But to see such wretched impulses eat away at the soul of a once-idyllic city is a particular psychological wound.
As investigators work to unravel the tangled threads of darkness confronting them, the people of Taxco are grappling with terrors few dreamed could puncture their bubble. The town’s inherited benevolence, so central to its draw, has been pierced by all-too-modern mirrors of savagery. What psychological wreckage will be left studding Taxco’s cobblestones when all is faced and reckoned with?
