Between 800 and 1,000 families have been forced to flee their homes in the mountains of central Mexico after a criminal mafia attacked communities with handmade explosives launched from drones and powerful weapons, community and human rights groups said Sunday. In Guerrero, where state power has long failed to protect rural people, the latest wave of violence began on Wednesday when a powerful group known as Los Ardillos started attacking communities in a rural mountainous region, pushing thousands of people, including children and the elderly, out in just a span of days.
Who Pays for the War Up Top
At least one person was injured, said the People’s Indigenous Council of Guerrero – Emiliano Zapata, or CIPOG-EZ. Videos showed families fleeing their homes early Sunday morning, on Mother’s Day, cloaked by darkness with nothing more than backpacks. Other images shared with The Associated Press showed heavy gunfire echoing over farms and drones rigged with explosives laying in the brush. The people being driven out are the ones left to absorb the cost of a conflict over territory that has been grinding on for years.
Marina Velasco, a representative for CIPOG-EZ, said, "These have been days of terror," and, "They’ve been bombing communities with drones, and how can one defend themselves from a drone, with bombs falling from the sky." Her words capture the imbalance at the center of the violence: communities on foot, under fire from above.
Abandoned Ground, Armed Groups
Community groups and local religious organizations said Los Ardillos have sought to take over the land for years in their battle for territory with a smattering of other rival criminal groups. Velasco said families have fled to nearby towns, where many now take refuge in a soccer field. She said that while there is a small presence of state actors, communities like these have largely been "abandoned" by Mexican forces in the face of attacks from criminal groups.
Mexico’s federal government and local state authorities in Guerrero did not immediately respond to a request for comment. That silence sits alongside the reality on the ground: people fleeing, families scattered, and no immediate protection from the institutions that claim authority over the region.
CIPOG-EZ has documented 76 people in the region slain by the conflict with the group in recent years, and 25 more who have gone missing. Those numbers mark the human toll of a territorial struggle carried out over the heads of ordinary people, who are left to bury the dead, search for the missing, and run when the drones come.
What They Call Order
Cartels have been using drones and more elaborate weapons for years to wage war, a sign of how entrenched the conflict is in regions like Guerrero, where cartels have splintered into rival factions. Increasingly, communities have taken up arms themselves to fight back against groups like Los Ardillos. The article does not say what protection, if any, the state has actually delivered to those communities before they reached that point.
The bloodshed comes as Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has come down more heavily on cartels than her predecessor as she has faced mounting pressure from President Donald Trump, who has threatened to take military action against the groups, which Sheinbaum has called "unnecessary." The push by Sheinbaum has resulted in a sharp dip in homicides, around 40%, since she took office, a figure which the government has boasted even as it’s been roiled by a number of scandals in recent weeks.
That is the official version of control: harsher pressure from above, threats of military action from another head of state, and government boasting about homicide numbers while communities in Guerrero are forced to flee with backpacks in the dark. The people in the mountains are left to navigate the consequences of a conflict shaped by armed groups, state absence, and the machinery of power that keeps treating rural life as expendable.