Hipólito Mora’s death in a hail of bullets is just the latest murder as the country’s brutal crime conflict shows no sign of abating

More than 150,000 people have been murdered since Mexico’s current president took power and Hipólito Mora suspected he would join them. “I knew this day would come,” the lime farmer turned vigilante rebel wrote in a farewell message to be published in the event that it did.

Mora’s premonition was proved right on a recent afternoon, when he was killed in a blizzard of nearly 1,000 bullets in one of Mexico’s most violence-stricken states. Hours after Mora’s incinerated truck was towed from the crime scene, the 67-year-old’s trademark hat was placed on his coffin at a wake most people were too afraid to attend. “We want justice. This cannot go unpunished,” his brother, Guadalupe Mora, said as he digested his sibling’s death foretold.

The murder of Mora – whose campaign against the cartels made him a national celebrity – has put the spotlight back on Mexico’s unfathomably brutal crime conflict, which claimed more than 30,000 lives last year….

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/16/mexico-violence-vigilante-hipolito-mora-amlo