Schools and some businesses were closed and few people walked the streets of this town south of Mexico’s capital Tuesday, hours after five people were gunned down on the same street where another attack left eight dead just eight months earlier.
Huitzilac is at the center of a restive area in Morelos state with competing criminal organizations and illegal logging. Those killed were apparently campaigning for local positions managing the community’s collective resources, like the surrounding forest, ahead of an election scheduled for March.
