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Tourists are being forced to drive their cars past the dismembered bodies of cartel victims as the drug violence escalates in Acapulco, Mexico.
Cops cordoned off parts of streets where the carved up corpses lied strewn in the Mexican holiday town.
Famed for its big beautiful beaches and as a playground for the rich and famous, the city has descended into chaos as it became a battleground for warring cartels.
On Tuesday, a car filled with tourists drove past burnt and dismembered corpses on Lazaro Cardenas Boulevard.
In February, the US government told citizens not to go to the former party town as it was revealed that Mexico suffered nearly 30,000 murders last year alone.
But even before then the UK government was warning Brits to be careful visiting the Latin American nation telling tourists to “be alert to the existence of serious violent crime like robbery, assault and vehicle hijacking.”
The resort city is now at the center of a crime wave that has swept across the country with extortion, kidnaps and murder becoming daily occurrences.
In the past, Acapulco was known for a very different reason. In fact, it was a favorite with glamorous jet-setters like Elizabeth Taylor and even members of the Kennedy family.
But that magic has been replaced by hideous violence.
Acapulco resides in Guerrero state, one of Mexico’s poorest provinces and one of the most ravaged by organized crime.
The crime has gotten so bad that last week Mexico’s Coca-Cola Femsa, the world’s largest Coke bottler, said it had decided to indefinitely shut down operations in a town in the south-western state.
The company, a joint venture between Fomento Economico Mexicano (Femsa) and Coca-Cola, said it was shuttering operations at its 160-employee distribution center in Ciudad Altamirano in Guerrero state.
The company said it “profoundly regrets that the absence of law and the prevalence of impunity that affects the region has led us to stop working in a territory where we have been for more than four decades.”
The news was a blow to the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto which has failed to curb gang violence while trying to lure foreign investment into Latin America’s second-largest economy.
Murders in Mexico hit a record high last year.
The state was also hit by a bomb attack in February when a homemade explosive device was detonated on a ferry in Playa del Carmen.
The explosion appeared to have been triggered from a distance and may have been made by someone with knowledge of mining materials, according to Mexican newspaper El Universal, citing an investigation conducted by the Mexican attorney general’s office and the marine secretary.
The blast on the ferry docked at a Playa del Carmen pier injured at least 25, including US tourists.
The motive for the attack is not yet known.
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