(Fox News)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nTransportation workers are frequently shaken down for protection payments by drug gangs throughout Guerrero state. Some drivers are also sometimes forced to work for the gangs under threat. That is despite the fact that more army and National Guard troops have been dispatched to Guerrero \u2014 which was hit by Category 5 Hurricane Otis in October \u2014 than to any other state in Mexico.<\/p>\n
In late January, the tourist town of Taxco endured a days-long strike by private taxi and van drivers who suffered threats from one of several drug gangs fighting for control of the area. The situation was so bad that police had to give people rides in the back of their patrol vehicles.<\/p>\n
Earlier in January, the main Acapulco chamber of commerce reported that gang threats and attacks caused about 90% of the city\u2019s passenger vans to stop running, affecting the resort\u2019s main form of transport.<\/p>\n
Acapulco has been bloodied by turf battles between gangs since at least 2006. The gangs are fighting over drug sales and income from extorting protection payments from businesses, bars, bus and taxi drivers.<\/p>\n
Truck drivers are also growing weary of continued violent robberies of trucks and their merchandise, in which the drivers are also frequently killed.<\/p>\n
The Mexican-American Federation of Truck Drivers, along with several other industry groups, had scheduled a demonstration by truckers on a busy highway outside Mexico City on Monday to protest the wave of killings of truck drivers during highway robberies.<\/p>\n
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\nBut the Interior Department issued a statement Sunday saying drivers had agreed to talks with federal officials on increased security on the highways, and only scattered protests occurred Monday.<\/p>\n
Thieves have long hijacked trucks on highways in central Mexico, but generally abandoned the drivers and their trucks after stealing the merchandise they were carrying. But now, industry groups say, the gangs often kill drivers and take the trucks to lots where they are stripped and sold for parts.<\/p>\n
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[ad_1] MEXICO CITY (AP) \u2014 Four bus and taxi drivers were killed Monday following apparently coordinated attacks by gunmen in the city of Chilpancingo, the capital of the southern Pacific coast state of Guerrero. Drug gangs battling for control in the state have long been known to kill people for not paying “protection” fees, including …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25440"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}