Cowed and outgunned: why Mexico’s police 'don't stand a chance' against drug cartels
The 14 October massacre that left 13 state police dead was just one extreme episode of violence in a recent litany of horrors
At first glance, the human skull lying beside the road looked like a piece of rubbish. Once spotted, it was impossible to ignore: charred, broken and punched through with a bullet hole.
Around it, a carpet of bullet casings was scattered across the street which runs through the middle of the village of El Aguaje in Mexico’s western state of Michoacán.
Bones and bullets bore witness to the intensity of a ferocious cartel ambush which two days earlier had killed 13 state police officers and wounded nine.
“It was crazy to send them here like that,” said a young mother who lives a block away from the ambush and asked not to be named.
