A frontline pine grower was murdered in Wanahuato, a state in central Mexico where a war is raging between rival drug cartels, local authorities announced yesterday, Sunday.

The victim, Ricardo Vega, was the owner of the Cuna de Tierra winery on the Dolores Idalgo highway.

“I am deeply saddened and strongly condemn the cowardly murder of Ricardo Vega,” Mauricio Trejo, the mayor of the nearby municipality of San Miguel de Ayente, said via X, according to whom “insecurity reigns in Guanajuato.”

According to a report published in the local newspaper A.M., gunmen killed the businessman the day before yesterday, Saturday, while he was at the wheel of his car. Authorities are conducting an investigation, the same source said.

For its part, the Council of Mexican Winegrowers, the sector’s collective body, expressed sadness at the death of Ricardo Vega, “a visionary leader and tireless defender of Mexican wine.”

In Mexico, a country that has been swept for decades by a wave of violence attributed to organized crime, more than 450,000 murders have been recorded since December 2006, when the so-called war on drugs began, with the involvement of the armed forces.

Wanajuato, a thriving industrial hub near popular tourist destinations such as San Miguel de Ayente, is the Mexican state where more homicides were committed than in any other in 2023 (3.746, or more than 12% of the national total), according to official data.

In that state, the New Generation Jalisco Cartel, one of the most powerful gangs in Mexico, has engaged in a ruthless war for control of territory with the local Santa Rosa de Lima thug organization.

On Thursday, authorities said they found at least five dismembered human bodies inside an abandoned vehicle.