Word: acapulco
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...outside world, Acapulco is a swingers' paradise filled with sunshine and golden people. Splashy new hotels and motels are sprouting up like beach umbrellas; old ones like Las Brisas, which includes a private pool and candy-striped Jeep with every bungalow, are adding new space. All over town, from the Tequila a Go-Go to the Paradiso, night life is a throbbing pandemonium. But there is another side to Aca pulco that the gay, sunny travel posters ignore: the resort city is one of Mexico's worst centers of crime...
...Acapulco has spawned a thriving underground traffic in "Acapulco gold," the local marijuana that hippies believe gives the world's best high. Prostitution, vice and corruption abound, and guns are as common as palm trees. Moreover, Acapulco is the largest city in mountainous and jungle-clad Guerrero, Mexico's most lawless state. Guerrero has become such a problem that last week the Mexican army was embarked on a massive drive to round up all the arms in the state...
Call for Help. Guerrero averages more than 200 murders a month, 60 in Acapulco alone. Last November, when a new bride refused to dance with one of her wedding guests in Tunas, guns came out and eleven persons were killed. A few weeks later, in a cemetery near Acapulco, another murder victim was no sooner in the ground than guns started blazing among the mourners; two people were killed. Six more died recently after a shoot-out over a land dispute. The incident that finally brought the arms crackdown came last month when two rival union factions shot...
...Acapulco's squalid, crumbling jail is so overcrowded that local authorities fear a breakout, have called in the army to help keep an eye on the city's 519 prisoners. Northern hippies who came south for Acapulco gold (maximum penalty for possession: six years) were jammed in with hardened characters like Félix Radilla, wanted for 85 murders, and Constáncio ("Black Animal") Hernández García, whose gang gunned down 18 soldiers a few months ago. The prisoners pay a price for everything: a cot to sleep on, half-decent food...
Long Way to Go. Tax money that should go for law enforcement in Guerrero often finds its way into someone's pocket. One day recently, almost 20% of Acapulco's 120-man police force quit because it had not been paid for 70 days. The state police force has dwindled from an original 140 men a year ago to ten; the policemen quit or get killed off faster than they can be replaced...