Huitzilac, Mexico—— Schools and some businesses were closed on Tuesday and few people walked the streets of this town south of the Mexican capital, hours after five people were shot to death on the same street and just eight months ago another The attack left eight people dead.

Huicilac is at the heart of a volatile region in Morelos state, home to competing criminal organizations and illegal logging. Those killed were apparently running for local positions managing the community's collective resources, such as surrounding forests, ahead of elections in March.

On Monday afternoon, like every afternoon in recent weeks, four men and a woman from a group running in local elections were campaigning door to door. They were intercepted by gunmen in two cars and left dead on the main street of Vizilac.

“I told them years ago not to participate, there would always be problems,” said Blanca Delgadillo, whose son-in-law, José Cuevas, a farmer who was killed Also among them.

Delgadillo, 70, said violence has engulfed the farming community in recent years, forcing its 20,000 residents to live in fear.

Mayor César Dávila Díaz, who took office on January 1, condemned the attack and said that such incidents “affect our city government because they always regard us as a violent hotspot."

The mayor has denied the existence of a drug cartel, dismissed the possibility of a political motive and said he did not know what the motive was.

Bloodstains and five candles could be seen on the sidewalk Tuesday morning.

Two hundred National Guard members arrived to support local and state police patrols in the area.

José Romero, a 53-year-old farmer who lives just feet from where the attack took place, said he was watching television when he heard gunshots.

He said security in the town depended on the presence of security forces. Romero said such attacks occur when the National Guard is not present.

Last May, just two weeks before Mexico's presidential election, an attack took place against a man drinking beer after a football match.

President Claudia Sheinbaum easily won the election, taking over a complex security situation.

Numerous criminal organizations fight for territory across Mexico, seeking to secure safe routes for smuggling migrants, drugs and guns but also increasingly extorting communities.

Her government has been more willing to crack down on criminal organizations than that of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, but hotspots are spread across the country. Factions of the Sinaloa drug cartel have been fighting for months in the Sinaloa state capital.

The Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation cartel are at war in several states, from central Michoacán to Chiapas south of the Guatemalan border.

The bodies of an unknown number of victims were found on a highway in the Gulf Coast state of Tabasco on Tuesday, and the state's governor announced that 180 troops would be deployed to respond to the growing violence.

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