IRAPUATO, Mexico _ Word spread quickly here after gunfire erupted at a neighborhood drug rehab center.
Natalia Acosta Medina bolted from her patio, sprinted through the muddy streets and climbed the stairs of the two-story facility.
More than two dozen blood-spattered men lay face-down, some with heads split open, others groaning in agony.
"I turned over the bodies one by one and looked at their faces," Acosta recalled. "But I never found my son."
He was discovered later, one of 27 men killed in the July 1 massacre.
The attack was the bloodiest episode in a wave of violence that has seen once-tranquil Guanajuato become one of Mexico's deadliest states.
There were 3,540 killings in Guanajuato last year, a more than threefold increase since 2016.
With 2,293 killings in the first half of this year, Guanajuato is on pace to set a new record. Only three less-populous states _ the Pacific coastal enclave of Colima and the historically violent border states of Baja California and Chihuahua _ have more homicides per capita.
At the root of the escalating violence is a David-versus-Goliath turf battle between a local mob boss and a multinational drug cartel capo.
In Mexico, everybody knows them by their monikers: El Marro and El Mencho.
