‘We’re Living in Hell’: Inside Mexico’s Most Terrified City

Fresnillo feels to residents overrun by violence and paralyzed by fear, a testament to the failure of Mexico’s government to tackle organized crime.

FRESNILLO, Mexico — The violence was already terrifying, she said, when grenades exploded outside her church in broad daylight some five years ago. Then children in town were kidnapped, disappearing without a trace. Then the bodies of the executed were dumped in city streets. And then came the day last month when armed men burst into her home, dragged her 15-year-old son and two of his friends outside and shot them to death, leaving Guadalupe — who didn’t want her full name published out of fear of the men — too terrified to leave the house. “I do not want the night to come,” she said, through tears. “Living with fear is no life at all.”