Shootout marks latest grim chapter in drug war

Rodolfo Chagoya was about to cut firewood near the El Sol ranch in western Mexico when suddenly, he said, "I heard 'rat-at-at-at!' It was a horrible thing."

The corn farmer said Friday's gunfight that killed 42 criminal suspects and one federal police officer made him even more afraid of working his plot of land in the violent region.

The ranch was the scene of one of the bloodiest battles in nearly a decade of drug conflicts in Mexico.

The shootout took place in Tanhuato, Michoacan state, near the border with Jalisco. The two states have endured some of the worst violence in the drug war.

This month, a mayoral candidate was assassinated in Yurecuaro, a Michoacan town near Tanhuato, ahead of the June 7 elections.

The mayor of Tanhuato, Gustavo Garibay, was assassinated by an armed group in March 2014.

In La Barca, a Jalisco municipality bordering the two states, 64 bodies were unearthed from mass graves in 2013.

"There's a lot of missing and dead people," an elderly man who refused to give his name said in Tanhuato. "This is no man's land."

The Jalisco New Generation drug cartel is the dominant criminal group in the region. Earlier this month, it downed a military helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade, killing seven soldiers and a policewoman. It has killed 20 other police officers since March.

Despite their exposure to violence, residents of the region were shocked by the intensity of Friday's battle.

"You don't get used to things like that," Chagoya said under his straw hat in the nearby town of Ecuandureo, while a friend lamented that he was unable to sell products on Friday because people were hiding inside their homes.

Chagoya said he often sees "bad people" cross the fields, though he has never come face to face with armed gangsters.

The region is known as the "western drug corridor" with mountains that provide cover for labs producing synthetic drugs that are smuggled into the United States.

The New Generation, a former wing of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, now dominates the regional underworld after fighting the ultraviolent Zetas gang in Jalisco and the Knights Templar criminal group in neighboring Michoacan.

President Enrique Pena Nieto's administration launched an operation on May 1 to dismantle the New Generation, whose attacks on police has made it a top target. Friday's clash was part of the efforts to break up the group.