In cartel-ridden Mexican cities, authorities are warning adults not to wear masks on Halloween

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Halloween is gaining ground in Mexico, but in a country ravaged by drug cartel violence there is a real fear of ghosts, ghouls and skeletons walking the streets.

Healthcare is not so much about competing Mexico’s traditional, homegrown Day of the Dead celebrations, which this year went off without a hitch on Friday and Saturday at cemeteries across the country.

Instead, authorities in at least three violence-plagued cities in Mexico have warned residents about masks, which are often used by cartel gunmen in Mexico to conceal their identities.

In the northern cities of Tijuana, Culiacan and Hermosillo, authorities warned residents not to stay out late and adults not to wear masks.

Arnulfo Guerreo, the local government secretary of the city of Tijuana, announced special security measures Thursday for the city’s “Operation Halloween,” which involved hundreds of police officers monitoring the Halloween-like celebration downtown.

“It’s already in the regulations that you can’t wear masks,” said Arnulfo Guerreo, the local government secretary for the city of Tijuana, a rule that largely refers to the ski masks favored by gunmen.

“That’s not to say don’t wear costumes, it’s just the issue of masks, it’s something that helps protect us and our families,” Guerrero said. Authorities later told local media that police would use their judgment when imposing fines, and that the rule would only apply to adults.

Based on social media videos of celebrations on Tijuana’s Revolution Avenue Thursday evening, the rule appeared to be largely unenforced: Adults could be seen in masks and disguises from Beetlejuice, Scream, Friday the 13th and other popular horror movie franchises.

Also just before Halloween, the chief of police in the northern state of Sinaloa – which has been plagued by infighting between factions of the Sinaloa drug cartel – gave a more somber warning.

“The recommendation is not to go out too late, not to go out trick or treating, or to wear disguises,” said the head of the state police, Gerardo Mérida, adding the eerie sentence: “At night all cats black.”

While that may sound like a curse from a terror movie, it’s an expression used in Spanish to mean “in the darkness it’s easy to confuse one thing with another.”

In a city where trigger-happy military forces have already killed one bystander while searching for cartel suspects, this was a chilling warning.

Brigades of police and militarized National Guard officers had been dispatched to patrol the streets of Culiacan, the state capital, on Thursday evening, and thankfully Mérida told local media on Friday that Halloween had been relatively peaceful for the embattled city, with just a few reports of gunfire.

Hermosillo, the capital of neighboring Sonora state, had also urged residents not to wear Halloween masks in public.

Elsewhere in Mexico, the Day of the Dead was celebrated on Friday to remember those who died in childhood; Saturday is dedicated to those who died as adults.

The celebrations included entire families cleaning and decorating graves, which were covered with orange marigolds. At both cemeteries and home altars, family members lit candles and made offerings of their deceased relatives’ favorite foods and drinks.