From the article:

While killings have sharply decreased under Sheinbaum, pressure has mounted over the past year as Mexico sought to project security and stability ahead of the World Cup following a burst of violence in February in one host city, Guadalajara. Compounding that are added threats by U.S. President Donald Trump to take military action on cartels and other internal political ruptures.

As a result, Mexico doubled down on security in the World Cup hubs, deploying 100,000 security forces largely to Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara to safeguard the tournament. The leg of the competition in Mexico, which wrapped up on Sunday, ended without major security incidents.

[...]

Mexican security analyst David Saucedo says the attacks like the ones in Guajes de Ayala and other areas haunted by cartel violence are the fallout of the government’s World Cup security strategy.

“There was heavy security in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey. Lots of military and National Guard officers from other states were transferred to fortify World Cup hosts,” Saucedo said. “But in doing that, they also left a number of regions that weren’t host cities unprotected.”

[...]

The Guajes de Ayala community had warned law enforcement that the cartel was closing in on their town and also shared videos of cartel drones hovering overhead and the location of cartel fighters inching closer to their homes on social media.

They said they feared an impending attack. Solario said no one helped.

On Wednesday morning that came to a head. While Solario and her group sought refuge from the firefight in the abandoned clinic, others elsewhere sheltered in churches.

[...]

Authorities had previously denied accusations that they’ve abandoned the Guerrero communities but when the AP recently visited the region, there was no state presence anywhere near the communities.

For years, the La Nueva Familia Michoacana — which was declared a foreign terrorist organization last year by the Trump administration, along with other Mexican cartels and Central and South American gangs — has been pushing into Guerrero.

In response to attacks and what the community said was an absence by security authorities, hundreds have fled their homes. In recent years, men in the community have formed a vigilante group to fight back.

The vigilante group was armed by rival cartels, fighting for territory with La Nueva Familia Michoacana, and carried military-grade weapons smuggled from the U.S., grenades and drones, which they used to monitor the encroaching cartel.