At 5:00 pm on September 27, 2014, seven hours after the forced disappearance of the 43 students of Ayotzinapa teachers training college in Iguala, an angry shout was heard at the checkpoint of the cartel Guerreros Unidos in Chilacachapa:

"Bring black bags you mother fuckers, fast!," a man yelled through a walkie talkie.

"How many?," someone asked.

"Around 50," the man ordered.

The fact was narrated by terrified inhabitants of the mountain village of Chilacachapa, located in the municipality of Cuetzala del Progreso about 37 kilometers (22 miles) from Iguala and 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the garbage dump of Cocula, where criminals allegedly executed and incinerated the students.

The witnesses spoke to EL UNIVERSAL on the condition of remaining anonymous. This newspaper was the first one to enter the rural community of 2,000 inhabitants scourged by organized crime for two years, during which there have been nine forced disappearances and over 200 cases of forced displacement.

The witnesses say that on September 26 the mafia announced that Iguala police was under attack and, with the support from local stalwarts, forced people to stand guard at their barricades.

One interviewee said that the inhabitants of this town know the whereabouts of the students: "My countrymen here know where they are, but they are afraid to speak."

On October 6 federal forces took control of Iguala after the municipal police, in cahoots with Guerreros Unidos criminal gang, were accused of executing the 43 students.

Consequently the cartel dismantled their roadblock at the entrance to Chilacachapa that the inhabitants were previously forced to watch in 12-hour shifts.

"They moved to Tianquizolco and Apetlanca," a neighbor explained. However, he says that others are hiding in Chilacachapa and control the access to the town from a barricade installed a few miles away. "They are here, they have not gone."

The night of September 26

EL UNIVERSAL covertly entered Chilacachapa, one of the dens of Guerreros Unidos, to meet secretly with a dozen villagers and some inhabitants of Tianquizolco. The visit lasted four hours.

The meeting was held in a building after the anxious organizers made sure that doors and windows were locked so as not to be heard from outside.

They said that between 23:00 hrs. on September 26 and 1:00 am on September 27, the cartel asked for support in Chilacachapa, Tianquizolco and Apetlanca arguing that Iguala police force was being attacked by Los Rojos, a rival cartel, and by students who "were going to make a revolution."

A man says that Jesús Valle Rosas, from Chilacachapa, along with 25 locals accompanied the criminals on the night of the students' disappearance.

"Federal authorities have not even summoned them to find out why they were taken away."

The witnesses say that the group returned at 7:00 am to get a red dump truck that they filled with more people before returning to the mountains on their way to Iguala.

An inhabitant from Tianquizolco says that he saw the truck parked on a cruise of his town that morning and that it was guarded by Guerreros Unidos.

There were more than 100 people on the cruise, among them "many people from Cuetzala, including the ruler of Apetlanca, of Tianquizolco, and they went from one place to another with the red truck with people from Chilacachapa."

He adds that as at 9:30 am "the truck left for Iguala packed with people" in a caravan that included trucks of Guerreros Unidos and the sheriff of Chilacachapa.

An acquaintance told him later: "They told us that we had to go to a demonstration Iguala." But this march never took place, so at 11:00 am everyone returned to their villages as they could.

'La Familia Michoacana'

A resident from Tianquizolco recalls that in late 2011 the first cartel arrived to the town of Cuetzala: La Familia Michoacana.

"Before 2011 these villages were very quiet, not even floods or earthquakes affected us," he says. "But after the arrival of La Famila they started to kidnap us." He explains that upon their arrival they co-opted Mayor Feliciano Álvarez Mesino, a member of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), who immediately announced that street traders would pay taxes.

The announcement caused anger and a grassroots organization in Tianquizolco met in 2012 with the sheriff and the inhabitants of Apetlanca, San Francisco Lagunita and Chilacachapa.

All planned to join the Union of Organized Peoples of the State of Guerrero (UPOEG), immersed in a process of creating paramilitary groups in the area of Guerrero known as "Costa Chica". However, they say that only two meetings were held.

"After the second meeting leaders started being kidnapped. They took the sheriff of Tianquizolco and Lagunita, as well as 12 people from Tianquizolco."

Most returned after paying a ransom, but not Venancio Vázquez and his two teenage sons from Chilacachapa. "They disappeared," the witness added.

Ever though La Familia kidnapped seven people in Chilacachapa who never came back, nobody dared to make a criminal complaint.

Another resident says that in October last year La Familia executed around twenty drug planters from Ahuaxotitla. "The Army expelled [La Familia] and Guerreros Unidos arrived soon after," he explained.

The law of 'Guerreros Unidos'

Guerreros Unidos, a cell of the Beltrán Leyva cartel, entered the town with another strategy: "They were more discreet, they operated in homes and never showed their weapons on the street," he explained.

He says that Guerreros Unidos approached all the sheriffs of all the communities of Cuetzala and in order to avoid contact with the UPOEG, the cartel imposed the creation of a civil guard at its command.

Thus on February 6, 2014 Raymundo Vázquez, a local leader, summoned authorities from Apetlanca, Tianquizolco and Chilacachapa to sign a document that instructed them to "name community police forces."

Days later, the sheriff organized a popular assembly at Chilacachapa's main square.

The witness says that "the sheriff was a mere ornament because in fact, the members of Guerreros Unidos were the ones that ruled in town."

Criminals told them: "We are here to look after you, to clean the town of criminals. Since we arrived there are no kidnappings, neither disappearances or extortions."

They also said "that they had people in the government and senators supporting them, that they would bring about big projects," another resident said.

Guerreros Unidos ordered a curfew at 19:00 hrs. They plundered stores, charged a fee on cattle sales, started selling drugs and stole trucks and houses.

A local says that a lady called Eva Morales Hernández and her husband were given three hours to leave the town because "they did not want to give their house and their daughter to the criminals."

The mafia established two checkpoints at the entrances of the village, where people were only exempted from standing guard if they paid a fine of 100 to 150 pesos per day (6 to 10 dollars).

The peasants watched the place "with their machetes or shotguns, while they were few meters away hidden with a true arsenal of goat horns. Also, they forced widows and house wives to cook for them," a resident explains.

On April 8 Federal Police arrested Álvarez Mesino for his ties to La Familia, something that in the witnesses' opinion strengthened Guerreros Unidos. The cartel is accused of being behind two cases of forced disappearance.

Captives and terrified

The case of the 43 missing students led to the arrival of federal forces in the region and the official version is that the Guerreros Unidos criminal gang has been dismantled. However, the inhabitants of Guerrero say that has not happened.

"Two or three times a week the mafia drives around in Chilacachapa intimidating people and they try to promote the checkpoints through people like Felipe Flores, Saturnino Anastasio, Francisco Atanasio, Pedro Susano and José Luis Quezada," a neighbor said.

Another resident added: "People do not dare to denounce because we are too afraid. We live in a sad situation of terror".

Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Chilacachapa continue living in hell.