Governor Resigns Amid Probe

The embattled governor of Guerrero state, home of the Acapulco and Ixtapa beach resorts, resigned Tuesday while the Supreme Court investigates his role in last year’s massacre of 17 peasants by state police.

Gov. Ruben Figueroa Alcocer, a veteran of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, submitted his resignation to the legislature of the southwest Mexican state while maintaining his innocence.

The June 28, 1995 killings of 17 peasants near Aguas Blancas, less than an hour’s drive from Acapulco’s seaside hotels, exposed the dangers faced by the political opposition in the state. The unarmed peasants, aligned with the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, were en route to an anti-government rally when they were stopped at a state police roadblock and executed, authorities said.