Mexico’s government has begun the deployment of troops to the western state of Michoacan in an effort to quell the state’s persistent violence.

The deployment comes a week after a 17-year-old gunman shot and killed a popular mayor during Day of the Dead festivities, spurring protests in towns across the state and demands that the federal government take action.

When asked about her government’s plan for Michoacán, President Claudia Sheinbaum said it involved strengthening security “from a presence on the ground to all that has to do with addressing the root causes and promoting economic and social development.”

Michoacan has long posed a security challenge for Mexican presidents.

Multiple organized crime groups fight for territorial control to move drugs along highways and chemical precursors for making fentanyl and methamphetamines through the critical Pacific port of Lazaro Cardenas.

But they also extract a severe price from local communities by extorting avocado and lime growers and in some places nearly anyone else with a business.

Some 1,000 additional troops arrived in Michoacan Monday and nearly half of those will be charged with a containment strategy aimed at keeping criminals from crossing state lines, a tall order in a state with multiple criminal organizations operating fluidly within and from neighboring states like Jalisco.

Defense Secretary Ricardo Trevilla Trejo said they will “send explosive detection units to the borders between Michoacán and Jalisco” to check all the roads where they ”know that these types of devices exist."

Sheinbaum’s administration has shown a greater willingness to pursue the country’s powerful drug cartels than her predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

AP video by Jordi Lebrija