If the shooters were not Mexican, there had to be some local Mexican assistance provided to the shooters.
Not necessarily. There is an Italian community in Acapulco, so the assassins could have received help from associates who were already stationed there or elsewhere in Mexico. Many mafiosi had settled in Central and South America after the first Mafia war in the early 1960s.
Recall as well that Francesco del Balso and Giuseppe Torre were reported to have purchased a villa in Acapulco in early March 2006, about three weeks after the former decided he was going to go on unemployment insurance (!) Del Balso himself seemed to confirm his having a home in Mexico when he was stopped by Canada Customs on October 10, 2006 at the Trudeau airport -- see
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/ne...d-3666d26ef09a.The book
The Sixth Family cites information from an analysis, by Canada's Department of Justice, of the Rizzuto organization's financial holdings and connections to other countries. The connection to Mexico? "[D]rug transactions, meetings and visits in Mexico." (See p. 349 of the 2008 updated and revised edition; p. 313 of the 2006 first edition, where the text reads "drug transactions through meetings in, and visits to Mexico.")
