Mexican Drug Cartels and the Art of Policitcal Puppetry
Police officers guard a crime scene post-obit an assassination attempt on Mexico City's primary of police Omar García Harfuch, in Mexico City last calendar month. Luis Cortes/Reuters hide caption
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Luis Cortes/Reuters
Police officers guard a crime scene following an assassination attempt on Mexico Metropolis's chief of police force Omar García Harfuch, in Mexico City last month.
Luis Cortes/Reuters
At start glance, a video circulating on Mexican social media this calendar month appears to show a boisterous unit of security forces. For more than than 2 minutes, the camera pans across a line of masked men in combat fatigues, stretching down a rural road. Some stand beside armored vehicles painted in cover-up colors, firing military-grade weapons into the air. Others peer out of makeshift turrets atop the vehicles.
Turn upward the book on the video, though, and information technology's clear this is no regular force.
The troops are yelling, "We are Mencho's people." Mencho is the nickname of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Mexico's most powerful drug trafficking organization, notorious for its murders of public officials, police and ordinary citizens.
"The imagery is pretty impressive," says security annotator and newspaper columnist Alejandro Hope. He estimates the dare, based in the central Mexican state of Jalisco, had more than $1 million worth of armaments and vehicles on brandish in the video. "It's an impressive piece of propaganda."
On Monday, Mexican Defence force Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval said the grouping in the video appeared to be an elite force of the dare. The video's authenticity would be analyzed, he said, just he was quick to add that no criminal group in Mexico has the firepower to have on the land'due south federal forces. In recent weeks, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has promoted a new National Guard force to fight the gangs, though analysts question whether it will make a divergence.
Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, shown hither on July 13, has formed a new National Guard forcefulness but said when it comes to the drug cartels, "We will fight them with intelligence and not forcefulness. Nosotros volition not declare war." Marco Ugarte/AP hide caption
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Marco Ugarte/AP
Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, shown here on July 13, has formed a new National Guard strength but said when it comes to the drug cartels, "Nosotros will fight them with intelligence and non force. We will not declare state of war."
Marco Ugarte/AP
The Jalisco cartel — known past its initials in Spanish, CJNG — has been tied to murders including those of a federal judge and his married woman in Colima state, and to an assassination endeavor concluding month on Mexico City'south law principal.
That assail took place early in the morning of June 26, in ane of the capital letter'due south richest neighborhoods. Virtually three dozen heavily armed men cut off Omar García Harfuch'southward convoy as he made his mode to work. They fired more than 400 rounds into his armored car, killing three people. García was wounded but survived. From his infirmary bed, he tweeted that the Jalisco cartel was to blame.
According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the CJNG dominates fentanyl and methamphetamine trafficking in Mexico and now eclipses the Sinaloa organization in its reach throughout the country. It'due south now the principal drug trafficking group operating in 3-quarters of Mexico'due south 32 states.
David Shirk, director of the Justice in United mexican states program at the University of San Diego, says the CJNG has been effectually for more than a decade only really took off afterwards the capture and extradition to the U.S. of the Sinaloa leader Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán in 2017. Shirk says after Guzmán left the scene, turf wars between the 2 groups escalated — and so did the violence and number of homicides in United mexican states.
"And they really oasis't stopped going up," says Shirk, "and a large part of that violence can exist attributed to the CJNG."
Last yr, nearly 35,000 Mexicans were murdered — the highest number recorded since the country began keeping such statistics.
That violence is most acute in Guanajuato state, known for its large American expatriate customs and equally an auto manufacturing hub.
Juan Gutiérrez, who heads a criminal offence victims' grouping there, says his state used to be 1 of the safest places in the country to live. "Now we take gone from beingness a peaceful state to a state filled with terror," he says.
His group had hoped to encounter with López Obrador terminal week, when the president came to tour areas of the land most afflicted by drug violence. The meeting never happened. López Obrador toured several hospitals and installations of his newly formed National Guard during a 3-day swing through central United mexican states.
Vidal Romero, a political scientist at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, called the president'due south bout all evidence and no substance. He says López Obrador's administration does non have a strategy to gainsay the drug cartels.
"They are doing the same every bit previous governments... but they are saying they are not doing the same every bit other governments," he says.
López Obrador has touted the new National Baby-sit, simply Romero says it'southward however the aforementioned Mexican regular army, doing the same inadequate task.
Equally he confronts Mexico's rising murder charge per unit, López Obrador has all but conceded he has no intention of mounting a firm response. He's made a mantra of the phrase "Hugs, not bullets."
Speaking to reporters earlier this calendar week, López Obrador seemed unfazed when asked to annotate on the show of strength in the Jalisco New Generation Cartel video. He said his administration had inherited the drug cartels, simply announced no new constabulary offensive against them.
Lopez Obrador has consistently said he'south reluctant to appoint in the bloody drug wars of by administrations. This calendar week, he said of the cartels: "We will fight them with intelligence and not force. We will not declare state of war."
Source: https://www.npr.org/2020/07/23/893561899/as-mexicos-dominant-cartel-gains-power-the-president-vows-hugs-not-bullets
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