Mexico burns as drug cartels deploy narco-terror
Drug cartels deployed terror in four states, targeting bystanders, blocking highways and burning vehicles and businesses. But the president accuses the media and his 'adversaries' of exaggerating
Swaths of Mexico burned last week as cartel thugs unleashed waves of narco-violence across five states – acts many in the country called “terrorism,” but the populist president described as “disturbances,” being exaggerated by his political “adversaries.”
The violence claimed 260 lives in four days across suburban Guadalajara, Guanajuato state, Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana and several cities in Baja California, according to a count by the newspaper Reforma.
But President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) spent more time at his Monday press conference chastising Reforma and “conservatives” for exaggeration and “yellow journalism” – while presenting homicide numbers for days in which the narco-violence was not flaring. He insisted, “There is governability, there is stability. And at the same time our adversaries are interested in magnifying things.”
Others in the president’s party floated conspiracies of “conservatives” teaming with criminals to attack AMLO and his political movement – with AMLO himself often playing the victim at times atrocity.
But the violence brought fears of an escalation in narcoterrorism – most notoriously deployed by the Sinaloa Cartel in 2019 to force soldiers to surrender Ovidio Guzmán, son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán – as cartels terrorize local populations to pressure and punish politicians. It raises the spectre of Colombia in the 1980s, when Pablo Escobar and Colombian cartels used narco-terrorism to avoid capture and extradition to the United States.
Organized crime expert Edgardo Buscaglia told Proyecto Puente in Hermosillo:
“Terrorism is an act of violence committed by criminal networks against the innocent civilian population indiscriminately in the streets. … They commit these indiscriminate acts of violence against the civilian population in order to pressure the state to protect them, pressure the state to release El Chapo’s son, pressure the state to change the president of the municipal assembly of Ciudad Juárez, pressure the state for some reason.”
Buscaglia, senior research scholar in law and economics at Columbia Law School and an adviser to governments on combating organized crime, has urged Mexico to adopt anti-mafia policies – to minimize cartel incursions into politics, rid elections of cartel funding and end impunity, which fuels violence. He predicted without such measures:
“This violence will continue to mature, continue to grow, taking increasingly more territories [and without anti-mafia policies] they will end up like Colombia, where people could not leave Bogotá” in past years because the countryside was too conflictive.
Narcobloqueos in Jalisco and Guanajuato states
Violence first erupted in suburban Guadalajara as the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) mobilized Aug. 8, carrying out nacrobloqueos – the commandeering of buses and vehicles and setting them alight on highways and thoroughfares to impede the movements of security officials.
The violence spread across western Guanajuato states - home to several auto plants, but disputed in recent years by cartels trying to control huachicol (gasoline and fuel products siphoned from Pemex pipelines and later fenced through service stations and informal fuelling stops). Thugs torched 25 Oxxo convenience stores in Guanajuato, according FEMSA, Oxxo’s owner, in a brief statement.
Why target Oxxo?
Owned by the biggest Coca-Cola bottler in the world, Oxxo operates more than 25,000 convenience stores across Mexico – dwarfing competitors such as 7-Eleven. The stores have become ubiquitous as they replace mom-and-pop stores common to Mexican neighbourhoods. But targeting Oxxo made little sense to most observers – other than being what Mexicans call mediatico, a target prone to garner media attention.
Writing in the newspaper El Universal, Javier Tejado Dondé raised the uncomfortable reality of extortion – which Oxxo, being part of a massive conglomerate, doesn’t pay. Mom-and-pop stores, however, are shaken down regularly by cartels and sometimes forced to double as points for drug-dealing. Tejado wrote:
“Oxxo is characterized by not paying any extortion. So, for the criminals, taking these stores out of operation means that others that others benefit from this transfer of customers.”
The arrival of Oxxo in many northern Mexican neighbourhoods is seen as a sign of reaching a certain socio-economic level. But by burning Oxxos, Tejado noted:
“Now it seems that (northerners) will have to find another method for referring to stability, since Oxxo has become a symbol of vulnerability and chaos. What will the state do?”
Mexico’s top general: violence didn’t target population
Defence Secretary Gen. Luis Cresencio Sandoval said Monday that the initial wave of violence broke out after soldiers were operating in an area north of Guadalajara where a pair of CJNG leaders identified as “Apa” and “RR” were holding a meeting. The pair eluded capture, according to AMLO – though a well-sourced columnist, Roberto Rock, wrote in El Universal, “This episode appears a perfect copy of the brief detention of Ovidio Guzmán.”
The cartel has a reputation for brutality and a history of hyper-violent responses when leaders are threatened. Analysts said the confusion of torching vehicles and convenience stores creates covers for escape. Sandoval voiced that theory, too – along with the idea of cartels are somehow “weakening (and) they want to feel still strong and generate situations of violence.” He also called the violence in Tijuana (see below) “acts of vandalism” and insisted, “They did not attack society,” rather, “A way of getting attention.”
Narcobloqueos
Security analyst Alejandro Hope noted that narcobloqueos are not new, but cause enormous chaos throughout Jalisco and Guanajuato states. The Monterrey area suffered similar mobilizations by criminal groups until the authorities formed antibloqueo groups in 2011, which used members of various police forces and tow trucks to unblock thoroughfares. He wrote in El Universal:
This week’s attacks are a demonstration of the authorities’ disorganization, not criminals’ enormous power. (After all, they’re attacking Oxxos, not military bases.)
Ciudad Juárez horror
Narco-violence consumed Ciudad Juárez on Aug. 11 after a riot broke out in the state prison involving rival criminal groups – the Sinaloa Cartel and Los Mexicles – and spread into the city as Los Mexicles targeted the population, according to Mexican authorities.
The violence left 11 dead, including four members of a radio station broadcasting live from a Little Caesar’s outlet, two women at an Oxxo store – an employee and an 18-year-old job seeker – a man in a truck, a man in the street and a boy shot dead in a Circle K store, according to an Los Angeles Times report.
The initial riot left two dead inside the prison. Los Mexicles have a long history in Ciudad Juárez of working as armed enforcers for La Linea and the Sinaloa Cartel at various times, while carrying out crimes like kidnapping, extortion and car thefts, according to profile in Reforma.
Molly Molloy, retired border specialist from the New Mexico State University library, has tracked Ciudad Juárez’s murder rate for more than a decade. Ciudad Juárez has registered 593 murders in 2022 – with 111 murders in July and “more than 50” so far in August. Though high, the rate still trails the more than 3,600 homicides committed in 2011, when Ciudad Juárez was murder capital of the world.
Tijuana torched; mayor tells cartel to target those who ‘owe’ them
Vehicles were burned Friday night in the border state of Baja California – attacks the mayor of Tijuana blamed on the CJNG. Vehicles were also torched in Ensenada, Tecate and Mexicali. Media reported 17 suspects arrested after the arsons. Six more suspects were detained Monday at a hotel in Culiacán – five from Baja California and one from Sinaloa – AMLO said at his morning press conference.
Tijuana Mayor Montserrat Caballero made national headlines the next day with a defiant press conference. The mayor struck a combative tone at first as she said, “Today we are saying to the organized crime groups that are committing these crimes, that Tijuana is going to remain open and take care of its citizens.” But then she pleaded with them – while revealing the powerlessness of public officials to stop their predatory behaviour:
“We also ask them to settle their debts with those who didn't pay what they owe, not with families and hard-working citizens.”
The comments landed with a thud. Social media lit up Saturday with some observers noting she made her plea to organized crime on an army base and flanked by soldiers. Others took it as a tacit admission of who called the shots in broad swaths of Mexico. Commentator Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez wrote in Reforma on Monday:
“Crime has become a regime that imposes its rules in all areas of social life. It holds back the economy, dominates politics, poisons the culture, frightens the press. All bend to its dictates.
“From the most modest establishment that hands over its [extortion] quota punctually, to the newspaper that asks criminals for instructions to know what they can publish. From the mayor of a border city, who trivializes extortion, to the president of the republic, who praises the beneficial effects of a criminal gang achieving territorial dominance.”
Interior Minister Adán Augusto López attributed the comments to “nerves,” saying Monday, Ssometimes one doesn’t explain what they mean to imply. I wouldn’t put too much importance in it.”
For her part, the mayor attributed the comments to “how we speak in the north” of Mexico.
Attacks continued Monday, however, with reports of vehicles being burned in Mexicali and Ensenada – though 300 soldiers and National Guard members had been sent to Baja California after the initial attacks.
Michoacán autodefensa abducts guardsmen to force leaders’ release
An autodefensa (supposed self-defence group) known as Pueblo Unido mobilized in Michaocán on Saturday, blocking the highway between Patzcuaro and Uruapan – hub of Mexico’s most productive and prosperous avocado growing region. Michoacán state officials announced 164 arrests and the seizures of more than 180 guns and 28 vehicles. (The Defence Secretariat later put the number at 167 arrests). Pueblo Unido – which formed under the pretence of protecting avocado growers from extortionists – is believed to be in conflict with the CJNG, which has made incursions into Michoacán from neighbouring Jalisco and is battling for territory in the state.
Pueblo Unido responded to the mass arrests by grabbing 24 National Guard members and attempting to negotiate to trade them for the release of their detained colleagues. The guard members were released unharmed – without any exchange occurring.
AMLO promotes his polls, even the country burns
AMLO never misses an opportunity to trumpet his own personal popularity and high polls numbers. On Friday, he invited functionaries to provide information at his morning press conference on 10 miners trapped in a rustic coal mine in Coahuila state (about 80 miles southwest of Eagle Pass, Texas) since Aug. 3 and the shocking narco-violence in Ciudad Juárez. Then, AMLO detoured into personal promotion, showing slides and speaking of his own approval rating, which, according to Morning Consult, has him No. 2 behind Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He trolled his opponents amid tragedy, too:
“Modi, from India, has always been in first place. And, last week, he was 10 points ahead of me and now it's only five or six, five points. I apologize, because it bothers them a lot.”
The Morning Consult poll put AMLO’s approval rating at 69%, according to AMLO’s spokesman.
Mexican presidents traditionally enjoy high approval while in office – with the exception of AMLO’s predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto, whose rating wallowed in the 20% range and even dipped into the teens. Oraculus, a poll of polls, puts AMLO’s approval rating at 60% with 35% disapproving.
At 70 months into his administration, AMLO lags where former presidents Ernesto Zedillo and Vicente Fox were at the same time in their sexenios (six-year terms), but slightly ahead of former president Felipe Calderón – who narrowly defeated AMLO in the 2006 election in a contest AMLO never conceded.
AMLO’s self-promotion followed more frivolity from the day before. As Ciudad Juárez exploded, Mexico’s Navy helicoptered in the mascot of AMLO’s hometown baseball team in Macuspana, Tabasco. The scene also came as AMLO promised another round of government cost-cutting – which he promotes as “Franciscan poverty” – and practices (supposed) austerity so severe that he often flies discount airlines, while eschewing military aircraft. (An exception to the austerity has always been baseball – a sport AMLO has an incurable passion for – on which he’s spent on stadiums and created a government program to promote it.)
‘Who is who in lies’: AMLO’s press conference segment blames the media, opponents for hyping narco-violence
AMLO’s press conference on Wednesday gives the floor to a segment known as “Who is who in lies this week,” in which a journalist-turned-partisan with a thin resumé tries to fact check the media, commentators and social media statements. The presenter, Liz Vilchis, often gets the facts wrong herself and as the segment drags on it dives more into criticizing coverage and offering spin rather than countering incorrect information with facts.
On Aug. 17, Vilchis struck the usual conspiratorial spin and criticized the coverage of Mexico’s raging narco-violence as sensationalism “with the aim of generating a perception of insecurity, instability, ungovernability, fear and misrule.”
Buscaglia, the global organized crime investigator, said of the government response:
“López Obrador answers with propaganda. He minimizes acts of violence by saying they’re disturbances. It’s a historic irresponsibility and will have grave consequences. These are acts of terrorism what is happening in Mexico.”
AMLO’s partisans also turned conspiratorial, spreading the idea that narcos and the opposition were operating in cahoots to “destroy” AMLO. Political opponents floated the ideas that the attacks were a false flag to distract facilitate AMLO’s plant to put the National Guard under Defence Secretariat command.
Writing in the newspaper El Financiero, journalists and columnist Raymundo Riva Palacio dismissed both versions of events, attributing the narco-violence to shifts in the underworld. He said:
“What happened in four states has to do with realignments and internal struggles between cartels, which are disputing territories in the deliberate absence of the federal government.”