A Mexican state suffers bloody fallout of cartel rivalry
MARÍA VERZA,
Associated Press
July 25, 2021
Updated: July 25, 2021 11:25 p.m.
Relatives cry outside a house where two young men were gunned down in Fresnillo, Zacatecas state, Mexico,Tuesday, July 13, 2021. Fresnillo has the highest perception of insecurity in Mexico: more than 96% of its population lives in fear, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography.Marco Ugarte/AP
VALPARAÍSO, Mexico (AP) — When they heard gunfire in the valley, residents locked their doors and cowered inside their homes. Some 200 armed men had just looted a gas station, according to a witness, and the shooting would continue for hours as an equal number from an opposing group confronted them.
The authorities didn’t arrive until the next day. When they did, they found 18 bodies in San Juan Capistrano, a small community in Valparaíso, Zacatecas. The north-central Mexican state holds strategic importance for drugs being shipped to the United States. Mexico’s two strongest cartels — Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation — are locked in a battle for control.
One month after the June 24 killings, there have been no arrests. The military has sent reinforcements, but killings continue across Zacatecas: a doctor here, a police officer there, a family hacked to pieces, eight killed at a party, two girls shot along with their parents.
In a country that has suffered more than a decade of violence at the hands of powerful drug cartels, the situation in Zacatecas, as well as violence-plagued states like Michoacán and Tamaulipas, shows that neither the head-on drug war launched by former President Felipe Calderón in 2006, nor the softer “hugs not bullets” approach of current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador have managed to break Mexico’s cycle of violence.
More:
https://www.chron.com/news/article/A-Mexican-state-suffers-bloody-fallout-of-cartel-16339174.php
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For anyone who remembers what happened when George W Bush and Felipe Calderón came up with their peachy solution to drug traffic across the border, this will sound totally familiar:
10 Years of the Mérida Initiative: Violence and Corruption
MERIDA INITIATIVE
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26 DEC 2018 BY ANNA GRACE
EN
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The Mérida Initiative celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. Yet since it began providing funding for security in Mexico, problems to do with violence and institutionalized corruption have worsened, suggesting flaws in both the approach and implementation of the Initiative.
The origins of the Mérida Initiative, a bilateral security cooperation agreement between Mexico and the United States, hark back to 2007 when former president Felipe Calderón appealed to the administration of President George W. Bush for assistance in tackling drugs and arms trafficking.
Since signing the agreement, the Mexican government has received nearly $2.9 billion in assistance from the United States. This assistance has supported the purchase of military equipment; training for judiciary personnel and improvement of courtroom infrastructure; military training along Mexico’s southern border; and the implementation of crime prevention programs.
Critics state that the Initiative focuses too heavily on the use of military forces to tackle organized crime. US aid to the program supported former President Felipe Calderón’s war on drugs, which led to a spike in homicide rates across the country that continue to rise today.
. . .
Firstly, the initiative has continuously supported violent and aggressive tactics for fighting organized crime.
Fighting fire with fire has led to an escalation in the number of deaths in Mexico since the initiative began. Kingpins have fallen, yet major transnational criminal organizations remain at large.
“Declaring a war on drugs seems logical from the US perspective, but not from the Mexican,” Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, associate professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government, told Insight Crime.
More:
https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/merida-initiative-failings-violence-corruption/
