Drug Violence Tests Mexico President's 'Hugs Not Bullets' Strategy
By Yussel Gonzalez
09/05/22 AT
Police inspect an area where suspected gang members set a bus on fire in Mexico's western state of Jalisco
Escalating drug cartel-related violence, including indiscriminate attacks on civilians, has deepened concerns about whether Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's "hugs not bullets" security strategy is working.
Mounting scrutiny of Lopez Obrador's approach comes as his critics accuse him of trying to militarize the Latin American nation by putting the National Guard under army control.
A spate of violence in August in several cities, including Ciudad Juarez on the border with the United States, left 12 people dead -- including several civilians.
Such attacks "generate panic in the civilian population and confusion among the political authorities. The security authorities are paralyzed, without the capacity to react," security consultant David Saucedo told AFP.
Saucedo branded the violence "narcoterrorism" -- a term that Lopez Obrador's government has stopped short of using.
In Ciudad Juarez, gang members went on a killing spree in what Lopez Obrador described as retaliation following a prison riot involving two rival gangs.
In the eastern and central states of Jalisco and Guanajuato, gang violence left one suspected criminal dead and businesses and vehicles on fire following a failed attempt to capture two cartel bosses.
The government's response was not to "examine why it happened and to implement the sort of strategies that have been proven to reduce criminal involvement," said Michael Lettieri, co-founder of the Mexico Violence Resource Project at the University of California, San Diego.
Instead, it ordered the deployment of soldiers -- a response similar to those of previous governments that Lopez Obrador accuses of having exacerbated violence by militarizing the war on drugs.
While the recent attacks shocked the country, every day there are dozens of murders in Mexico and most do not draw much attention.
The country faces "two wars": high-profile attempts to capture gang leaders and violence affecting ordinary Mexicans that the government has failed to tackle, said Laura Atuesta, coordinator of the drug policy program at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching.
Criminals "keep killing people, breaking into houses and making people disappear," she said.
Lopez Obrador says his "hugs not bullets" strategy aims to tackle violent crime at its roots by fighting poverty and inequality with social programs, rather than with the army.
The new approach was "reducing violence," the president said last week in his annual state of the nation address, adding that federal crimes had dropped 29.3 percent since he took office in 2018.
Between January and July, murders fell 8.7 percent compared with the same period in 2021, to 18,093 victims, according to the government.
More than 340,000 people have been killed in a spiral of bloodshed since the government of then-president Felipe Calderon deployed the army to fight drug cartels in 2006.
Human rights group Amnesty International has urged Lopez Obrador to abandon his plan to give the military control of the National Guard.
The president created the new security force in 2019 with a civilian command to replace federal police accused of corruption and rights violations.
"Experience shows that today Mexico is more dangerous than 16 years ago when it was decided that the military should take to the streets," Amnesty said last month.
"There has been an increase in forced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, physical, psychological and even sexual torture," it added.
Lopez Obrador's plan has been approved by the lower house of Congress but seems unlikely to be passed in the upper chamber, so he has vowed to seek other legal options.
Even if the National Guard is put under military control, it will take time for the force to develop operational capabilities, according to experts.
Lopez Obrador is only managing, rather than solving, the security problem, "laying the groundwork for a future war" that will not happen before his term ends in 2024, Saucedo said.
Escalating drug cartel-related violence, including indiscriminate attacks on civilians, has deepened concerns about whether Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's "hugs not bullets" security strategy is working.
Mounting scrutiny of Lopez Obrador's approach comes as his critics accuse him of trying to militarize the Latin American nation by putting the National Guard under army control.
A spate of violence in August in several cities, including Ciudad Juarez on the border with the United States, left 12 people dead -- including several civilians.
Such attacks "generate panic in the civilian population and confusion among the political authorities. The security authorities are paralyzed, without the capacity to react," security consultant David Saucedo told AFP.
Saucedo branded the violence "narcoterrorism" -- a term that Lopez Obrador's government has stopped short of using.
In Ciudad Juarez, gang members went on a killing spree in what Lopez Obrador described as retaliation following a prison riot involving two rival gangs.
In the eastern and central states of Jalisco and Guanajuato, gang violence left one suspected criminal dead and businesses and vehicles on fire following a failed attempt to capture two cartel bosses.
The government's response was not to "examine why it happened and to implement the sort of strategies that have been proven to reduce criminal involvement," said Michael Lettieri, co-founder of the Mexico Violence Resource Project at the University of California, San Diego.
Instead, it ordered the deployment of soldiers -- a response similar to those of previous governments that Lopez Obrador accuses of having exacerbated violence by militarizing the war on drugs.
While the recent attacks shocked the country, every day there are dozens of murders in Mexico and most do not draw much attention.
The country faces "two wars": high-profile attempts to capture gang leaders and violence affecting ordinary Mexicans that the government has failed to tackle, said Laura Atuesta, coordinator of the drug policy program at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching.
Criminals "keep killing people, breaking into houses and making people disappear," she said.
Lopez Obrador says his "hugs not bullets" strategy aims to tackle violent crime at its roots by fighting poverty and inequality with social programs, rather than with the army.
The new approach was "reducing violence," the president said last week in his annual state of the nation address, adding that federal crimes had dropped 29.3 percent since he took office in 2018.
Between January and July, murders fell 8.7 percent compared with the same period in 2021, to 18,093 victims, according to the government.
More than 340,000 people have been killed in a spiral of bloodshed since the government of then-president Felipe Calderon deployed the army to fight drug cartels in 2006.
Human rights group Amnesty International has urged Lopez Obrador to abandon his plan to give the military control of the National Guard.
The president created the new security force in 2019 with a civilian command to replace federal police accused of corruption and rights violations.
"Experience shows that today Mexico is more dangerous than 16 years ago when it was decided that the military should take to the streets," Amnesty said last month.
"There has been an increase in forced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, physical, psychological and even sexual torture," it added.
Lopez Obrador's plan has been approved by the lower house of Congress but seems unlikely to be passed in the upper chamber, so he has vowed to seek other legal options.
Even if the National Guard is put under military control, it will take time for the force to develop operational capabilities, according to experts.
Lopez Obrador is only managing, rather than solving, the security problem, "laying the groundwork for a future war" that will not happen before his term ends in 2024, Saucedo said.
Soldiers, firefighters and forensic experts work at the site of an arson attack in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez'
Army Taking On Gangs In Colombia's Biggest Port
By Juan RESTREPO
09/05/22
A Colombian navy patrol in the waters around Buenaventura, where rival gangs have turned the major port city into a living nightmare for residents
Colombia's army put on a show of force at the weekend in a town whose population is at the mercy of two warring gangs.
The "Shottas" and "Spartanos" gangs have been fighting for months over control of Buenaventura's drug trafficking trade, and other illegal activities such as micro-trafficking, extortion and kidnappings.
But the army has tried to assert some state control by coming out in force in several neighborhoods in Colombia's main port city.
Buenaventura is where 40 percent of the country's international trade takes place and the departure point of most of the cocaine destined for the United States.
In recent years, it has become one of the most violent cities in the country, with 576 murders between 2017 and 2021, according to the Pares foundation, along with forced disappearances and kidnappings.
On August 30, the two gangs were involved in a shoot-out using automatic weapons that lasted several hours.
It was a "night of terror," said local media.
Surrounded by mangroves, Buenaventura is a city of between 350,000 and 500,000 people, with 90 percent claiming African descent.
The city extends along an avenue flanked by poor neighborhoods down to the port at the end of a lagoon.
Those are places where it is too unsafe to venture alone due to the kidnapping risk.
Shottas and Spartanos share control of these neighborhoods of modest brick homes, unfinished buildings surrounded by steel fences, wooden huts on stilts and metal shacks perched over water and garbage.
The gangs swept in and replaced the right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing guerrillas that used to reign here and were already self-financed by drug trafficking and terrorising the local population.
Formed from a schism in the La Local criminal group, these two gangs markedly stepped up their actions from the end of 2020 and their territory extends to the marshlands on the edge of town.
Buenaventura has since been a hive of shoot-outs, kidnappings and extortion.
Locals speak too of sinister so-called "slaughterhouse" homes, where the bodies of kidnap victims are dismembered before being disposed of in the laguna, far from prying eyes.
"The two groups made themselves with legal businesses, above all food: eggs, cheese, fruit... nothing got away from them. They were even prepared to fix prices on certain basic foods," Juan Manuel Torres, a researcher at the country's peace and reconciliation commission, told AFP.
"What we're living through now is a new urban war, one in which control of the neighborhoods is at play."
With new left-wing President Gustavo Petro due to visit Buenaventura on Tuesday to implement his "total peace" policy aimed at negotiating with, rather than crushing, criminal groups, police and the army patrolled the city's streets night and day.
They were most present in streets known for being conflict zones between the rival gangs, known as "invisible borders."
In one such neighborhood, Jean XXIII, shootings are a near-daily occurrence and terrified residents barricade themselves inside their homes once night falls.
The sudden appearance of soldiers has generated apprehension and curiosity.
Heads pop out of doorways and eyes peer from behind curtains, as heavily armed soldiers carefully make their way down roads and alleyways.
"The criminals could shoot at us at any time," warned lieutenant colonel Samuel Aguilar, commander of the 24th marine infantry battalion.
"The two gangs are at war here and they don't like seeing us interfering in their business."
Alongside the police, they are trying to prevent the gangs from asserting their authority on the streets.
"There have been many changes in Buenaventura in one year, and unfortunately not to the benefit of the community," added Aguilar.
By Juan RESTREPO
09/05/22
A Colombian navy patrol in the waters around Buenaventura, where rival gangs have turned the major port city into a living nightmare for residentsColombia's army put on a show of force at the weekend in a town whose population is at the mercy of two warring gangs.
The "Shottas" and "Spartanos" gangs have been fighting for months over control of Buenaventura's drug trafficking trade, and other illegal activities such as micro-trafficking, extortion and kidnappings.
But the army has tried to assert some state control by coming out in force in several neighborhoods in Colombia's main port city.
Buenaventura is where 40 percent of the country's international trade takes place and the departure point of most of the cocaine destined for the United States.
In recent years, it has become one of the most violent cities in the country, with 576 murders between 2017 and 2021, according to the Pares foundation, along with forced disappearances and kidnappings.
On August 30, the two gangs were involved in a shoot-out using automatic weapons that lasted several hours.
It was a "night of terror," said local media.
Surrounded by mangroves, Buenaventura is a city of between 350,000 and 500,000 people, with 90 percent claiming African descent.
The city extends along an avenue flanked by poor neighborhoods down to the port at the end of a lagoon.
Those are places where it is too unsafe to venture alone due to the kidnapping risk.
Shottas and Spartanos share control of these neighborhoods of modest brick homes, unfinished buildings surrounded by steel fences, wooden huts on stilts and metal shacks perched over water and garbage.
The gangs swept in and replaced the right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing guerrillas that used to reign here and were already self-financed by drug trafficking and terrorising the local population.
Formed from a schism in the La Local criminal group, these two gangs markedly stepped up their actions from the end of 2020 and their territory extends to the marshlands on the edge of town.
Buenaventura has since been a hive of shoot-outs, kidnappings and extortion.
Locals speak too of sinister so-called "slaughterhouse" homes, where the bodies of kidnap victims are dismembered before being disposed of in the laguna, far from prying eyes.
"The two groups made themselves with legal businesses, above all food: eggs, cheese, fruit... nothing got away from them. They were even prepared to fix prices on certain basic foods," Juan Manuel Torres, a researcher at the country's peace and reconciliation commission, told AFP.
"What we're living through now is a new urban war, one in which control of the neighborhoods is at play."
With new left-wing President Gustavo Petro due to visit Buenaventura on Tuesday to implement his "total peace" policy aimed at negotiating with, rather than crushing, criminal groups, police and the army patrolled the city's streets night and day.
They were most present in streets known for being conflict zones between the rival gangs, known as "invisible borders."
In one such neighborhood, Jean XXIII, shootings are a near-daily occurrence and terrified residents barricade themselves inside their homes once night falls.
The sudden appearance of soldiers has generated apprehension and curiosity.
Heads pop out of doorways and eyes peer from behind curtains, as heavily armed soldiers carefully make their way down roads and alleyways.
"The criminals could shoot at us at any time," warned lieutenant colonel Samuel Aguilar, commander of the 24th marine infantry battalion.
"The two gangs are at war here and they don't like seeing us interfering in their business."
Alongside the police, they are trying to prevent the gangs from asserting their authority on the streets.
"There have been many changes in Buenaventura in one year, and unfortunately not to the benefit of the community," added Aguilar.
Buenaventura is Colombia's biggest port from where most of its cocaine leaves for the United States
Colombian police are securing the streets of Buenaventura where residents are often too afraid to step outside at night
Colombia's army is making a show of force in poor Buenaventura neighborhoods faced with an escalating turf war between drug gangs
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