It is difficult to type the name of a Mexican municipality on the Internet and not have news entries mention recent violence: kidnappings, murders, missing persons, armed attacks, dismembered bodies, narco-messages, neighbors leaving their homes because of gunfire… It is the reality of a country about to reach a sad anniversary, 20 years of unleashed violence, initially linked to drug trafficking, a paradigm that has long been overcome. Today, violence in Mexico responds to a multitude of reasons and situations, always rooted in the ease with which weapons are obtained on the streets.
None of the last three governments has found a solution to the violence; none has known how to channel the situation. The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which ends in 15 days, blames the government of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), who is responsible, in its opinion, for stirring up the hornet’s nest, a metaphor where the hornet’s nest is the criminal status quo and Calderón, an unconscious person. The outgoing administration points out that Calderón wanted to settle with cannon fire a problem that, at the beginning of his government, was not so serious. At least in terms of homicidal violence: 2007 ended with 8,867 murders, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi).
The middle government, led by Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), barely appears on López Obrador’s list of villains, but the truth is that the great escalation of homicidal violence occurred in his last two years, when the number of murders exceeded 30,000, something that had never happened before, at least since records began. The three governments have placed in the hands of the Armed Forces, if not the solution, at least the containment of violence. But two decades later, it is difficult to point to significant progress. Unless stabilizing murders above 30,000 and preventing them from continuing to grow, is considered progress.
That is the situation now. If the last four months of 2024 behave as the first eight have, the year will end with more than 30,000 murders for the eighth consecutive year, a scandalous figure that, however, does not seem to generate reflection at the highest level. Over the years, fires of violence in one region or another have led to the temporary deployment of soldiers, sailors or, now, national guards. The military contains the fire, but the country remains the same wasteland as before they arrived, waiting for the next spark, the next badly extinguished cigarette end.
Right now, the fire is raging in Sinaloa. The war unleashed between the two main factions of the Sinaloa Cartel has the population in fear, particularly in Culiacán, the state capital. On Sunday alone, 14 people were killed in the region, including five men, whose bodies were found tied up, wearing hats, next to a water park in southern Culiacán. The capital of Sinaloa left one of the scenes of Sunday, Independence Day, one of the most important holidays of the year. The governor, Rubén Rocha, who had cancelled the celebrations days before, gave the cry of independence from an empty plaza.
But there are more fires, each one as complex as the last, dependent on criminal actors accustomed to thriving in the magma of impunity and corruption. The case of the Tierra Caliente in Michoacan and surrounding regions is paradigmatic. From Coahuayana to Buenavista, from Tepalcatepec to Apatzingán, the residents have not known calm for more than 10 years. The milking of the productive industries of the region by crime and the battles between the different local mafias, and between the mafias and groups that present themselves as self-defense groups, have turned the area into a temperate hell, always waiting for the next battle.
Last week, one of Buenavista’s best-known lemon growers, José Luis Aguiñaga, was murdered on his ranch, allegedly at the hands of one of the old regional mafias, Los Viagras, accused last year of murdering Hipólito Mora, one of the historic leaders of the Michoacán self-defense forces, which emerged 10 years ago. Aguiñaga’s murder provoked a reaction from citrus growers in the area, who have announced a work stoppage as a protest measure.
Crime is on the rise and if it does not become a permanent scandal it is precisely because of its permanence. Violence is not surprising and something very serious must happen for it to capture the attention of society for a more or less long period of time. With what is happening in Sinaloa, few remember the drama experienced by several regions on the border of Chiapas and Guatemala, subjected to the vicissitudes of organized crime, in a fight to the death for routes to traffic migrants, drugs and weapons. It has not even been ten days since the elected mayor of the most important municipality in the area, Frontera Comalapa, disappeared. His desperate son yesterday asked the authorities in a video to “not stop looking for him.”
This text would never end if the review were state by state, but there are problems in all of them, or there have been recently. The electoral campaign of the first half of last year left a trail of blood in Guerrero. In Taxco alone, where the authorities recently arrested more than a dozen police officers for corruption, 16 victims of attacks were recorded, the municipality that recorded the most situations of this type in the country. The second was Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero, with 12. But if it is not the campaign, it is another reason; crime, economy and politics inhabit the same universe and, often, out of interest or obligation, they speak the same language.
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