As much as the figures are manipulated, the growth of violence in the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is impossible to hide. Data on deliberate killings were released on Tuesday, with the government reporting a 16% decline from what was described as “an all-time high.” This measurement is tricky because it responds to a propaganda design, not a methodological one, to deceive the population. The “historical maximum” was in July 2018, the month of the presidential election, where 3,074 intentional homicides were recorded, compared to 2,582 last January.
But drawing a comparison between indicators that are not measurable smacks of scam. The comparison can be made using two criteria, with respect to the previous month and with the same month of the previous year. Under either of the two, intentional homicides grew. In December 2022 there were 2,529, an increase of 53, and in January of last year there were 2,426, 156 less than the last figure. July 2018 was the most violent month in the country’s history, in terms of intentional homicides, but the next three with the highest number of crimes of this type were July and July 2019 (3,06 and 2,981, respectively). and May 2020 (three thousand 41).
Although there is a downward trend, the first four years of the López Obrador government show that the strategy undertaken did not work. In that period, 140,102 intentional homicides were registered, compared to 88,394 in the first four years of the government of Enrique Peña Nieto and 68,433 in the same period of the administration of Felipe Calderón. How is it explained? Because of the passive doctrine of hugs, not bullets, except when it is in self-defense, and that social programs to tear young people out of criminal arms remained a mere good purpose.
But there is another way of interpreting the mediocre results that will lead López Obrador to hand over the presidential sash totally bloody, and with the legacy of having governed the most violent six-year term in the country’s history (he is 17,000 intentional homicides away from exceeding the total number of crimes of this nature in the six years of Peña Nieto), which is the way they are seeing it in Washington.
Last week at the Capitol there was a very negative hearing for Mexico in the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Bob Menéndez, a close friend of President Joe Biden, and an enemy of President López Obrador. Although it was about fentanyl in the world, data and statements emerged that should worry the National Palace, due to the way in which, DEA administrator Ann Milgram said, the cartels have expanded during her government: the Pacific/Sinaloa, It operated in 19 states and now it does so in 32; the Jalisco Nueva Generación did it in 23 and now it is in the 32 entities.
The revealing dialogue at the hearing went like this:
Milgram: Mexico worked in the past, from 2012 to 2015, to take down one of the most violent cartels, Los Zetas, and they were effective in dismantling it. We want Mexico to do the same in this case (the fight against fentanyl trafficking) and make it their main operational priority..
Menendez: But that’s not happening.
Milgram said that virtually all of the fentanyl entering the United States comes from those two cartels and enters through California and Arizona.
Menendez: Is it possible to deal with this problem without Mexico as a partner? Isn’t it impossible to fight it without a productive relationship with Mexico? However, there are obstacles to cooperation with Mexico, such as the growing politicization of the Attorney General’s Office, which has shown little appetite to prosecute fentanyl-related cases. Collusion between drug cartels and Mexican authorities is a constant challenge. The Mexican authorities do not seem very willing to acknowledge that the vast majority of the fentanyl that reaches us is produced in clandestine laboratories in Mexico. So, what are we doing with the López Obrador government to change this reality?
Milgram: We believe that Mexico must do more to stop the damage that we are seeing.. The cartels are completely dominating and controlling the fentanyl supply chain and are operating from Mexico.
Todd Robinson, Under Secretary of State for Drug Affairs, said Mexico has expressed interest in doing more, within the framework of the Bicentennial Understanding, the framework agreement on security between the two countries.
Robinson: We asked Mexico to put more resources into this effort. For Mexico it is a domestic matter; for us it is international and national security.
Menendez: I have to be honest with you, I don’t see it. I don’t see the willingness, I don’t see the urgency, I don’t see the commitment, nor the actions that would indicate that Mexico is a good partner. If we can’t get them to act, there must be other considerations. I think we work with our Mexican friends with child gloves. I don’t know how many more lives have to be lost for Mexico to get involved. If it were the other way around, they would be on us all the time. President López Obrador would be above us all the time.
Signs of frustration and anger are evident in Washington, as is dissatisfaction with security cooperation. The description of the cartels in the fentanyl trade -which has replaced all other drugs as the most profitable illegal product- helps to understand the increase in intentional homicides, due to the war between the two large organizations for control of the territories and the laboratories to produce them. This spiral of violence, which produces murders and intentional homicides at unbearable levels, despite the increase in military operations and the deployment of federal forces in the country like never before, gives meaning, with an ominous horizon, to Menéndez’s words.
rrivapalacio@ejecentral.com.mx
twitter: @rivapa