Mexicans are wondering why the drug cartels have burst and what they are seeking after days of massive drug cartel killings and burning in four states last week.
Eleven people were slain in the assaults, including a small kid and four radio station workers who were shot at random on Thursday in Ciudad Juarez, a border city across from El Paso, Texas.
In the northern state of Guanajuato, more than 20 convenience shops belonging to a well-known national brand had been burned down two days earlier.
In the adjacent state of Jalisco, automobiles and buses were seized and set ablaze. Additionally, on Friday, two dozen automobiles were taken over and set ablaze in areas near the California border.
Due to the violence, the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana gave its staff the order “to shelter in place until further notice” this past weekend.
To allay people’ anxieties, the federal government sent in soldiers and National Guard members, but the violent outbursts sparked concerns about President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s policy of entrusting the military with security rather than civilian police forces.
The authorities disputed claims that the shooting and arson assaults were acts of terrorism, although some people said so right afterwards.
Adán Augusto López, secretary of the interior, remarked, “You don’t have to inflate the facts; these are not terrorist actions.”
But it’s unclear what the objective was.
Alejandro Hope, a security specialist from Mexico, believes that the shooters were given instructions to create disruption. “Create confusion, uncertainty, and dread by firing at everything that moves. Something like that inspires fear.”
But Hope clarified: “Terrorism suggests a political objective. I’m not sure what the political objective is in this situation.”
López Obrador said there was “no huge issue” with security on Monday, implying that the assaults were a part of a political plot against him by opponents whom he refers to as “conservatives.”
I’m not sure whether there was a link, a shadowy force, or if this was staged, he said.
What I do know is that the crooked conservatives who oppose us support the false information.
Later, Luis Cresencio Sandoval, the defence secretary, said that the cartels had retaliated because they were vulnerable.
They create violent situations to transmit the idea that they are still powerful via publicity, he added, because they still want to feel strong.
Montserrat Caballero, the mayor of Tijuana, adopted an entirely different tone when she made a remarkable public plea to the drug gangs on Friday to cease attacking defenceless residents.
In a video, Caballero said, “Today we are declaring to the organised criminal organisations that are conducting these atrocities that Tijuana is going to stay open and care for its residents.
“And we also request that they settle their debts with those who did not pay what they owe rather than with families and law-abiding individuals,” the statement said.
After an unusually quiet weekend of postponed doctor’s appointments and shuttered eateries, the streets of downtown Tijuana were bustling on Monday.
At the San Ysidro border crossing, which links Tijuana and San Diego, people had to wait more than three hours to enter the United States on Monday morning.
The presence of increased security was not apparent in the city’s centre.
The owner of a clothes souvenir shop in Tijuana, Omar Garca, said that tourism dropped down during the weekend.
Although the high volume of customers on Monday gave him hope, he warned that the violence may have an adverse economic impact on his company.
They are sporadic blows, according to Garca, 34, who has been a souvenir vendor at the border crossing since he was a little child. “Tourism is everything to us. They won’t come if they are afraid.”
The choice to target people was deliberate, according to José Andrés Sumano Rodrguez, a professor and security expert at the Northern Border College in Matamoros, a community near the Texas border.
The cartels “have discovered that pressure on the side of inciting fear and carrying out assaults on citizens offers them excellent results,” he claimed.
When compared to directly confronting the armed forces, which they would almost always lose, doing this is often considerably more successful.
According to security expert David Saucedo, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel was responsible for the carnage in the states of Guanajuato and Baja California and that the acts were “narcoterrorism.”
Since last year, when troops at roadside outposts stood by and watched as gangs fought for control of the western state of Michoacan with bomb-dropping drones, IEDs, and land mines, Saucedo said that Mexico’s drug strategy had changed.
The alteration, according to Saucedo, could have enraged the cartels.
López Obrador previously said he was not interested in pursuing drug lord arrest, but Mexico has increased its efforts in this area. Rafael Caro Quintero, a wanted drug kingpin wanted for the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, was apprehended by Mexican marines in July after years on the run.
Additionally, meth laboratories and the synthetic painkiller fentanyl have been far more often found in Mexico in recent months.
“The approach used to combat drug cartels has changed. Recently, Andrés Manuel (López Obrador) has been under heavy fire for his “hugs, not guns” campaign, “said Saucedo.
I believe that he is altering his mind and agreeing to apprehend prominent drug traffickers as a result of pressure from Joe Biden.
According to reports, the military stumbling finding a meeting with a leader of the Jalisco cartel, which the Department of Justice deems to be “one of the five most dangerous transnational criminal organisations in the world,” is what ignited the unrest in Jalisco and Guanajuato last week.
Nemesio Oseguera, or “El Mencho,” the cartel’s head, is one of the people who Mexican and American officials are most interested in finding.
Defense Secretary Sandoval said that the troops weren’t aware of it and were only attempting to stop a cartel shipment.
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel’s narcoterrorism, according to Saucedo, is a response to the president’s shift in approach.
“The Jalisco cartel will retaliate with acts of narcoterrorism in the areas it governs as part of its enormous empire if the Mexican president continues with this approach of catching high-ranking members of the Jalisco cartel.”
There hasn’t been a change in approach, according to Sandoval.
He clarified, “It’s not that we’re searching for the leader or that operations are focused on certain levels of the organisation.
To be able to provide security, Sandoval added, “We have to know where to deploy that force, where to use it, the number of personnel we have to send to reinforce, the precise sites, and know where we have to act.”
Despite the fact that the National Guard already outnumbers state authorities in 19 of Mexico’s 32 states, he insisted that the government was not acting quickly enough.
It is a component of a plan that has already been laid out, and we will implement it as necessary.
Such terrorist actions have occurred previously. In an effort to overthrow a rival group that controlled Reynosa, a branch of the Gulf cartel invaded the border city of Reynosa in June of last year and murdered 14 individuals they labelled as “innocent residents.”
An alternative president, according to Ana Vanessa Cardenas, coordinator of the international relations department at Anahuac Mayab University in Merida, would have forced the resignation of half the security cabinet, consulted with foreign specialists, and begun developing a new security policy.
However, she does not anticipate any change from López Obrador, whom she views as being in denial.
The last rung, according to Cardenas, “we’ve seen a total militarization of security and of the country.” Where do we go if, after reaching the highest level of security, there is a rise in crime, murder, and violence?
Authorities in Mexico stated in May that they had apprehended a suspected CJNG commander. Francisco Javier Rodriguez Hernandez, also known as “El Seorón,” “XL,” or “Frank,” was captured by navy agents during an operation in Mazatlan, a popular tourist destination in the northwest state of Sinaloa.
More than 340,000 people have died as a result of cartel-related violence in Mexico since the government started a contentious anti-drug operation with federal troops in 2006, according to official figures.
López Obrador said in April that Mexico had disbanded a special force that had been trained by American authorities to combat drug cartels because it had been compromised by criminals.