Car bombs. Massacres. A cartel turf war. Mexico’s new president confronts a wave of violence
MEXICO CITY — Car bombs. Massacres. The slaying of a Roman Catholic priest.
A cartel war that has engulfed a major city. A mayor of another large city beheaded after he dared to call for peace.
Six weeks after taking office, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is contending with a nationwide wave of violence, and is facing increasingly urgent questions about what she plans to do about it.
As a candidate, Sheinbaum vowed to continue the strategy of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who expanded the military’s reach but sought to avoid direct confrontations with cartels, and insisted that the best path was to address the social conditions that allow violence to flourish.
A scientist by training, Sheinbaum also pledged to replicate at the national level the security policies she put into action as mayor of Mexico City, where she oversaw a dramatic drop in violent crime, including a 50% plunge in homicides. The strategy is built on professionalizing law enforcement and implementing the sorts of data-driven and community policing models used in many U.S. cities.
“We already did it,” she vowed on the campaign trail. “Of course we will continue.”
The front-runner in Mexico’s presidential election brought down crime as Mexico City mayor. Can Claudia Sheinbaum save Mexico from rampant violence?
Extreme violence has vexed every leader of Mexico since 2006, when then-President Felipe Calderon sent soldiers into the streets to do battle with cartels. Homicides began soaring. Today, much of Mexico is contested by warring criminal groups that operate with near impunity and are often aligned with political leaders.
Sheinbaum’s challenge at the national level, where cartels are more embedded than in Mexico City, has been abundantly clear since she was sworn in Oct. 1. Last month, the country saw an average of 74 homicides a day, up from 69 a day in October 2023. . Every day seems to bring fresh headlines of another massacre.
On Saturday, 10 people were killed and 13 wounded when a gunman opened fire at a bar in Queretaro state.
The next day, a similar attack at a bar in Mexico state killed five and wounded seven.
Two journalists have been slain in recent weeks, as well as a beloved Indigenous priest. A prominent feminist activist disappeared with her partner after reporting for years that she had been threatened with violence.
In Guanajuato state, the explosion of two car bombs highlighted the escalation of cartel warfare, with some criminal groups now arming themselves with grenade launchers and drones rigged with explosives.
In Guerrero, a series of brazen violent acts emphasized the chaotic nature of the state’s criminal topography, where a dense network of gangs competes for the right to sell drugs and extort money from business owners.
In the mountains of the state, a family of 17 simply vanished last month. The remains of several of them were discovered this week. In the beach town of Acapulco, a family of five, including a child, was shot to death inside a home.
And then there was the killing of Alejandro Arcos Catalán, the newly sworn-in mayor of the city of Chilpancingo. Political violence is common in Mexico, with dozens of candidates for office killed across the country during this year’s election season alone. But the slaying of Arcos, who had vowed to pacify the region, was particularly grisly. A week after taking office, his body was discovered inside a pickup truck. His severed head was propped up outside.
More than 140 people have been killed in the last month in Culiacán as two factions of the Sinaloa compete to fill a power vacuum.
Mexico often sees a surge of violence during elections and afterward, when newly elected leaders are taking power. That is in part because so many local governments are linked to organized crime.
Sheinbaum, who has been questioned about the violence repeatedly at her daily news conferences, has vowed to stop it, saying that her administration will be focused on reducing killings and extortion, specifically.
Eschewing the approach of multiple leaders before her, who formed new police or military forces to confront criminals, her strategy appears more focused on improving crime investigations. She recently announced the creation of a national intelligence center and says her administration will use statistics to identify high-impact perpetrators — and work with local authorities to prosecute them.
It remains to be seen how she will use the nation’s armed forces, including the National Guard, a 130,000-strong force that López Obradror created in 2019 and later put under the control of the military.
Last month, members of the military killed six migrants in southern Chiapas state whom they apparently mistook for gang members. Sheinbaum said that “a situation like this cannot happen again” and opened an investigation. Later that month, three civilians were killed in confrontations between the military and gangs.
Her administration recently deployed hundreds of troops to Sinaloa, in northern Mexico, amid a war between rival factions of the state’s namesake cartel.
One group is loyal to Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the 76-year-old cartel co-founder who was recently captured in the United States. The other faction pledges allegiance to the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Zambada’s ex-partner, who is serving a life term in the U.S.
Hundreds of people have been killed in Sinaloa state in recent months. This week, the state’s livestock association announced that it was canceling its annual expo in Culíacan — a major cultural event for the city — after its president was killed and a series of cartel messages appeared threatening state Gov. Rubén Rocha Moya with death.
When asked about the violence there, Sheinbaum said her government had a plan.
“We have a security strategy that will work,” she said. “What there will not be is a war against drugs.”
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