A Sinaloa-based army commander appears to have admitted that the military is incapable of controlling violence in the northern state, saying that the reestablishment of order will only come when rival criminal factions stop fighting each other.
At least 39 people were killed in state capital Culiacán and nearby municipalities between Sept. 9 and 16 as a long-running battle between the “Los Chapos” and “Los Mayos” factions of the Sinaloa Cartel escalated.
In the same period, the army and National Guard — both of which play a central role in the federal government’s security strategy — were involved in more than a dozen confrontations with armed men in Sinaloa, including one on Monday during which one soldier was killed.
The violence has left many Sinaloa residents afraid to leave their homes, and caused the suspension of classes at some schools and the cancellation of Independence Day celebrations.
At a press conference on Monday, the top army official in Sinaloa said he hoped that peace would be restored in the state “as soon as possible.”
However, that eventuality “doesn’t depend on us,” said Commander Francisco Jesús Leana Ojeda.
“It’s up to the opposing groups to stop confronting each other and to leave society in peace,” he said.
Pressed as to whether security in Sinaloa really depends on a truce between rival criminal groups, Leana responded:
“It depends on them, they’re the ones carrying out attacks and taking lives. We’re not doing that. On the contrary, we’re here to avoid confrontations and the loss of human lives.”
Despite the loss of more than three dozen lives in just eight days, and the abduction of more than 30 people in the same period, Leana asserted that the army has achieved “good results” in Sinaloa.
“We’re living through a confrontation between opposing groups, we’re constantly planning the contention of attacks between them, between factions and we’ve had good results,” said the army commander.
According to state and federal authorities, security forces arrested 27 alleged cartel members in Sinaloa between Sept. 9 and 16 and seized more than 100 firearms, some 25,000 rounds of ammunition and 57 vehicles, including 12 armored pickup trucks and a fake police car.
Leana said that more than 3,000 members of the army, National Guard and Mexican Air Force are currently deployed in Sinaloa.
The escalation in the conflict between “Los Chapitos,” a Sinaloa Cartel faction led by the sons of convicted drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, and “Los Mayos,” a faction loyal to Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García and his son Ismael “El Mayito Flaco” Zambada Sicairos, comes after the arrest of Zambada García in the United States on July 25.
El Mayo, a co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel along with Guzmán Loera, has accused Joaquín Guzmán López, one of “Los Chapitos”, of kidnapping him in Culiacán and forcing him onto a plane that delivered him, and Guzmán López, into the hands of U.S. law enforcement authorities.
Zambada is currently in custody in New York, while Guzmán López is behind bars in Chicago.
With reports from Reforma, Río Doce and Animal Político
