The deployment of the National Guard to 200 regions across the country is one of several new year’s resolutions outlined by Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo in a series of Twitter posts.
The federal government is beginning 2020 with “things to do and challenges,” Durazo wrote in the first of five New Year’s Day posts.
“We will continue combating corruption in the security forces and will not give any concession to uniformed crime that protects organized crime,” he said.
The security secretary asserted in his second post that the government’s welfare programs will continue to create opportunities this year, particularly for the nation’s youth and poorest people.
“We will continue moving forward to eliminate all activities and conditions that are generators of violence,” Durazo wrote in reference to the government’s so-called abrazos no balazos (hugs not bullets) security strategy that favors addressing the root causes of crime over combating it with force.
In his third post, the secretary said the government will deploy the National Guard to 50 new regions in 2020 to bring the total number of regions covered by the new security force to 200.
Durazo said that 21,170 new guardsmen will be recruited in order to bolster the National Guard’s presence in the entire country.
“The organizational and administrative maturing” of the force will continue to be a priority for the government, he added.
The National Guard, which has drawn most of its approximately 90,000 members from the Federal Police and armed forces, was formally inaugurated on June 30, 2019 and deployed to 150 regions the next day.
However, it failed to make any significant progress in reducing violence in the second half of last year, which is almost certain to go down as the most murderous in recent history.
In his fourth Twitter post, Durazo said the government will continue moving ahead with a “reorganization” process in the nation’s prisons in order to combat the criminal activity that is organized within them.
“We will especially work on the implementation of the new national policing model and coordination for the strengthening of state and municipal police,” he added.
The security secretary wrote in his fifth and final January 1 Twitter post that the government expects that “with these measures, and the will, unity and participation of everyone, 2020 will be a year of very good results for the recovery of peace” in Mexico.
Police at the scene of one of several shootings this week in Tamaulipas.
Instead of celebration, the new year was rung in with widespread violence in two border towns in Tamaulipas as gunfights between members of the Northeast Cartel and security forces left at least 17 dead and many others wounded.
National Defense Secretariat (Sedena) troops were attacked by armed civilians in Miguel Alemán on Tuesday but at least six of the attackers were shot and killed by soldiers.
Soldiers also dismantled a criminal cell’s compound and seized guns, magazines and around 1,000 cartridges.
Nuevo Laredo saw at least five violent confrontations between criminal groups and security forces on New Year’s Eve. One of the attacks left three gunmen dead and a police officer wounded. Two gunmen were shot dead in another clash.
Armed men later attacked a hotel in which state police officers were staying, and another confrontation outside a hospital left two people dead and a civilian seriously wounded.
The violence continued into the new year, as clashes between cartel members and police forces created chaos in the city on Wednesday. At least four criminal suspects were killed and two officers were wounded in the confrontations.
Tamaulipas Governor Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca responded on Wednesday evening to what he called the “cowardly attacks by the Northeast Cartel.”
“The [government of Tamaulipas] will not let its guard down and will keep acting with strength against the criminals,” he said in a tweet.
He went on to recognize “the good state police who have acted with strength and bravery facing the criminals in #NuevoLaredo.”
Two riots at the Cieneguillas prison in Zacatecas this week have left 17 inmates dead.
At least 60 guards and staff were being investigated after a first clash left 16 dead and five wounded on New Year’s Eve when a second riot occurred Thursday morning, killing another inmate.
Authorities believe that the inmates may have had help from prison staff in smuggling weapons into the facility during family visits on Tuesday.
“The state Attorney General’s Office began an investigation into the 60 guards and the staff working that day with the objective of determining their probable collusion in allowing the entry of weapons,” said Zacatecas Public Security Secretary Ismael Camberos Hernández.
Initial media reports stated that the riot broke out due to a dispute during a friendly soccer game between inmates, but Camberos denied the rumors, stating that the fight was planned by prisoners affiliated with criminal organizations.
At a press conference on Wednesday he said there are inmates affiliated with the Sinaloa, Gulf, Zetas and Talibanes cartels.
He said that preliminary investigations indicate that the violence was begun by members of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Prison staff were alerted to the fight by the sounds of alarms and gunshots during a special New Year’s Eve meal for inmates. It took three hours to get the situation under control.
Four firearms found in the prison after the fight led officials to believe that they were smuggled in on the day of the violence. Prison staff had also confiscated cellular telephones, knives, hammers and drugs on Sunday.
Camberos said the wounded inmates were in stable condition and that others have since been relocated in order to avoid further confrontations.
However, that did not prevent renewed violence on Tuesday when another inmate was killed.
The World Bank will provide more than US $100 million in financing for two water projects in the Valley of México.
A project to replenish the depleted water resources of the Valley of México aquifer will receive US $54 million, while another to modernize the infrastructure of the Cutzamala system will get US $60 million.
The funds in both cases will be managed by the Valley of México Basin Organization, a dependency of the National Water Commission (Conagua).
The federal government submitted a proposal to the World Bank for the first project, highlighting that the Valley of México aquifer is deteriorating due to the high demand for water in the Mexico City metropolitan area.
The aquifer supplies water to a permanent population of almost nine million people as well as a floating population estimated to be approximately five million.
The government proposed the use of treated wastewater to refill the aquifer via existing infrastructure such as the Cerro de la Estrella treatment plant, located in the Mexico City borough of Iztapalapa.
A World Bank document seen by the newspaper Milenio says there are plans to rehabilitate wells and build an advanced water treatment system, among other measures. The development of two pilot projects to test ways in which the Valley of México aquifer can be replenished are under consideration.
The bank noted that the depletion of water in the aquifer due to excessive pumping has caused fracturing that has led to contaminants such as nitrates, chromates, iron and magnesium entering the water table and wells in different parts of the Valley of México.
The second project will seek to improve the energy efficiency and resilience of the massive Cutzamala water system as well as strengthen its information, monitoring and control systems. It also intends to improve the safety and reliability of the system and make changes that will prepare it to confront challenges posed by climate change.
The World Bank’s commitment to provide resources for the project comes in response to a funding application submitted by the National Water Commission (Conagua) for US $119.7 million.
Cartel gangsters control a street corner in Culiacán in October.
The number of homicides in Sinaloa is on the decline: they were down 17% last year compared to 2018 and by 58% compared to 2010, the state public security secretary said on Tuesday.
Cristóbal Castañeda Camarillo told a press conference that preliminary statistics show there were 934 intentional homicide cases in Sinaloa in 2019 whereas in the first year of the decade there were 2,250.
The security secretary said the efforts of all three levels of government contributed to the “historic decrease” in homicide numbers over the past decade.
Greater coordination between state and municipal police forces in Sinaloa and the armed forces helped to achieve a reduction not only in homicides but in a range of other crimes, Castañeda said.
Vehicle theft declined 55% to 4,222 cases in 2019 compared to 9,401 cases in 2010, the secretary said before highlighting reductions in the incidence of several crimes between 2018 and last year.
Vehicle theft declined 28%, business robberies fell 7% to 986 cases and kidnappings decreased by 25% to nine cases.
Cartel gunmen took effective control of Culiacán for several hours in an unprecedented show of strength, which led the federal government to take the decision to release Ovidio Guzmán to avoid a bloodbath in the city.
The decision was heavily criticized in Mexico and abroad. A United States Secretary of State official said the events in Culiacán were “very concerning” for the U.S. government.
Many critics said the government had effectively given in to organized crime by releasing Ovidio Guzmán in the face of the threat posed by the Sinaloa Cartel.
Investigations have led authorities to believe that Villegas could be an active element in the La Línea gang and that through his influence and staff he procured protection for members of the organization. He is also under investigation by federal authorities in the United States.
The FGR said that joint investigations by various federal security forces led to the district court judge at the Altiplano federal prison in México state to issue arrest warrants for Villegas and two others for their involvement in the massacre and other gang-related crimes.
The three were put into preventative custody for the duration of their trial, which is expected to take four months.
The FGR added that for the purpose of secrecy, the legal status of the other four detainees also in preventative custody will be released at another time.
Despite the arrests, the LeBarón family continues to dispute the government’s claim that the attack was related to the conflict between the La Línea and Los Salazar criminal organizations.
The holiday season is time for young people in towns across Veracruz to dress up as senior citizens and take to the streets to celebrate a tradition called El Viejo (The Old Man), which is believed to date back to 1875.
In the state capital, the youngsters parade through the streets to the sound of drums and trumpets to ask for money from drivers and pedestrians they pass along the way.
In the state’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec region, young men are the ones who don the costumes of both men and women to dance in the streets for a few coins.
In Xalapa, young people are joined by dozens of others from the nearby town of Teocelo to dance around in the dress of their grandparents. They return home around 11:00pm and use the money they earned dancing to buy soft drinks or alcoholic beverages.
In some towns, such as those in the Sierra Altotonga region of the state, the tradition is called Güegües (Old Men in the Náhuatl language), and the youngsters hit the streets at midnight on Christmas Eve and again on Three Kings Day on January 6. They also dance and take along the mandinga, a man dressed as a woman.
Tradición de “El viejo”, vigente entre la población conurbada Veracruz-Boca del Río-Medellín
As opposed to the El Viejo celebrations elsewhere in the state, these kids don’t ask for coins. They give candy to children and adults that come to admire them and receive traditional punch and sweet fritters called buñuelos from women in the neighborhood.
Each municipality and village in the state has its own way of celebrating this nearly 150-year-old tradition, using trumpets, drums, violins or simply whatever they find along the way that will make noise to say farewell to the old year and ring in the new.
Gaytán was run over and stabbed to death by her ex-husband.
A Jalisco woman went to the state’s Center for Women’s Justice 16 times to ask for protection from her abusive husband before he stabbed her to death in front of the governor’s mansion last April.
The state’s Human Rights Commission (CEDHJ) revealed in a report that Vanesa Gaytán Ochoa, 25, first sought help on September 21, 2017. Her last attempt for protection was on April 13, 2019; she was killed 12 days later.
On April 25, Gaytán was going to work when she realized her ex-husband, Irwin Emmanuel Ramírez Barajas, was following her in a vehicle despite three orders that he refrain from making contact with her. When she phoned relatives and her lawyer to relate what was happening, they advised her to go to Casa Jalisco for aid.
Gaytán took a taxi to the mansion but Ramírez caught up with her there and struck her and a government official with his vehicle before stabbing her to death. He was then shot by a security detail.
Ramírez died later in hospital.
An investigation by the rights commission found deficiencies in the way Gaytán’s case was handled by the Center for Women’s Justice. Although she took witnesses with her each time to corroborate the threat against her, the department passed its responsibilities on to other public institutions “despite being aware of the risk” and isolation in which she lived.
“The efforts to prove the degree of participation of the killer were null and void and [the CEDHJ] didn’t even try to locate or inhibit him from carrying out illegal activities,” said the commission in a petition to state authorities.
“Without a doubt this constituted a cause for the aggressions against the victim not only to go unpunished, but also led to [Ramírez] taking her life.”
The commission stated that the three protection orders issued for Gaytán were inadequate, ineffective and imprecise, and did not take into account the previous incidents of gender violence she had suffered at the hands of her husband.
“From the evidence in the case file, it is not observed that the staff of the public prosecutor’s office followed a clear and serious line of investigation aimed at verifying the crime and sanctioning the man responsible,” said the CEDHJ.
The commission requested that state authorities begin inquiries into 12 public officials for negligence.
It also requested support for Gaytán’s mother and son so they could obtain their own housing, receive psychological help and rebuild their lives.
Lastly, the CEDHJ requested that the Jalisco legislature make the reforms necessary to standardize the definition of orders and protective measures in the state.
Former ambassador Mercado, left, and Bolivia's interim president Áñez.
Mexico’s ambassador to Bolivia returned home on Tuesday after that country’s interim government expelled her and two Spanish diplomats for allegedly colluding to help a former government official get out of the country.
The return of ambassador María Teresa Mercado came after Bolivia’s interim president, Jeanine Áñez, announced on Monday that Mercado and two Spanish diplomats had 72 hours to leave the country, declaring them “persona non grata.”
“This group of representatives of the governments of Mexico and Spain have gravely damaged the sovereignty and dignity of the people and the government,” she said.
The Secretariat of Foreign Affairs (SRE) responded in a statement that Mercado – who entered Mexico’s diplomatic service in 1982 and has received awards from other nations – has always complied with Mexico’s foreign policy principles and international law.
It said it considered Bolivia’s decision to be of “a political nature.”
The official who was allegedly going to be helped to escape the country was the interior minister in the government of ousted president Evo Morales, and one of 10 officials who sought and received asylum at the Mexican Embassy in La Paz.
The decision to expel Mercado was the latest development in a dispute between the two countries that began when Mexico granted asylum to Morales after he resigned in November amid accusations of electoral fraud.
The interim Bolivian government said Mexico violated asylum conventions by allowing Morales, who is now in Argentina, to make political declarations while in Mexico.
Providing asylum at the embassy to 10 officials from Morales’ leftist administration also angered officials of the center-right interim government.
It has issued arrests for three of the officials, including former interior minister Juan Ramón Quintana, accusing them of sedition and electoral fraud. It has refused to give them safe passage passes that would enable them to leave Bolivia.
Officials in Áñez’s interim government said the Mexican government has broken diplomatic norms by allowing the asylum seekers in its embassy to engage in political activity and travel in diplomatic vehicles.
Bolivia’s Murillo: ‘We love the Mexican people a lot’ but AMLO not so much.
Mexico in turn accused Bolivia last week of harassing and intimidating its diplomatic staff and described a deployment of more than 50 police and soldiers outside its embassy as “out of proportion” with the provision of security it requested in light of the unrest in the country following the disputed October 20 election.
The government also said that its embassy has been constantly filmed, drones have been flown over it and its diplomatic vehicles have been searched. Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said last Thursday that Mexico would file a complaint against Bolivia in the International Court of Justice against the “siege” on its embassy.
Spain unexpectedly became involved in the tiff last Friday when two of the country’s diplomatic vehicles – driven by masked security officers – tried to enter Mexico’s embassy in La Paz to collect the charge d’affaires. Bolivia accused Spanish embassy staff of trying to extract Quintana and other officials who face charges.
“. . . The hostile conduct [of Mexico and Spain] and attempting to enter the Mexican Embassy in Bolivia in a surreptitious and clandestine way are acts that we cannot allow to happen . . .” Áñez said when announcing the expulsion of the three diplomats.
In response, the Spanish government said it “categorically rejects any insinuation of presumed willingness to interfere in Bolivia’s internal political affairs.”
The Spanish charge d’affaires “was purely making a courtesy visit and vehemently denies there was any aim to facilitate the exit of people holed up inside the building,” the government said.
However, it didn’t explain why the drivers of its diplomatic vehicles were masked and refused to identify themselves to Bolivian police. In retaliation for the expulsion of its diplomats, the Spanish government said Monday it had declared three Bolivian diplomats persona non grata and that they too must leave the country within 72 hours.
Mexico, however, didn’t take any immediate steps to expel Bolivian diplomats, and Interior secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero said the government has no intention of breaking diplomatic ties with Bolivia.
“The embassy of our country in Bolivia continues, we will continue to work inside the embassy, there will be people in charge of embassy business . . .” she told a press conference.
Similarly, Bolivian Foreign Minister Karen Longaric said the interim government wasn’t severing ties with Mexico or Spain but rather wanted the two countries to send new diplomats to replace those who “disrespected the sovereignty of Bolivia.”
Interim interior minister Arturo Murillo told the newspaper El Universal that “we love the Mexican people a lot but reject the hostile attitude of President López Obrador.”
He also said the only reason Bolivian security forces were outside the Mexican Embassy was because there have been threats to set it on fire. Crowds of angry protesters have recently gathered outside the diplomatic mission to demand that Mexico hand over Quintana and the other wanted officials to Bolivian authorities.
“All of Bolivia’s actions have been peaceful,” Murillo said before accusing Morales of having links to drug trafficking and terrorism. The government would seek his extradition from Argentina, he added.
Murillo also accused López Obrador of having a close relationship with the family of convicted drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, citing the government’s decision to release his son Ovidio Guzmán after he was captured in Culiacán, Sinaloa, in October as evidence of his claim.
Despite the antagonism towards the Mexican president, the interior minister said the Bolivian government wants to strengthen the relationship with Mexico.
“It’s a brother country, all we ask for is respect for our people and to be treated as an equal.”
For his part, López Obrador – who characterized the ousting of Morales as a coup – has called on the Bolivian government to respect the right to asylum.
I keep thinking about a conversation at a get-together I attended about a year ago. The person who was talking, a likable, educated college professor, was saying that he didn’t understand why it was necessary to make a special category for “femicide” separate from regular “homicide.”
“Why don’t we call it ‘machocide,’ then, when men are killed?” he wanted to know. “Murder is murder, no matter who the victim is; what’s the use of distinguishing?” He was enjoying the argument in that affable and confident way that men do when they don’t have actual skin in the game.
He wasn’t being nasty about it, but I was irritated. We women are weary of these arguments, but tire of not quite being able to put our finger on fantastic counter-arguments when the topic is so viscerally scary and real for us. Too few of us joined debate club as we should have during our formative years, preferring to direct much of our attention to being liked by boys rather than competing with them on “their turf.” I wish someone had told us we’d still get laid throughout our lives anyway. Oh, the time I wasted!
And here we are today, not quite as good as we’d like to be at arguing what we know to be true, feeling like we’re losing a rigged game over and over again. We simply know the difference between femicide and “regular” homicide because it’s something we can feel deep in our guts and as obviously as splinters in our feet.
Part of our difficulty is the nature of the “rules” of debate. First rule of the game: you can’t take anything personally. Well, with that we’ve already lost. What’s more personal than women being so much more easily killed, and for much less, than men?
Here’s what we know: men are, for the most part, physically stronger than us and when it comes down to it, can physically subjugate us if they decide to do so. Even if they’re not, weapons are fairly easy to get. (Though there’s no data for Mexico, in the U.S. one of the highest risk factors for a woman being killed is the mere presence of a gun in the home where she lives.)
Women are most likely to be killed by a current or former intimate partner — 40% of femicides are committed by them, though that number is believed to be a low estimate. How’s that for sleeping with the enemy? (For men, it’s 5% and of that a majority of those are reported as self-defense.)
It’s no secret that almost no crime in Mexico will be punished, and we have few hopesregarding the importance given to femicides by the justice system. Whoever kills and abuses women is likely to remain free to do so again, and again, and again.
Back to our “discussion,” with the knowledge that it’s only a discussion for the person who doesn’t have any emotions about it. To the other side, it’s a fight for recognition of a grim reality that won’t cease if it’s not acknowledged and taken seriously: the most urgent kind of convincing.
The thing that I knew, of course, is that femicides are indeed different; they’re not simply “regular murder.” There’s a special quality to them, often involving sexual violence.
While all murders, I suppose, can be explained as a fundamental lack of respect for (that particular) human life, there seems to be an extra sneer and shrug reserved for women, especially if they’re deemed to have behaved “badly.”
Ciudad Juárez was famous for a while in the 1990s and early 2000s for the copious numbers of disappeared and murdered women and a justice system that famously would not take them seriously. “She probably just went off somewhere with her boyfriend,” they’d say. Ecatepec has been a more recent ground zero, garnering much attention after the arrests of the “monsters of Ecatepec.”
I live in Veracruz, currently the leading state in Mexico for femicides. My blood turns cold when I think of my daughter. My blood turns cold when I think of myself. How many people are walking around us, in our own communities, with total contempt for the female population? The statistics, the papers, the protests. This must be the way black people feel driving through the Deep South, Trump signs and confederate flags streaming by.
I find it hard to believe that well-meaning men are truly oblivious to the institutional sexism around us, and especially to the fact that it’s woven into the very fabric of our society and culture. And if we can’t get half the population to treat this as the emergency it is, where does that leave us?
I hope that it’s simply privilege that blinds them, and not indifference.
Sarah DeVries writes from her home in Xalapa, Veracruz.
