The CowParade public art event will return to the capital in April next year for the first time since 2005.
CowParade is an international art event which consists of decorating streets with colorful fiberglass cows designed by artists. At the end of the exposition, the sculptures are auctioned off.
The project was founded in 1999 and has visited 79 cities. In 2005, Mexico City was the first Latin American city to participate. Over the past 20 years, more than 250 million people have seen the cows, and the sales have raised more than US $30 million.
CowParade will open on Paseo de la Reforma, and the cows will tour several Mexico City boroughs before being auctioned off at the Papalote Children’s Museum.
The call for proposals to decorate cows opened on October 17, and will remain open until December 16. All artists are invited to participate, and can register at the official website.
AMLO tells reporter that his newspaper won't accept that things are going well.
A day after residents of Culiacán, Sinaloa, were terrorized by a wave of cartel attacks, President López Obrador said on Friday that the government’s security strategy is working “very well.”
At his regular morning news conference, a reporter asked the president whether he would concede that his security strategy has failed in the wake of the violent incidents this week in Sinaloa, Michoacán and Guerrero, which left a combined death toll of 36.
“. . . You say that there are no longer massacres, that there are no longer murders but they keep happening, more in recent days than in previous governments. But you keep blaming governments that left a long time ago [although] you are responsible. Do you recognize that the strategy has failed?” the reporter asked.
“What newspaper are you from,” López Obrador barked back at the journalist, who replied that he wrote for Reforma, a Mexico City-based broadsheet that the president frequently accuses of being prensa fifi (snobby or elitist press).
“Of course,” the president remarked. “I understand. You have the right to ask me but it really catches my attention because that’s the point of view of our adversaries and the opposition press, such as Reforma.”
After the reporter suggested that the view that the security strategy has failed is not one of the conservative press but rather of ordinary citizens, López Obrador responded:
“We’re doing very well in our strategy because the causes of the violence are being attended to. We’re doing very well but it’s very difficult for Reforma to accept, to recognize that we’re doing well because Reforma is a newspaper of the opposition, a conservative newspaper.”
The president described the cartel violence in Culiacán that followed the arrest and release of a son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán as “regrettable” before adding that “in no way” does it show that the security strategy has failed.
“That’s what the conservatives want, they’re rubbing their hands together, they’re going crazy looking for us to fail but we’re not,” López Obrador added.
The president traveled today to Oaxaca, where he touched again on yesterday’s events in Culiacán, making the point that the decision to withdraw and abandon the arrest of Ovidio Guzmán marked a change in the country.
Describing the situation as “complicated,” he said the arrest triggered a reaction by criminal elements that put many people in danger. “The life of a human being is worth more than the arrest of a criminal . . . no to massacres, you cannot confront violence with violence.”
One of the trucks that was carrying suspected gangsters in Tepochica.
The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) will investigate a confrontation in Guerrero this week that left 14 suspected gangsters and one soldier dead.
The clash occurred on Tuesday in Tepochica, a community just outside the city of Iguala. A call to the 911 emergency number in the late afternoon alerted authorities to the presence of armed men in the community, triggering a deployment by soldiers. They were attacked upon their arrival.
According to the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena), the soldier died while acting as a “shooter” in a vehicle that led the army response. Military force was used in accordance with the law, Sedena said in a statement.
President López Obrador said on Wednesday that the slain soldier had fought on after being wounded and killed an unspecified number of gangsters before dying.
However, the president said the government didn’t know whether all of the army’s adversaries were killed during the gunfight or whether there had also been extrajudicial killings.
López Obrador said there would be an investigation to determine exactly what happened.
Accounts of the incident and photographic evidence have raised doubts among security experts and human rights groups that all 14 presumed criminals were killed during the battle.
Photos showed some of the slain men in the back of a pickup truck and two others in the back seat of a vehicle, one with a long gun lying across his body.
“You don’t need to be an expert to see that [from] the position of the bodies, it’s questionable that this was a gunfight,” Erubiel Tirado, a security and intelligence expert at the Ibero university in Mexico City, told the news agency Reuters.
“The fact there’s only one dead soldier is something that needs to be cleared up to establish there wasn’t excessive use of force. I think the National Human Rights Commission and the U.N. high commissioner should be part of this,” he said.
“It’s clear there was excessive use of force,” he added.
The Human Rights Commission said it would send a team of investigators to the scene and called on the government to carry out a prompt and exhaustive investigation.
“The intervention of the CNDH seeks to ensure that the truth is known about what happened . . .” the organization said in a statement, adding that if any wrongdoing on the part of the army is detected, those responsible must be held accountable.
In turn, Amnesty International said in a statement that Mexico should conduct a prompt, independent and impartial investigation “to determine whether the security forces made legal use of lethal force.”
Americas director Erika Guevara-Rosas said “if there is evidence of human rights violations, the authorities should try those suspected of responsibility in a fair trial and guarantee their rights to due process.”
The armed forces have been accused of committing a range of human rights abuses since former president Felipe Calderón launched the so-called war on drugs in late 2006.
Seven soldiers were arrested on suspicion of carrying out extrajudicial killings and three were charged with murder. However, all of the suspects had been released by 2016.
Many people believe that the army also played a role in the September 2014 disappearance of 43 teaching students in Iguala. One theory is that the students’ bodies were burned in the incinerators of a Guerrero army base.
The United Nations said last year that there were “strong indications” that federal security forces were responsible for the disappearance of 23 people in Tamaulipas.
Tuesday’s clash left the largest death toll of any incident in which the military has been involved since López Obrador took office last December.
The federal government’s security strategy is currently under intense scrutiny following a failed operation on Thursday to arrest a son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán in Culiacán, Sinaloa.
The brief detention of Ovidio Guzmán López triggered a wave of cartel attacks that terrorized residents of the northern city and left eight people dead.
Kids playing games organized by Nike at the family services agency supported by the Junior League.
Not long ago I was invited to the inauguration of a new playground at a DIF (family development) center in a low-income section of Guadalajara.
One of the organizers of the event was an expat named Lori Sumner, who explained to me that “DIF centers do amazing things for families. They provide food and medical care, hold classes and workshops, offer scholarships, run programs for children — well, they just plunge ahead and do whatever is needed in the neighborhood.
“This particular DIF serves 90 kids a day,” Sumner continued, “but the yard around it used to be just concrete with nothing for the kids to do. So we came up with the idea of constructing a playground here. Financing this proved a bit of a challenge, but in the end we were able to complete our project thanks to a little help from the Junior League.”
“And what is the Junior League?” I asked.
“Well, the president of the Guadalajara Junior League is standing right behind you, so I’ll let her answer your question,” replied Sumner, who was immediately off to resolve all of those problems which inevitably arise whenever you are trying to inaugurate anything.
DIF playground team. Second from left is Terrill Martínez.
This was how I met Terrill Martínez, a former high-school English teacher and author of a highly imaginative children’s books called ¡Chícharo!
“Our organization is part of the Association of Junior Leagues International,” Martínez told me, “which was started in New York City in 1901. Today it has 150,000 members spread around four different countries: U.S.A., U.K., Canada and Mexico. Each league is dedicated to helping women become leaders for positive change in their community.
“Here in Mexico our focus is on women and children who are living in poverty and we have six programs that work to address those needs. We have a chapter in Mexico City which has been around for 80 years, while our Guadalajara branch is only 35 years old.”
One of the organization’s oldest projects, Martínez told me, is called Mi Bebé y Yo (My baby and I), which gives packages of badly needed items, as well as breast-feeding information, to new mothers at several Guadalajara hospitals.
Another project goes by the name of Primera Impresión (First Impression): “We assist girls who have just graduated from college and are about to interview for jobs. We help them write their resumes and set up mock interviews to familiarize them with the process. We even provide clothing and a makeover for them, if they are in need of that.”
Other projects are Sábados Musicales (Musical Saturdays), a music program for children at the Sueños y Esperanzas orphanage in Guadalajara, and Hecho en un Día, (Done in a Day) by which the Junior League assists other organizations that want to carry out some sort of one-day-only effort.
Youngsters enjoying a meal thanks to the Junior League.
“For example,” said Martínez, “we’ve helped with some projects of Techo, a Latin-American organization a bit like Habitat for Humanity, which has constructed houses for over 102,400 families in 19 countries.”
Terrill Martínez also mentioned that the Junior League was operating a soup kitchen in a little community at the edge of town, but by then it was time for the official inauguration of the new playground at the DIF, which consisted of well-built swings, slides and monkey bars.
That ceremony, I have to say, was unlike any inauguration this writer has ever seen during his many years of living in countries like Italy, Jamaica, Korea, Spain, France, Saudi Arabia and, of course, Mexico.
Even though representatives of the DIF, the Junior League and the U.S. Foreign Service were all present (even the U.S. Consul General was there), not one speech was given and not one politician or administrator got up on a stage to take all the credit!
Instead, a young volunteer from Nike picked up the microphone and directly addressed the children, many of whom were already swinging high in the air and otherwise enjoying their new playground.
“Kids, we have all kinds of great things for you to do today. We have rings to toss, basketballs to throw, bats to swing, hoops to squeeze through and games we can all play together — let’s have fun!”
Teenager Natalie Martínez heads a student-volunteer group.
And fun they had. What a lot of happy kids and smiling moms! And there in the background taking it all in, was the U.S. Consul General for Guadalajara, Robin Matthewman. “This is a wonderful project,” she told me, “all done by volunteers. I am filled with pride.”
A few weeks later, I had an opportunity to visit the Junior League’s soup kitchen project in the indigenous pueblito of San Juan Ocotán, which is located at the far western edge of Greater Guadalajara.
“Well, well, this little community has been here for a long time,” I told my wife when we ran into the coat of arms of Spanish king Carlos III — dated 1779 — on the wall of the local church.
Inside the patio of the church grounds we found a group of women busily preparing yummy-looking tortas. One of them was Pilar Ortega, co-director of the soup kitchen.
“Once a month we come here to serve 150 meals,” Ortega told me. “We are partnering here with HP. They organize the soup kitchen on the second Thursday of each month and we handle it on the fourth. After the meal I give talks to those women who are interested, typically on subjects like violence, drug addiction, emotions, fears, abuse and dealing with the seasonal viruses that often attack the kids.”
Soon a line of local people appeared to receive their meal and when they had finished eating, Ortega went upstairs to give today’s talk while another volunteer organized games in the patio for the children. Meanwhile, yet another volunteer — this one originally from Lebanon — commented that, in her opinion, the talks were the most important part of the soup kitchen event.
[soliloquy id="92112"]
“The women of this community have expressed a real need for this kind of information,” Rita Chehabeddine told me. “They say the talks are very, very helpful.”
I was truly impressed by the dedication of these volunteers. “How did this organization get started?” I asked Terrill Martínez.
“It all began,” she told me, “when a woman named Mary Harriman visited a settlement house in the Lower East Side of Manhattan at the turn of the 20th century. She couldn’t believe what was happening to migrants in these places and she organized a group of friends to try to help them out.
“They called themselves the Junior League and soon there were Junior Leagues appearing all around the country. Today it’s hard to find any city in the U.S.A. that doesn’t have one. Many are small, but some of them have thousands of members. Each of them addresses problems specific to their own community.
“In one town, kids might be getting into trouble after school, so the Junior League will start a program to keep them busy. Somewhere else they might help local people build a museum. Back in the day, the league had a lot to do with getting women the vote in the U.S.A. The Junior League has been working to help out women and children for a long time and here in Guadalajara we continue that upbeat tradition born in New York City a century ago.”
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for more than 30 years and is the author of A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area and co-author of Outdoors in Western Mexico. More of his writing can be found on his website.
One of Mexico’s premier horror shows opened its doors to the public in Guadalajara on Thursday.
The Horror Land experience has haunted Guadalajara’s Casa Francia every October and November since 2013, consistently scaring the daylights out of terror fanatics looking to experience their favorite scary movies and TV shows in real life.
This year’s show features a section inspired by the film Annabelle, where the demonically possessed doll hides out to murder those unfortunate enough to cross her path.
There is also the tour through Briarcliff Manor, inspired by the popular television show American Horror Story: Asylum, whose diabolical sisters will do whatever it takes to harvest the souls of all who enter.
Only the bravest will dare to buy a ticket for the abandoned circus, where the legendarily terrifying clown Pennywise, of Stephen King’s It, puts on a heart-stopping show.
American Horror Story comes to Guadalajara.
The basic tour runs about 30 minutes, but the Asylum section can take 45 minutes or more, depending on how long the horrified guests take to solve the puzzles required to leave.
As a security measure, participants are never touched by the actors, except in one case. Key Horror is an extreme terror experience in which the actors can have contact with the participants and even throw fake blood on them.
If the fear becomes too real, however, participants can leave the tour at any moment by following the staff’s instructions.
The mansion also includes a snack bar and areas to snap frightening photos.
Built in 1910, Casa Francia is one of the few houses that has survived since the beginnings of Guadalajara’s Colonia Moderna neighborhood. In the 1990s it was used as a funeral home, and in 2012 it was the principal location for the horror film El Eco del Miedo (The Echo of Fear).
Reports of supernatural occurrences are nothing new for neighbors and visitors to the mansion, so enter at your own risk.
Federal security officials admitted on Friday that the operation to capture a son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán in Culiacán, Sinaloa, on Thursday was poorly planned and hastily executed.
National Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval told a press conference in the northern city that Federal Police officers, soldiers and National Guard members who participated in the operation to apprehend Ovidio Guzmán López “acted in a hasty manner” due to “their eagerness to obtain positive results.”
The arrest of the 28-year-old Sinaloa Cartel leader triggered a wave of attacks that terrorized residents of the Sinaloa capital on Thursday afternoon and left eight people dead.
The security forces released Guzmán López after they were outnumbered by armed criminals who quickly surrounded the house in which he had been detained.
Sandoval said that police, soldiers and guardsmen failed to anticipate the consequences that the arrest of the cartel leader would have.
“It doesn’t mean that [the operation] was improvised,” he said, explaining that an initial act of aggression toward the federal forces occurred as they were waiting for a search warrant to enter the house.
“They didn’t envisage that [the cartel response] could reach” such a level, said Sandoval, who also asserted that while Guzmán López was detained, he was never formally arrested.
“. . . It was a mistake made by personnel who were hasty in their actions, who were seeking . . . the safety of society, the safety of all of you . . .” the army chief said.
However, the violence that followed the operation threatened citizens across Culiacán.
Sandoval said that eight people were killed in gunfights and 16 others were wounded. A civilian, a member of the National Guard, a prison guard and five aggressors were killed, he said.
Among the wounded were seven soldiers, five guardsmen, two municipal police and one state police officer. The defense secretary said there were 14 separate acts of aggression against security forces and that blockades were set up by cartel hitmen at 19 different locations in Culiacán.
Armed gangsters stand watch outside an Oxxo store Thursday in Culiacán.
More than 50 prisoners escaped from a Culiacán penitentiary during the violent chaos that engulfed the city and 49 remained at large on Friday morning, Sinaloa Security Secretary Cristóbal Castañeda said.
A video on social media showed dozens of inmates running down the road outside the prison and commandeering private vehicles at gunpoint to make their escape.
At this morning’s security cabinet press conference, federal Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo – who said on Thursday night that Guzmán López was arrested during a routine patrol rather than a targeted operation – asserted that the release of the cartel leader was not evidence of a “pact with criminals” or a “failed state” but rather the result of a “failed operation.”
He also said that eight soldiers and one army officer were “held and later released by criminals.” Some media reports have suggested that the release of the military personnel was in exchange for setting Guzmán López free.
The release of the 28-year-old son of “El Chapo” shortly after he was arrested – and the Sinaloa Cartel’s takeover of Culiacán with an unprecedented show of strength – is a major embarrassment for the federal government, which has pledged to bring peace to Mexico but has instead seen homicide rates reach record levels.
Despite the bungled operation and ensuing violence, Durazo ruled out any possibility that he would resign, stating that he remained committed to achieving peace in Mexico.
At a press conference in Oaxaca this morning, President López Obrador said he supported the decision to release Guzmán López.
“I was in agreement [with the decision] . . . because we can’t have massacres . . . the capture of a criminal cannot be worth more than people’s lives,” he said.
However, security experts and others were highly critical of the decision and many people contended that the government simply folded when confronted with the overwhelming firepower of the Sinaloa Cartel.
“There is nothing admirable about this decision,” prominent security analyst Alejandro Hope wrote on Twitter. “By launching a badly planned operation that was then badly executed, the government laid itself open to being blackmailed.”
Hope also retweeted a post by Twitter user Jorge A. Castañeda Morales that read: “Durazo lied to the face of all Mexicans. He must resign.”
Morena party lawmaker Tatiana Clouthier, who served as López Obrador’s campaign manager during last year’s presidential election campaign, also criticized federal and Sinaloa security authorities for not having a well-thought-out plan to capture Guzmán López and failing to foresee the violent response from his cartel allies.
“I believe that the authorities should have had a complete strategy and they should have thought, visualized, that a complicated situation was going to be unleashed . . .” she said.
The government also came under fire for not providing details about the events in Culiacán until several hours after the violence started.
“First it was an operational disaster. Then it was a communications disaster. And finally it was a political disaster,” tweeted Carlos Bravo Regidor, a professor at CIDE, a Mexico City university.
It has been a particularly difficult week for Mexico’s security forces: before the violence in Culiacán, 13 state police officers were killed in a cartel ambush in Michoacán on Monday and a soldier was killed in a confrontation with suspected gangsters in Guerrero on Tuesday.
Mexico’s breeds of hairless dogs are the subject of an exhibition marking Day of the Dead festivities at Mexico City’s Museo de El Carmen.
The exhibition Xolos, compañeros de viaje (Xolos, Traveling Partners) displays 117 pre-Hispanic, artistic and artisanal pieces, as well as bones of extinct species, provided by over 20 institutions.
Visitors to the exhibition will see a panoramic presentation of the various breeds of hairless dogs endemic to Mexico that highlights their importance as part of the country’s cultural heritage.
“We Mexicans possess a special breed that is here despite all the problems that threatened its survival,” said Raúl Valadez Ursúa, an archaeozoologist at the National Autonomous University (UNAM).
He said the dogs have a troubled history, facing extermination policies during colonization and into the 19th century. He added that all breeds of hairless dogs in the Americas are endemic to Mexico.
Pieces on display at the Xolos exhibition in Mexico City.
The exhibition explains the domestication of the dogs, their dispersion through the Americas and the presence of at least three Mexican hairless breeds: Xoloitzcuintles, Tlalchichis and Itzcuintles; the latter two of which are now extinct.
Visitors are welcomed to the exhibit by Cipactli, a taxidermically preserved specimen of Xoloitzcuintle that was a model for artists and won many prizes during its lifetime. Cipactli gazes at the bones of what was most likely an Itzcuintle.
More commonly known as the “Dogs of Colima,” the extinct Tlalchichis were immortalized in the red clay pottery from the Comala phase (200-500 AD), much of which is on display in the exhibition.
Pieces unearthed at Mexico City’s Templo Mayor highlight the relevance of Xólotl, the Aztec god who was believed to accompany the dead on their journeys to Mictlán, the Aztec underworld.
A brief but fundamental display tells of the disappearance of these dogs until very recently. The extinct breeds are known to modernity only through codices and historical texts, such as Fray Bernardino de Sahagún’s General History of the Things of New Spain.
The Xoloitzcuintle regained popularity in the 20th century, primarily as a source of inspiration for artists such as Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Francisco Toledo.
Xolos, compañeros de viaje will be on display until April 2020, after which it will be moved to the Regional History Museum of Colima.
Hidden cameras have caught a jaguar and its cub eating a sea turtle in Nayarit’s Marismas Nacionales Biosphere Reserve.
The Natural Protected Areas Commission (Conanp) captured the event using a camera trap monitoring system.
The adult jaguar is seen dragging the turtle’s remains in order to hide them, then taking refuge in the mangrove trees.
Evidence of predatory behavior and feeding contributes valuable information to the conservation and protection of the jaguars, their prey and their habitat, Conanp said in a press release.
The footage was obtained thanks to the efforts of Francisco López Jiménez, a community monitoring volunteer and head of the Miguel Guardado Pérez turtle camp.
Jaguares se alimentan de una tortuga marina en Marismas Nacionales Nayarit
During one of his rounds, he noticed that one of the turtles that had come ashore to lay its eggs had not returned to the sea. After finding coyote and jaguar prints around the turtle’s nest he followed their trail and found the dead turtle, which had been dragged into tall grass about 50 meters away.
He notified Conanp, which sent personnel to the camp, confirmed the kill and set up camera traps. The turtle was gone in the morning, and the researchers had photographic evidence of the jaguars feeding.
Passengers at the Miguel Hidalgo International Airport in Guadalajara, Jalisco, are still dealing with an infestation of mosquitoes.
“There’s nothing to prevent them from reproducing,” one passenger told the newspaper Milenio.
But according to Aurora Adame, corporate affairs director of Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico, which manages the airport, there are no more mosquitoes than normal.
“The airport is located in an environmental area that is completely eroded and destroyed,” he said. “That has affected the growth of mosquitoes for many years. It’s not a recent issue for us to be affected . . .”
However, some passengers suggested the airport should warn travelers about the high numbers of mosquitoes so they can take precautions against them.
The airport operator said in July it had succeeded in reducing mosquito numbers by 95% in a battle that has been going on for years. It also said a study was under way to determine how to rid the airport of mosquitoes permanently. The results were expected this month.
In the north of Guadalajara, the bugs have also been causing cases of dengue fever around the University of Guadalajara center for art, architecture and design, according to student Gabriel de la Torre.
“Half of the school is sick,” they said. “I’ve seen lots of mosquitoes, and many of my classmates have missed class because of it. I know of four or five students who are sick.”
There have been 86 confirmed cases of dengue in the school, affecting 57 students, six teachers and 23 administrators.
Pharmacies have reported increases in the sales of paracetamol and insect repellent.
Jalisco has the second-highest number of cases of dengue in the country with 5,704 confirmed cases, and 13 confirmed deaths from the disease. Authorities are investigating another 48 deaths that could be related to dengue.
Burning vehicles block streets in Culiacán Thursday afternoon.
Security forces released a son of convicted drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán on Thursday after his arrest in Culiacán, Sinaloa, triggered a wave of cartel attacks that terrorized residents of the northern city.
Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo told the news agency Reuters late on Thursday that soldiers and members of the National Guard retreated from the Culiacán home where Ovidio Guzmán López was captured “without Guzmán, to try to avoid more violence in the area and preserve the lives of our personnel and recover calm in the city.”
Violence broke out in Culiacán at about 3:30pm and quickly spread as rumors swirled about the capture of one of “El Chapo” Guzmán’s sons.
There were gunfights and blockades, some of which were formed by setting trucks and other vehicles on fire, at several locations in Culiacán, generating what Durazo called “a situation of panic.”
The security secretary said last night that 30 members of the army and National Guard were attacked by armed civilians at a house in the Culiacán neighborhood of Tres Ríos on Wednesday afternoon while carrying out a routine patrol.
Smoke indicates hot spots during yesterday’s shootouts.
The security forces returned fire and “took control” of the house, where they found four people, including Guzmán López, a Sinaloa Cartel leader wanted in the United States on drug trafficking charges.
Durazo said several groups of armed criminals quickly surrounded the house, outnumbering security forces.
“Likewise, other groups carried out violent acts against citizens in several points of the city generating a situation of panic. With the aim of protecting the greater good . . . of Culiacán society, the officials of the security cabinet agreed to suspend the actions,” he said without clarifying whether Guzmán López remained in custody.
Durazo subsequently told Reuters that the 28-year-old had been released and a lawyer for the Guzmán family confirmed in an interview that Ovidio Guzmán was free.
Durazo’s assertion that Guzmán López, one of four children from El Chapo’s second marriage, was arrested during a routine operation contradicted other federal officials who told the newspaper Milenio that the detention came during a targeted operation.
In the hours following the arrest, Sinaloa Cartel gunmen took control of Culiacán in a terrifying show of strength.
Scores of videos posted to social media showed citizens running for cover or trying to hide amid bursts of gunfire. Photographs showed black plumes of smoke rising above the city.
One image showed two heavily armed men in the back of a truck with their weapons, including an M2 machine gun, at the ready. Another showed gangsters with military-grade weapons in a pickup truck just two blocks from the municipal palace in downtown Culiacán. Milenio said that the violence “exceeded any precedent” in the city.
In one photograph published online, two men, one of whom is wearing a camouflage shirt and a bullet-proof vest, are seen lying dead on the street in a pool of blood.
A video posted to Twitter showed families with young children lying on a road next to their cars as gunfire raged.
“Dad, can we get up now?” a young boy said to his father. “No, stay there on the ground,” the man responded with a trembling voice.
Other videos showed masked, heavily armed-men blocking streets and stopping traffic. Businesses closed across the city, public transit was suspended and residents locked themselves in their homes.
In the middle of the chaos, more than 50 prisoners escaped from the Culiacán penitentiary.
Video footage showed the prisoners, accompanied by armed men, stopping and then hijacking vehicles traveling on a street outside the jail. Four prisoners were later recaptured, state security secretary Cristóbal Castañeda said, but 49 remained at large on Friday morning.
Castañeda said two prison guards were killed during the prison break and that 21 other people were wounded in the wave of attacks across Culiacán. At least four soldiers and two state police officers are among the injured.
“It was a very difficult, intense and complicated afternoon . . .” said Sinaloa Governor Quirino Ordaz, whose government issued a statement urging residents to “keep calm.”
Speaking at his morning press conference on Friday, President López Obrador said that he supported the security cabinet decision to release Guzmán López.
“. . . The situation became very difficult and a lot of citizens, a lot of people were at risk,” he told reporters.
Culiacán under fire: locations of shootouts Thursday in the Sinaloa capital.
“I was in agreement [with the decision] . . . because we can’t have massacres . . . the capture of a criminal cannot be worth more than people’s lives,” López Obrador said.
“You can’t put out fire with fire, this is the difference of this [security] strategy with those . . . [of] previous governments, we don’t want deaths, we don’t want war, this is hard for many people to understand but the strategy that was being applied turned the country into a cemetery.”
