Former Morelos governor Graco Ramírez was among the officials Blanco accused of working with cartels.
Morelos Governor Cuauhtémoc Blanco has accused some 50 past and present politicians and officials, including his predecessor, of belonging to a narco-political network in the small central Mexico state.
Two weeks after a photograph surfaced in which he appears with three alleged narcos, Blanco went to the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) on Monday to denounce a “dirty war” against him and accuse numerous municipal, state and federal politicians of being complicit with organized crime.
Among those he pointed his finger at were former governor Graco Ramírez, ex-Morelos police chief Alberto Capella, former deputy security minister Francisco Viruete and current federal Senator Ángel García Yáñez. Capella and Viruete served in Ramírez’s 2012-18 government.
According to the newspaper Milenio, which obtained copies of documents, photos and other evidence Blanco presented to support his accusations, the governor accused the politicians and officials of having links to criminal groups including the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the Gurreros Unidos, Comando Tlahuica and Los Rojos.
Alleged leaders of the first three of those organizations appeared in the photo with the current Morelos governor, a former soccer star who represented the national team on over 100 occasions.
In early January, the newspaper El Sol de México found and published this three year old photo of Cuauhtémoc Blanco with three alleged cartel leaders.
Audio evidence in the possession of the Morelos Attorney General’s Office suggests Ramírez and Capella had links to former Los Rojos leader Santiago Mazari Hernández, who was arrested in 2019 and sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment on organized crime charges in 2020.
Another alleged member of the narco-political network denounced by Blanco is Esther Yadira Huitrón Vázquez, presumed leader in Morelos of the Guerreros Unidos, whose members allegedly abducted and killed the 43 students who disappeared in Guerrero in 2014.
Known as La Jefa (The Boss), Huitrón is believed to be the partner of Senator García Yáñez.
Blanco reiterated on Monday that he has nothing to hide and doesn’t make deals with criminals.
He said earlier this month that he didn’t know the identity of the alleged narcos with whom he appeared in the photo published by El Sol de México on January 4. The governor said he appears in thousands of photos and couldn’t be expected to ask every person who they are and what they did for a living.
Capella, who also worked as police chief in Tijuana and was Quintana Roo security minister until late 2020, has denied he was complicit with any crime groups and called on Blanco to resign.
In a Twitter post on Monday, he asserted that Morelos – which recorded almost 1,200 homicides last year – is currently mired in a multi-faceted crisis and that the “ineptitude, cowardice, corruption and ignorance” of Blanco is its main cause.
“In light of the evidence of his dialogue with alleged criminals Cuauhtémoc Blanco must resign!!!” Capella wrote.
When Rodrigo Orozco found out that tarantula poachers often let hundreds of them die while trying to sell a dozen he decided to do something about it.
In 2002, the government of Mexico authorized a project aimed at saving the Mexican tarantula from the damage inflicted on the species by poachers. Rodrigo Orozco, a Mexican who initiated that project and ended up making it his life’s work, said that illegal trafficking of tarantulas has been “radically reduced” over the last 20 years.
“I’m not saying it’s all due to my project, because others have taken up the cause over the years, but the change is dramatic,” Orozco said. “In 2002, trafficking tarantulas was widespread, and you could find illegal Mexican tarantulas in [the Mexican retail chain] Liverpool and even in India. You could buy them in big-name department stores! Today, you are very unlikely to find an illegal Mexican tarantula in the market anywhere. It would be very rare.”
This change has come about, according to Orozco, because today the United States and Canadian markets are saturated with tarantulas raised in captivity, provided by his and five or six other organizations in Mexico.
Another key factor in this change, Orozco explained, is an increasing awareness among tarantula aficionados:
“People are going to our Tarántulas de México website, where they discover hard facts about the difficulty of raising tarantulas, as well as solid reasons why tarantulas should not be kept as pets,” he said. “Our website is in Spanish and English, and right now, it’s the most-read page on the internet for information on tarantulas!”
A Mexican red-knee tarantula from the central Pacific coast. Harmless, their docility made them so popular that they’re now considered “near threatened.”
I asked Orozco what had inspired him to start a project like this 20 years ago.
“I used to live in parts of Mexico where there was a lot of jungle. So I got to know and love the creatures of the jungle, including, of course, spiders and tarantulas. And I noticed that everywhere I went, I could find tarantulas for sale in markets and pet stores, and I imagined they were all coming from some kind of tarantula farms,” he said. “But I couldn’t figure out how those farms were able to produce so many mature tarantulas because these creatures grow very, very slowly. A female only reaches sexual maturity after 10 years, and it would take 20 years for her babies to reach the size I was seeing in all those shops. So I wondered just where all the tarantulas were coming from.”
Orozco decided to put his question to the man in charge of the local office of the federal Environment Ministry (Semarnat), asking him where he might find one of those tarantula farms.
“What?” the official replied.” There’s no such thing as a tarantula farm.”
“Then where do all those tarantulas come from?” Orozco asked.
“What tarantulas are you talking about?” the Semarnat man asked. “Where did you see them?”
Orozco’s day job is running a small drywall construction business.
“Everywhere!” Orozco said. “All kinds of huge tarantulas in every market.”
“Oh, those!” the representative answered. “Todas son ilegales [they’re all illegal]. They were taken from the wild.”
Orozco, at the time a young man who had walked in from off the street, then told the official in charge of protecting wildlife, “Can’t you see this is an ecological disaster? If you take one tarantula out of the wild, it’s going to take 20 to 40 years before you’ll ever find another tarantula there because they are very slow-growing. The damage would be irreparable.”
He walked out of that office totally disheartened.
“That’s when I decided I would begin to seriously study tarantulas,” he told me, “their diet, their mating behavior, everything. I would learn how to start my own tarantula farm, and then I would flood the market with them so nobody would take them from the wild anymore.”
“But guess what?” he said. “There was no information on tarantulas anywhere in Mexico.”
“The fact that [Orozco] doesn’t get any financial support from his government is just staggering,” fellow tarantula expert Rick West says.
He went to Guadalajara, where there was nothing in the libraries. Then he went to Mexico City, where all he could find was one thesis in the National Autonomous University library; it had only a little information on tarantula reproduction.
“So I started talking to and writing to biologists, and when they heard my plan, they shut the door in my face,” Orozco said. “Nobody wanted to listen to me.”
Orozco’s luck changed when he managed to contact Canadian Rick West, whom he refers to as “the pope of the world of tarantulas.”
West liked Orozco’s idea of flooding the market with tarantulas raised in captivity and urged him to attend an upcoming meeting of the American Tarantula Society in Carlsbad, New Mexico.
“So I went to the USA just for this meeting, and everybody kind of looked at me as if they were thinking, ‘What is this Mexican doing here?’ Well, people were milling about when suddenly the crowd started whispering to one another. They were all excited because the famous Rick West had just arrived. Then West walked in and stood there before that crowd, and the first thing he said was ‘Rodrigo, come on over here with me!’ And suddenly, I was turned into ‘Rick West’s Mexican friend!’”
At this symposium, West introduced Orozco to Stan Schultz, author of The Tarantula Keeper’s Guide, which Orozco said is the bible for raising tarantulas and still the best book on the subject.
A former schoolhouse in Pinar de la Venta is now home to 6,000 tarantulas, as well as emperor scorpions, vinegaroons and tailless whip scorpions.
Orozco returned from Carlsbad filled with enthusiasm and registered his project as the first legal UMA (Wildlife Management Unit) in Mexico dedicated to tarantulas.
“Once I was registered,” he said, “I started to receive all the illegal tarantulas that the Mexican government was seizing at airports and such, and it was these confiscated tarantulas that I bred, and soon I had 5,000 young ones growing in my parents’ house.”
Today, Orozco’s tarantula sanctuary is located in the hills of Pinar de la Venta, just outside Guadalajara. From here, he ships legal, certified tarantulas all over the world and also receives visitors, who typically arrive feeling somewhat twitchy, only to leave utterly charmed both by Orozco and by the big and hairy but oh-so-gentle arachnids they are able to hold in their hand for a few precious moments.
It is just my personal opinion, but it seems to me that between 2002 and 2022, one man with an idea — one man with intent and persistence — saved a species.
All that time, including right now, he operated in the red, and in all that time, neither his government nor any organization nor any Mexican millionaire was willing to lend a hand. Not even the tarantulas know why they are still walking about safe and happy, but I know — and now, dear reader, so do you.
The tarantula management unit is open to visitors on weekdays, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Just ask Google Maps to take you to Tarantulas de Mexico, Pinar de la Venta. Driving time is about 30 minutes from downtown Guadalajara.
Biologist Eduardo Delgadillo looks after the 12,000 crickets and “too many cockroaches to count” that feed 6,000 tarantulas.
• For more information, contact Rodrigo Orozco at 333 968 7805.
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, since 1985. His most recent book is Outdoors in Western Mexico, Volume Three. More of his writing can be found on his blog.
From left: tarantula experts Rodrigo Orozco, Rick West and Stuart Longhorn.
No matter your age, holding a fully grown tarantula in your hands is an unforgettable experience.
Juan Manuel Salazar cuts his birthday cake. He got his cumpleaños wish to visit the Tarantula Sanctuary, a 14-hour drive from his home in the state of México.
A male Mexican dwarf redleg tarantula spotted while roaming the Primavera Forest. This species was first described in 2016.
The Swedish furniture and home goods retailer plans to open its newest store in Mexico in six months.
Ikea has confirmed its plan to open a store in Puebla this year.
The Swedish multinational, famous for its affordable ready-to-assemble furniture and other home goods, said its second location in Mexico will open within six months. It already has a store in Mexico City.
The enormous box store, planned for the Vía San Ángel commercial center of the Puebla capital, will cover more than 11,000 square meters and include a restaurant with seating for 380 customers.
“The pandemic has caused logistical problems for many businesses in the world, and we have seen effects at the local and global level. That, along with a very positive response from Mexican consumers, has led to higher demand than we foresaw,” the company wrote.
Ikea’s first store in Mexico opened in April 2021 and has been a success despite pandemic restrictions. Mexico was the second Latin American country to host the chain, after the Dominican Republic.
In 2020, the company said that its 10-year plan for Mexico included opening stores not only in Puebla but also Monterrey, Guadalajara and Querétaro.
Nahua residents of Tecoltemi, in the municipality of Ixtacamaxtitlán, challenged two mining concessions granted to Minera Gorrión in 2015.
The Supreme Court (SCJN) has postponed discussion of a challenge against the federal mining law filed by indigenous residents in Puebla who have long opposed the granting of two mining concessions to the Mexican subsidiary of a Canadian company.
A group of Nahua residents of Tecoltemi, located in the Sierra Norte municipality of Ixtacamaxtitlán, filed a challenge in 2015 against two concessions granted by the Economy Ministry to Minera Gorrión, a subsidiary of Almaden Minerals.
The residents, who have been fighting against mining in their town for 13 years, say they weren’t consulted about the concessions.
They also sought a judicial review of the mining law, arguing that several articles violate the constitution. The law prioritizes mining over all other kinds of land use.
The Fundar Center for Analysis and Research, a non-profit organization that is representing the residents, said in a statement Wednesday that the law can subjugate communities, their land and their lives to mining companies for up to 100 years.
Puebla miners at work. Minera Gorrión
Residents say that local water sources have been contaminated by exploration activity on gold and silver deposits.
The SCJN was scheduled to hear the resident’s case on Wednesday but discussion was postponed indefinitely, the Fundar Center said.
“While we don’t know the reason why the discussion was postponed, we believe that it is of great importance that the justices … take the time needed to deeply analyze this case … given that it’s an important issue not just for … Tecoltemi but also for other communities in Mexico that are currently resisting … the imposition of mining projects” or may do so in the future, it said.
Speaking to the newspaper El Sol de Puebla before the court postponed the case, Alejandro Marreros Lobato said he and other opponents of the mining hoped that the SCJN would declare the concessions illegal and definitively cancel them.
The opponents are also hopeful that the court will declare the mining law to be unconstitutional, he said, adding that it violates international agreements and treaties to which Mexico is party.
“The mining law is the basis for the dispossession of the land that we indigenous people live on. It’s what permits the legalization of violence… we have a great expectation and hope that the SCJN will serve justice,” Marreros said.
But his expectations may not be met for a while. No new date has been set for the court’s consideration of the matter.
The case has divided Tecoltemi because some residents work for Minera Gorrión, which has rejected that its activities are harmful to the water table and emphasized the economic benefits it brings to Ixtacamaxtitlan.
“Employment … dictates who is in favor or against the mine,” Diana Pérez, a lawyer at the Mexican Institute for Community Development said in 2019.
The first migrants' caravan of the year left Tapachula on Thursday.
Another caravan has left Tapachula, Chiapas, this time with more than 500 migrants hoping to reach the United States. It is the first caravan of 2022 to leave the southern border city.
The group left from the National Immigration Institute (INM) offices on Thursday evening. Members of the group said that they applied for documents that would allow them to legally leave Tapachula and travel freely through Mexico, but received no response to their applications, the newspaper Milenio reported.
The group is comprised primarily of Central Americans, with some Venezuelans, Columbians, Haitians, and citizens of African countries joining their ranks.
Some migrants said they had been directed to go to the Mexican refugee commission (COMAR) to begin the required paperwork, but that it could take up to three months to get an appointment. In the meantime, the migrants are not permitted to leave the city or work.
The group left Tapachula on foot with no food or water, expressing their hope that human rights and migrant aid organizations would help them on the journey. Earlier the same day, many of the migrants participated in a march through the city in a bid to draw attention to their predicament. The marchers requested that the federal government provide them a way to regularize their immigration status and/or papers that would allow them to travel through the country.
Tapachula, located near the border with Guatemala, has become a focal point of the immigration crisis. Numerous caravanshave originated in the city, as frustrated migrants head north, some seeking to stay in Mexico and many others hoping to reach the United States.
Among the country's 50 most violent municipalities, Tijuana saw one of the biggest reductions in murders.
Homicides declined 3.6% in 2021 but exceeded 30,000 for a fourth consecutive year, preliminary government data shows.
There were 33,308 homicides last year, a reduction of 1,246 compared to 2020, Security Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez reported Thursday at President López Obrador’s regular news conference.
The decline follows a 0.4% reduction in murders in 2020 after Mexico recorded its most violent year on record in 2019 – López Obrador’s first full year in office – with 34,690 homicides.
There were 102,552 homicides between 2019 and 2021 for an average of 94 per day, a 20% increased compared to the last three years of Enrique Peña Nieto’s 2012-18 presidency.
Rodríguez noted that 50.1% of all homicides last year occurred in just six states. Guanajuato was once again the most violent state in terms of total homicides with 3,516 murder victims, while Baja California ranked second with 3,014.
Security Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez presents kidnapping data at Thursday’s presidential press conference. Presidencia de la República
Michoacán, México state, Chihuahua and Jalisco ranked third to sixth, respectively. Each of those states recorded more than 2,300 homicides last year. Rounding out the 10 most violent states in 2021 were Sonora, Zacatecas, Guerrero and Veracruz.
Four states recorded fewer than 100 homicides. They were Yucatán, 42; Baja California Sur, 51; Aguascalientes, 86; and Campeche, 96.
Rodríguez also presented data that showed that homicides declined 1.3% in Mexico’s 50 most violent municipalities between August and December compared to the same period of 2020. The federal government ramped up security efforts in those municipalities in late July.
The security minister observed that Tijuana – Mexico’s most violent city – Ensenada and Salamanca recorded the biggest reductions in murders among the 50.
“We need to improve in Cajeme, [Sonora] and in … Zamora and Jacona in Michoacán,” Rodríguez said, referring to the three municipalities with the biggest increases.
While homicides declined last year, femicides – the killing of women and girls on account of their gender – increased 2.7% to 1,004.
The figure is more than double the number recorded in 2015, when 427 femicides were registered, but the government claims that its predecessors incorrectly classified many murders of women as homicides.
Among the other crimes that increased last year were extortion, up 12.3% to over 9,400 reported incidents; rape, up 28.1% to more than 21,000 alleged assaults; and muggings, up 9.3% to almost 74,500.
Among those that declined were kidnappings, down 22.3% to 811 reported incidents; business robberies, down 8.9% to almost 86,800; and home burglaries, down 4.8% to just under 60,500 reported break-ins.
Deputy Security Minister Ricardo Mejía also spoke at Thursday’s press conference to highlight “some of the main arrests” security forces have executed since López Obrador took office.
President López Obrador met with U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm Thursday at the National Palace. Presidencia de la República
The United States is not concerned about the federal government’s proposed electricity reform, Energy Minister Rocío Nahle said Thursday after she, President López Obrador and other officials met with U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm in Mexico City.
Nahle said officials discussed energy policy in both the United States and Mexico during a “very enjoyable and very respectful” 2 1/2-hour meeting on Thursday evening.
“[We gave] a brief description of the reform we presented to Congress, which is very good, and everything is fine in that respect,” she told reporters after leaving the National Palace.
López Obrador said on Twitter that he had a “friendly conversation” with Granholm during which “matters of interest for our people and nations” were addressed.
“Respect, understanding and willingness to cooperate for development prevailed,” he wrote.
The Mexican and US delegations following Thursday’s meeting in Mexico City.
Earlier on Thursday, Granholm – under pressure from U.S. Democratic Party senators to challenge Mexico over its “detrimental fossil fuel agenda” – said there may be some issues that the United States and Mexico would have to work on with respect to the electricity reform, which would guarantee 54% of the market to the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission and thus limit the participation of private companies, many of which generate renewable energy.
“Mexico has such an enviable and amazing series of clean resources that we want to talk about. And like all friends there may be issues that we’re also going to work on on the electricity reform but we know that in the end we are going to be strong allies, strongly supportive of a strong North American economy,” she said during a meeting with Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard on Thursday morning.
Granholm also met with Nahle prior to the evening meeting at the National Palace, and will attend a roundtable discussion on Friday on the topic of “women in the energy sector in Mexico.”
The Mexican Energy Ministry said in a statement that the meeting moved energy cooperation between the two countries forward, thanks to the nations’ mutual respect for one another and the political experience of the two energy ministers.
Four United States senators wrote to the energy secretary and Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier this week to urge the Biden administration to “more forcefully speak out in support of renewable energy production that will benefit both” the U.S. and Mexico.
They warned of a range of adverse consequences if López Obrador’s proposed electricity reform is approved, including the cancellation of renewable energy permits, contracts, and certificates.
Ernesto Zedillo served as president of Mexico from 1994 to 2000, then joined the Citigroup board in 2011.
President López Obrador on Wednesday condemned former president Ernesto Zedillo for taking a position on the board of Citigroup more than a decade ago.
Zedillo, president from 1994 to 2000, has sat on the board since 2011 and received income of more than US $3 million from the American bank, the newspaper Milenio revealed.
Asked about the ex-president’s employment at his regular news conference, López Obrador described it as something “completely immoral.”
Citigroup purchased Mexican bank Banamex the year after Zedillo left office.
López Obrador noted that his administration has enacted a law that – for a period of 10 years – prevents former high-ranking public officials from working for companies they regulated, supervised or of which they have “privileged information” as a result of their government work.
Before the law took effect, there was no impediment to former officials quickly taking up positions at private companies with which they had dealings while in government.
“This wasn’t regulated, that’s why [former government officials] went to companies [soon after they left public office]. If Zedillo has income it’s because of that, but it’s corrected now,” López Obrador said.
Zedillo, however, took up his position with Citigroup more than a decade after he left office in late 2000.
But the ex-president did take up a board position with rail company Union Pacific shortly after the conclusion of his presidency, during which he privatized Mexico’s rail system.
Lacandones girls in modern dress. Mike & Iliana Alcalde/México Natural
The Lacandon jungle is the largest contiguous tropical rainforest left in Mexico and the most biodiverse jungle in the hemisphere after the Amazon. Once part of the heavily populated heartland of the Mayan civilization which flourished in the region and stretching from Chiapas and southern parts of the Yucatán peninsula into Honduras and Guatemala, the jungle is home to an abundance of wildlife.
Toucans, howler monkeys, tapirs and a small population of the critically endangered scarlet macaw call this area of rich ecological diversity home, as well as arguably the most unique tribe in Mexico: the Lacandones.
Residing in the vicinity of tributary rivers and lagoons in the Usumacinta River basin, the lifestyle of the Lacandones — known in the Mayan language as the Hach Winik (True People) — is possibly the closest modern approximation we can find to the way the ancient Maya lived — minus, perhaps, the relentless pursuit of new territories.
Speaking about his time spent with them, Mike Alcalde, a documentary filmmaker at México Natural, posits that they are “a people who live in true harmony with nature. Theirs is a worldview which revolves around traditional agriculture, gathering, hunting and fishing; they live by their own traditions and laws.”
Taking only what they need to survive from the forest, the peoples of the Lacandon are unparalleled in their ability to attribute the helpful properties — medicinal or otherwise — to plants. The trails they follow through even the densest parts of the jungle — obscure and undecipherable to visitors — are self-evident to them, and they are able to move through the land without doing harm to its non-human inhabitants.
The Lacandones take only what they need from their lands, which has a rich and flourishing ecosystem, abundant in natural resources.
As a result, they enjoy abundant milpas (fields cultivated for just a few years at a time) growing native corn, beans and other crops, as well as access to water in the rivers and streams.
“The Lacandones are sentinels of the jungle,” says Alcalde. “Their territory is sacred, and they do not allow other communities to harm it. They zealously protect trees, animals and water alike.”
The people of the Lacandon have not always been so isolated in their stewardship of the jungle. In the late 1970s, 3,312 square kilometers of the Lacandon were allocated as a biosphere reserve by the federal government under the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere (MAB) program.
The MAB initiative works towards enhancing relationships between people and their environments. Biospheres are set aside for their genetic significance instead of other considerations such as aesthetics.
However, the protected land area that Mexico established, known as Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, has proven to be a legal fiction. For all the supposed government protection of their lands, the Lacandones are struggling to keep the wolves of extractivism from the door.
Extractivism refers to the process of extracting valuable natural resources to sell on the world market.
The Las Nubes cascades in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas.
Theirs is a rich and flourishing ecosystem, abundant in resources that neighboring communities, as well as large capitalist corporations and the government, are increasingly looking to get their hands on.
The land is historied with such conflicts: like any indigenous tribes at the time of the Spanish conquest, the Lacandones were threatened into near nonexistence hundreds of years ago and have remained under the prolonged threat of newcomers flooding the jungle.
The Lacandon jungle was also the site of major conflicts during the Zapatista uprising of 1994, fueled by colonization, enslavement and the exploitation of indigenous communities across Mexico. Though the Zapatistas claimed to be fighting for indigenous people, the Lacandones were left to worry whether their own battle to recover their stolen land had been doomed by the Zapatistas’ cause.
Compounding this problem, argues Alcalde, are the various side effects that the arrival of modernity invariably has on small, isolated communities. It is a tale as old as extractivism itself: workers on behalf of governments and corporations arrive with their various luxuries and leave behind a polluted legacy that seeps into the workings of communities that have sustained themselves for centuries.
“The arrival of government support instruments, far from benefiting the Lacandon community, increasingly separate it from a way of life that has historically been sustainable,” says Alcalde. “Wrong concepts and strategies, one after another, have led Lacandon communities to begin negative changes in their way of life.”
It is not uncommon today, for example, to see the children consuming the same chemical-ridden, plastic-wrapped fast food that tragically blights populations of all sizes the world over. Perhaps more unnervingly, says Alcalde, are the swish new vehicles cruising the roads, sponsored by automotive companies with vested interests in the land and its resources.
The Lacandones’ lifestyle is possibly the closest approximation to the way the ancient Maya lived. Mike & Iliana Alcalde/México Natural
As a result, Alcalde argues, the Lacandones are beginning to lose the essence of that which has distinguished them for centuries.
“The new generations of Lacandones are visibly moving away from the way of life that has sustained them for centuries,” he says. “Fewer and fewer young people are planning to remain in the communities in the future.”
It’s a familiar story, one that repeats itself across Latin America and indeed the world, one involving the loss of language, biosphere, of cultural memory. But Mexico, unlike many other nations, still has these riches to lose.
The Lacandones are a hardy people, ghosts of the rainforest. Their extinction — as with all extinctions — will be a slow one, but it is not too late to give them the protections that they need.
And what protections are those? Alcalde is forthright in his response:
“To be left alone. To be given the power to make their own decisions. To have their land federally protected with serious consequences. To be celebrated, to be trusted. We should be learning from them, not the other way around.”
Shannon Collins is an environment correspondent at Ninth Wave Global, an environmental organization and think tank. She writes from Campeche.
Former Colombian vice president Francisco Santos is familiar with the fight against narco-trafficking.
The federal government’s non-confrontational security strategy that purports to address the root causes of violence through the delivery of social programs is a failure and a “tremendous, historic error,” according to a former vice president of Colombia.
Francisco Santos Calderón, a journalist, former ambassador to the United States and vice president during the 2002-10 government led by conservative president Álvaro Uribe, has been in Mexico for the past month and spoke with the newspaper El Universal.
Asked how he would describe President López Obrador’s so-called abrazos, no balazos (hugs, not bullets) security strategy, Santos responded:
“As a failure and a tremendous error – a historic error that Mexico will pay for during many decades … [with] many more deaths, a greater penetration of drug trafficking in society and political power, and a much more narcotized society.”
Santos, cousin and outspoken critic of former Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, asserted that the federal government’s security strategy has already caused homicide numbers to increase.
(López Obrador’s first full year in office – 2019 – was the most violent year on record, but homicides declined slightly in 2020 and were down 3.8% in the first 11 months of 2021 compared to the same period of the previous year.)
“What abrazos, no balazos does is encourage crime [groups] to be much more aggressive. Small crime groups and medium-sized crime groups grow, and they’re the ones that generate large amounts of violence, … they’re hyper-violent … because they have to face up to large organized crime [groups]. This is the worst policy that one could establish and you are living it,” the ex-vice president said.
Santos also said that Mexican cartels are now working much more closely with Colombian cartels than was previously the case.
However, he opined that the former are “much more powerful” than the latter and are consequently able to exert influence over them. “[Mexican cartels] are the main buyers of their product [cocaine] and work hand in hand with them,” Santos said.
Drawing on his knowledge of the situation in Colombia, he charged that rebuilding “combat structures” dismantled by the current Mexican government will be extremely difficult, although López Obrador has continued to use the armed forces for public security tasks.
Juan Manuel Santos dismantled “the entire apparatus” for fighting drug cartels during his 2010-18 presidency and current President Iván Duque hasn’t been able to rebuild it since he took office in August 2018, Santos said.
Santos experienced narco-violence first hand when he was kidnapped by the Medellín Cartel in 1990.
“… Rebuilding an entire apparatus has been tremendously difficult because the mafias tend to consolidate, they become much more powerful. … For the state to build an apparatus capable of … neutralizing these organizations takes a lot of time, and I say it from the experience I’ve seen in Colombia between 2018 and 2022,” he said.
Asked whether using the armed forces to combat organized crime was a good thing, Santos responded:
“No, the armed forces are for territorial control … It must be trained police forces … with a lot of internal control, a lot of counter-intelligence. The fight against criminality is a police, intelligence and justice issue. Using military force in that is a mistake.”
Members of Mexico’s municipal and state police forces are generally poorly trained and badly paid, making them more likely to collude with organized crime. The federal government disbanded the Federal Police and created a new, quasi-militarized police force, the National Guard, but it has failed to reduce violence by any significant amount.
Santos, who was kidnapped by the Medellín Cartel when he was working as a newspaper editor in 1990, also criticized López Obrador for not being a greater defender of democratic values in Latin America, where Russia “is more active … than during the Cold War” and China is starting to exert its “economic power and political power of interference.”
“[Mexico] should be the great leader in the defense of democracy, it should be the great leader of … [democratic] values, but it’s not doing it precisely because in Mexico at this time there is a president who is very inward-looking and whose values are … [aligned] with leftist totalitarian values, … freedoms are not part of his values, and Mexico is missing out on the great opportunity it could have to become the icon of freedoms in the continent,” he said.
“Andrés Manuel López Obrador isn’t interested in that,” Santos said before asserting that the Mexican president is a fan of current and past leftist Latin America leaders such as Hugo Chávez, Daniel Ortega and Evo Morales.
“… It should be the opposite, [Mexico] should become an epicenter of … policy in defense of freedom and democracy in Latin America,” he said.
