The sky was overcast, cloudy, it ended up raining, the Zócalo was full, but less than other times and it emptied when the event was not yet over, despite the fact that there were, it was said, people from 25 states who had been brought to commemorate he fifth year of electoral triumph of Lopez Obrador. The event, which would be a celebration, became a sum of slogans and, above all, a rally against the opposition.
The absolute absence of something similar to self-criticism, or the recognition that there are things that do not work, does not cease to amaze. The president Lopez Obrador He said that in the country “there is justice and social tranquility, progress is being made towards the eradication of violence” and stressed that Mexico “is not a narco-state.”
The facts deny it. There are more than 160 thousand murders so far in the six-year term and more than 30,000 disappeared. But the issue goes beyond statistics. On Wednesday, 16 workers from the Chiapas security secretariat were kidnapped, amid growing violence in that state, with areas outside government control. San Cristóbal de las Casas is, according to official data, the second city in the country with the highest percentage of drug dealing of the country, you can get everything anywhere. President López Obrador, before the kidnapping of the workers, asked that they be released or else he would accuse the kidnappers of the northeast cartel, “with their parents and grandparents”. The kidnappers asked for the release of a singer kidnapped on June 22 (who would be the partner of one of their leaders and who has not yet appeared) and to remove three officials that she accuses of being linked to the Sinaloa cartelto the group ofthe little boys.
We saw the kidnapped in videos kneeling and begging for their lives, their relatives taking to the streets and demanding their release. 72 hours later, the hostages appeared alone, walking almost in front of the offices of the security secretariat in Tuxtla. Governor Rutilio Escandón, who had taken two days to appear, hastened to thank the security forces for the release of the hostages. But they had been released, in the middle of Tuxtla, by the kidnappers, the security forces did not find them, much less released them. The relatives ended up thanking the criminals for their release, not the authorities.
On Wednesday at midnight, in an almost unprecedented act of terrorism, a car bomb exploded in celaya. The National Guard had received a complaint that there was a van with bodies inside, when they went to investigate they blew up the bomb car. Ten GN were wounded, three of them seriously. Also that Thursday, the police chief of Linares, Nuevo León, was assassinated, and the leader of the PVEM, who had been kidnapped a couple of days earlier, was assassinated on the Costa Chica in Guerrero.
On Friday in La Ruana, Michoacán, it was assassinated Hipólito Mora, leader of one of the self-defense groups of the Tierra Caliente. It was the fourth attack that he suffered in the year. A couple of guards were also killed. Governor Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla was quick to explain that he had told Mora to move to Morelia because the government could not protect him otherwise. In other words, the only place in the state where the authorities can protect someone is in the capital. A few days earlier in Apatzingán, extortion, kidnapping and shooting caused the displacement of hundreds of families. Mora denounced him one day before his murder.
During the week, the mayoress of Tijuana showed us the “modest” housing that he has in the military barracks from the city, because she does not feel safe in the face of the wave of violence that is plaguing the border city. The two million inhabitants of Tijuana They have nowhere to shelter. Another mayoress, the one from Chilpancingo, explained that the seven dismembered bodies that were left almost in front of the mayor’s office with messages for not having fulfilled their commitments to the criminals, were simple threats that should not be taken into account. Meanwhile that cartel, the Tlacos, which also emerged from one of those community police forces that are part of organized crime, even controls the price of tortillas in the state capital. In Tierra Caliente, also in Guerrero, twelve mayors ask for protection because those in charge in the area are those of the Nueva Familia Michoacana, as is the case in a good part of the state of Mexico, from Valle de Bravo to Tenancingo, Villa Guerrero, Ixtapan de the salt.
In Guachochiin the heart of the Tarahumara sierra, where a few days ago a jesuit church it had been riddled with 700 bullets, eight people died in a confrontation, there is almost no information due to the isolation of the area, also abandoned by the authorities. Returning to Chiapas, around Frontera Comalapa, in the mountains, clashes between criminal groups continue, displacements and people’s demands for the intervention of the security forces continue. Tarahumaras and Tzotzils, the poorest of the poor, continue to be victims of crime without any protection.
All this happened hours before it was confirmed that we are making progress in “eradicating violence”, that “we are not a narco-state” and that we live “with justice and social tranquility”. By the way, we are close, he assured himself again, to having a health system like Denmark’s.
#Peace #tranquility #security