Mexico has experienced again this week the consequences of its violent reality. Sometimes in the form of dismembered or absent bodies, crime has preferred on this occasion to organize a small chaos, with terrifying consequences for the population, physical or virtual spectators of organized crime’s ability to post messages. The reason, a failed operation. The Army tried to arrest two leaders of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), alias El Doble R and El Apá, and these, on the run, set fire to what they could.
It had been four years since central Mexico had experienced a situation like this Tuesday. The blockades, the vehicles set on fire, the stores attacked, criminals building an image of power against the nothingness of the state. The last time that Guadalajara and its metropolitan area suffered a similar situation dates back to 2018, when hit men tried to assassinate former prosecutor Luis Carlos Nájera in the center. The blockades then remained in the capital of Guadalajara and its surroundings.
For researcher Carlos Flores, from the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology, CIESAS, the lukewarmness of the federal and state governments in the face of organized crime causes situations like this. “The authorities need to take responsibility. The type of strategies they use do not have positive results, they only generate fires. Criminal organizations perceive a certain permissiveness. I’m not saying there are agreements. But it is the message that the government’s lack of action sends. The groups react and they don’t do it in a rational way”.
This week in Jalisco and Guadalajara has been different from other occasions. The reaction of the criminals covered a radius of more than 350 kilometers, a distance that separates Ixtlahuacán del Río, north of Guadalajara, the place of the frustrated operation, and Celaya, in Guanajuato, one of the towns in the neighboring state where vehicle fires were recorded. and convenience stores. The distance suggests different possibilities, the escape routes of the assembled leaders, for example, but also the mobilization capacity of a group addicted to virality.
Beyond the raw figures that the Government has offered -16 detainees, an alleged criminal killed, weapons and vehicles seized-, the trickle of information, emanating from the meeting of the security cabinet this Wednesday, to which they agreed various media. At the meeting, the Secretary of National Defense, Luis Cresencio Sandoval, would have explained, precisely, that the chaos on Tuesday night had been the result of the attempted capture of Ricardo Ruiz, The Double Rand Gerardo Gonzalez, The Apa. The president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has confirmed that the chaos was the result of a meeting between the two and the fiasco of his capture attempt.
Both aliases are old acquaintances of the press and of General Sandoval himself. The secretary mentioned the name of the first a little over two years ago, after another publicity effort by the criminal group, which days before had released a video of a strange parade, in which dozens of alleged members of the CJNG posed in front of their police vehicles. war, modified vans that in Mexico have acquired the name of artisanal tanks. The lack of official information about El Doble R and his buddy El Apá has favored the appearance of versions in the media about his position in the criminal hierarchy. Even about the nature of the meeting. The newspaper Millennium has reported that the succession of the leader of the CJNG, Nemesio Oseguera, The Menchohad been one of the topics discussed.
About El Doble R, the newspaper Reform He has also recalled that Sandoval placed him as coordinator, leader or command of an elite group of the CJNG, El Mencho’s messenger, supposedly, in his main battlefields these years, in the case of the central and southern areas of Guanajuato and the Sierra region. Michoacan coast. In Guanajuato, cells linked to the CJNG have fought with another organization, known in the media as the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, in cities such as Salamanca, Irapuato, Celaya or Silao. One of the Pemex refineries in the country operates in Salamanca. The Sierra Costa region of Michoacán has suffered these years from the struggle between the criminal group and the imitation of old local mafias, popularly known as United Cartels.
For the researcher Flores, one of the few academics who has studied the specific case of the CJNG in Mexico, what happened “reflects the type of structure of the criminal group, with a strong militarized component, and a capacity for military mobilization. Perhaps unconventional, but of counterinsurgency, which also speaks of a non-clandestine presence”. Flores adds that the type of presence and reactions of the CJNG also respond to the relationship it maintains with the population. “It is no longer just drug trafficking, it is an issue of extracting resources from the population through extortion,” he settles.
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