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AMLO: The issue of violence "is getting out of the ordinary" 0:41
(CNN Spanish) - The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said Monday that Guanajuato "is getting out of the ordinary" by recognizing the increase in violence and insecurity that plagues this state. There, the incidence of crime and homicides have risen on behalf of the gangs that fight criminal activity.
"Guanajuato is getting out of the normal that has been presented, the incidence of crime, homicides, and gangs that are confronting each other have risen a lot," López Obrador told reporters on Monday.
AMLO gave a chilling figure: in that state located in the center of the country, 15% of daily homicides occur throughout Mexico. But the last weekend of January, this figure increased to 20%.
"The weekend was very difficult in Guanajuato: it reached 20% of the national homicides only Guanajuato," said AMLO, ensuring that "they are working" to solve the problem of insecurity and violence in this state.
The president did not detail the number of daily deaths in the country.
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File Image. The crime scene of a shooting in Salamanca, Guanajuato, in which six people died in an armed attack in June 2018. (Credit: GUSTAVO BECERRA / AFP via Getty Images)
Violence on the rise
Only between 25 and 27 January, 69 murders were recorded in this state and at least three were injured, as confirmed by CNN in Spanish by the state prosecutor's office in Guanajuato. The situation was described by López Obrador as "very difficult" and said he is already addressing the problem, among others, with the presence of the National Guard, the Ministry of Defense and the Navy.
Guanajuato was the third state with the highest homicide rates in the country in December 2019, reaching an index of 5.3 per 100,000 inhabitants, located behind Baja California and Colima, the most violent that month. It also has a rate of 176.2 alleged crimes per 100,000 inhabitants, when the national rate is 122.2.
According to López Obrador, Guanajuato “is broken down” and the violence he is suffering today comes from a long time ago, but the situation is getting worse.
"Most of these killings, most of them, [is because of] organized crime," the president of Mexico told reporters on January 15.
Cases of violence by drug trafficking groups are seen daily in the state, with shootings, among many others, such as the one in the municipality of Salamanca, in March last year, which left 15 dead and 4 wounded. The Prosecutor's Office said at the time that an armed group would have entered the nightclub and began shooting attendees. Last week the local press reported a shooting in which nine people died in the municipality of Villagrán, by armed men carrying high caliber weapons.
What is behind the violence?
The theft of fuels or “huachicoleo” is one of the reasons why violence has increased in Guanajuato in recent years, since control of the areas of influence for this crime is disputed by two factions: the Jalisco New Generation Cartel versus the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel, as explained in CNN in Spanish by Guillermo Cruz, editorial director of Quinto Poder.
“The violence has increased in Guanajuato in the last four years and it has to do practically with this criminal dynamic of the theft of hydrocarbons that is linked to the control of this particular cartel in the Salamanca refinery. Every part of it, ”Cruz said on CNN.
The main activity of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel is fuel theft.
This poster arises from the municipality of Guanajuato that bears that name and was extended to other municipalities in the south center of Guanajuato that border Michoacán and Querétaro. In the latter there is a base to which the fuel arrives and from there came the entire network of fuel theft that had its fundamental axis in the Salamanca refinery.
According to the crime investigation page inSight Crime, fuel theft is very lucrative due to the market that exists for sale. In addition to the lower danger that it represents in comparison to the sale of drugs "because criminal groups do not have to worry about trafficking the product on the other side of the border."
AMLO, meanwhile, said his security plan includes the approach in those states where there are more homicides, as in the case of Guanajuato where he said “there is an already special operation of the National Guard”, without giving more details.
In January 2019, Guanajuato experienced a shortage of fuel due to changes in distribution of pipelines to trucks used by the AMLO government to deal with the huachicoleo, which according to the authorities amounted to 3 billion dollars annually.
According to inSight Crime, fuel theft is very lucrative due to the market that exists for sale. In addition to the lower danger that it represents in comparison with the sale of drugs "because criminal groups do not have to worry about trafficking the product on the other side of the border."
A promise to keep
This month, when the president was asked about when there will be results to disrupt the alarming figures of violence in that state, López Obrador acknowledged that "it is a pending issue, it is a problem that we could not solve."
For AMLO, the explanation of the exacerbated violence is that in Mexico “the problem of insecurity, violence was greatly increased” and “the causes were not addressed”, besides there was no authority or a “line that divided a border to divide authority with crime. ” According to him, this "abandonment" of the State that has been coming for many years led to the origination of the situation of violence that is experienced today in Mexico, "because these bands that operate did not arise last year."
And although it is a fact that violence increased, for López Obrador during his first year of government it has been possible to “stop the upward trend in crime incidence”. However, he pledged that by December 1, 2020, he will finish “laying the groundwork for the country's transformation” and delivering results that are yet to be seen.
Violence in Mexico