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The seizure of toll booths in Mexico opens a new front for the Government against organized crime

2020-10-20T19:09:56.485Z


Three Secretariats are involved in the fight against the "huachicol carretero" that causes millions in losses to the State and private concessionaires


Elements of the National Guard prevented the taking of the booth that connects Tijuana with the municipality of Rosarito.OMAR MARTÍNEZ / CUARTOSCURO

The Twitter account of Federal Roads and Bridges (Capufe) informs every bit of the hijacked toll booths and how they are being released in the course of a few hours.

“The protesters in dir.

Cuacnopalan… The closure continues towards Oaxaca ”.

It is as much as making a real-time count of the money that the Mexican State stops entering through its highways.

In other words, losses of millions of pesos that who knows where they will go.

A group of people arrive, decide that for a period of time that booth is theirs and to collect money.

This has been the case for years and continues to be the case, although now the Government is sending the National Guard to put some of these posts in order.

The taking of booths already has a name that unequivocally relates it to organized crime: the "huachicol carter".

Those affected say it and Andrés Manuel López Obrador himself repeats it.

The image that Mexicans have been accustomed to for years seems the same, but among those who directly suffer the consequences of these extortions, the idea is spreading that those who now take illegal advantage of the booths do not have much to do with those who They used to take to make their protests visible: teachers, students, day laborers, well-known causes.

"Now they are grouped together to commit a crime, not to claim a cause, although they hide behind the disguise of a social demand, it is nothing more than a facade", criticizes Marco Frías, director of the Mexican Association of Road Infrastructure Concessionaires.

"About 20 booths are taken a day, some are permanently, on federal roads we estimate losses of more than 6,000 million pesos between last year and this," he adds.

The coronavirus crisis has only increased this fraudulent practice, says Frías, because there is a greater need for easy money, but also because in troubled times, crime moves with ease.

"We know that there are different groups led by the same person, they are complicated economic and health contexts and they are taking advantage of them," adds the director of the association.

Some recent events have put the authorities on guard: a couple of weeks ago, armed groups clashed over the control of a booth in Ecatepec, an hour from the Mexican capital.

With the noise, the media came out to look and found that the booth seizure seemed at times guarded by agents of the National Guard, rather than being pursued by them.

The money at stake is enough to distribute.

The President of the Government showed last Friday in his morning a confusing, disorderly and unequal criteria slide entitled Prevention of Taking of CAPUFE Booths, but it allowed, at least, to interpret the final figure: 7,922 million pesos that have not gone to fraud , 202 million more than 10 days before.

They call it "loss prevention," but they don't explain how long.

It is understood that they are booths released by the police where what would otherwise be lost has been collected.

Capufe has not explained.

"Here the robbery is no longer allowed, this is like the huachicol and like many other things, but we are constantly treating it," said Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and framed these practices in the savage corruption in which the country has moved: people ask, “if they steal upstairs, why don't we?

And so it happened and nobody cared ”.

Days before, also questioned about this matter, he told the protesters to look for another job, that they were robbing the people.

There are several secretariats involved in tackling this problem, which has collaboration at all levels of Government.

The National Guard has developed operations in Nayarit and other specific ways to free booths in which it was charged on a mandatory basis.

And the concessionaires applaud the initiative, but they ask for more “criminal action” for these groups, that they also treat the huachicoleros, that is, like organized crime that steals fuel from the pipelines and the trucks that transport it, a matter which the López Obrador government has tried to put a stop to.

"The violence in the taking of booths has escalated," says Marco Frías. "If we reduce our ability to collect taxes, the State also reduces our contribution in taxes, everyone loses," he says.

The regulations governing toll road concessions establish a “rebalancing” for very specific circumstances, for example, if a natural disaster occurs and the service cannot be offered.

In these cases, the State compensates the losses, the most common is that it extends the term granted to them for the operation of the booths, which is usually 30 years plus an additional 30 years.

But the taking of booths, even though it is sometimes permanent, is not considered as a factor to demand rebalancing measures.

“The economic impact of taking over the booths is modest, the concessionaires are not going to go bankrupt because of that.

The rebalancing is for force majeure, but this is fortuitous and is a risk that the concessionaires must take.

They have always complained, but the Government has been very condescending towards them, since 2006. Nor is it necessary to modify the law because what they do is already a crime, you just have to send the National Guard, "says engineer Esteban Figueroa, who knows Well what he talks about, professor at UNAM and consultant for years in infrastructure, financial and technical planning of the Ministry of Communication and Transport.

Figueroa agrees with Frías that criminals are now disguising themselves as a social cause, and that is the first thing to determine before proceeding with a police intervention.

"When the quota they ask for is mandatory, it seems that what is behind it is only a collection of money, while if what is requested is a voluntary amount cooperation it may be for an honest cause," he assures.

"By discriminating those two kinds of booth taking, the police can be sent," says Figueroa, "they should have done it a long time ago."

Frías is confident that new technologies will also reduce these frauds, because they will have already paid before reaching the booth and there would not even be barriers to lower or raise.

In the absence of trains, Mexico is crossed by 407,958 kilometers of highways.

The federal network is responsible for 50,590, the majority (40,000) free of tolls.

The state company Capufe manages 3,760 kilometers with a fee, according to its data;

the rest remains in the hands of concessioned companies, although the Association of Road Infrastructure Concessionaires affirm that those 10,000 kilometers are shared with Capufe in two practically equal halves.

The seizure of booths began with force in the past six years, although long before various groups were cutting off the roads to protest.

“It was very practical, you took the booth and lowered the pen.

But before it was blocked, for example taking advantage of the holiday traffic to Cancun, because it was about making a protest visible;

It won't be okay, but it was his way of pushing.

Now everything has been perverted, they charge and they don't block, ”says engineer Figueroa.

Remember the nineties, when the layout of the new highways divided entire communities and “those people had a clear perception of an injustice: some became rich with the road for which they had ceded their lands without anyone, in return, solving their pressing problems. "" The lands were well paid for them, although they don't see it that way, "says Figueroa," but there was social resentment and certain inconveniences for these peoples were real too. "

It was in the nineties, in the days of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, continues Figueroa, when the existing roads were modernized, resorting to the toll for their financing.

In four years 6,000 kilometers were made with public-private resources.

The Free Trade Agreement signed at that time with the United States required a solvent infrastructure to lower the logistics costs and the geometry of those roads that were made in previous decades, when what it was about was to connect and integrate the population, not what allowed. "That is how tolls were born and ultimately the taking of booths. They always looked the other way." It was treated with great tolerance because everything, like so many things in this country, was a tinder, any spark could set everything on fire. " Now the authorities are trying to shut it down.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2020-10-20

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