Huachicol trafficking, an evil that does not stop in Mexico

A clandestine fuel intake in Guanajuato.Mónica González

Mexico has reached a ceiling in the fight against fuel theft.

At least that is what the figures from Pemex say, a state company that controls gas and gasoline production.

According to company reports, the country lost 174.9 million pesos from January to July because of the huachicol, a figure just lower than the 177 million pesos of losses due to theft suffered in the entire previous year.

As in 2020, the largest amount of losses - 169 million this year and 105 last year - were from robberies on the Baja California peninsula.

For the number of clandestine intakes in the fuel pipelines, the States of Hidalgo and Puebla top the list, a situation identical to that of four years ago.

Guanajuato, Veracruz and the State of Mexico also appear in the first places.

All in all, the figures are lower than those registered in 2018, the year in which huachicol became a real problem for several states, in the case of Puebla or Guanajuato, and also for the federal government, then commanded by Enrique Peña Nieto (2012- 2018).

In that year, Pemex registered 14,910 clandestine intakes that made it lose 2,068 million pesos.

Loss calculations set aside the money used to repair the holes in the pipelines or the amounts necessary to maintain surveillance operations in conflictive areas.

According to the calculations released by the current Administration in December 2018, the losses from huachicol reached 60,000 million pesos annually, about 3,000 million dollars.

As soon as he took office, the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, launched a crusade against fuel theft.

In January 2019, the president announced the temporary closure of several of the pipelines that distribute fuel throughout the country.

Tanker trucks replaced the pipelines, a decision that slowed supply and left hundreds of gas stations across the country without gasoline.

López Obrador ordered the Army to literally camp on top of the pipelines in some of its sections, for example Guanajuato, which in 2017 and 2018 registered almost 4,000 clandestine intakes. The situation transcended the theft of fuel, also becoming a public safety problem in some regions, first due to the aggressiveness of the groups of thieves and then due to the risk involved in piercing the pipelines.

In those two years, the last of Peña Nieto's administration, gangs of fuel thieves punctured Pemex pipes with total impunity, summoning dozens of accomplices with portable warehouses, including tanker trucks. In areas of Puebla, these robberies occurred in broad daylight, provoking a reaction from the authorities. In 2017, hundreds of soldiers arrived at the so-called red triangle of the huachicol, north of the city of Puebla, to try to contain the thieves. The clash between criminals and the military left unprecedented situations in the region, such as shootings and persecution in the towns. At the time, the case of the town of Palmarito was very well known, a confrontation with gunshots between criminals and uniformed men that was recorded on security cameras in some houses in the area.The images showed the brutal exchange of bullets and, at the end, how a soldier finished off one of the wounded criminals.

Sometimes the holes in the fuel lines left hundreds of neighbors queuing up, carrying buckets and bottles, trying to take home some free gas. In fact, the closure of the pipes ordered by López Obrador coincided with one of the worst accidents recorded during his tenure. On January 19, 2019, a clandestine intake in a pipeline in Tlahuelilpan, Hidalgo, caught fire and exploded, killing 137 people.

The president's strategy took effect and the number of recorded clandestine seizures fell in 2019 and even more in 2020, coinciding with the pandemic.

Now in 2021, it seems that the figure is growing again.

The situation is different from that experienced in 2017 and 2018. Although in some regions, as in the case of Puebla, the number of clandestine seizures registered in the last 18 months is high, the impact is minimal.

From January to July of this year, Pemex counted 1,185 holes in its pipelines in that state.

The losses caused, however, amounted to just over a million pesos.

In Hidalgo, in the same period, there were 2,554 and no losses were recorded.

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