By Elliot Spagat and Fabiola Sánchez -
The Associated Press
TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — Several attacks in recent days by drug cartels in four Mexican states have left people wondering why the violence erupted and what the drug lords want.
On the streets of the Ciudad Juárez border, across from El Paso, Texas, at least 11 people were killed, including a child and four radio station employees who were shot apparently at random on Thursday.
Two days earlier, more than two dozen self-service stores owned by a well-known national chain were burned down in the state of Guanajuato.
Cars and buses were seized and set on fire in the neighboring state of Jalisco.
And two dozen vehicles were hijacked and torched in California border towns on Friday.
The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with the Secretary of Defense, General Luis Cresencio Sandoval (left) and the Secretary of the Navy, José Rafael Ojeda, in a file photo of June 30, 2019. Christian Palma /AP
The federal government deployed soldiers and National Guard troops to calm residents' fears, but the outbreak of violence has raised questions about the approach of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has left security in the hands of the military rather than of the civil police.
Some were quick to describe the burnings and shootings as terrorism, while the government denied it.
The Secretary of the Interior, Adán Augusto López, said: “They are not terrorist attacks;
there is no reason to exaggerate the facts”.
But it is not clear what his goal is.
[Terror in five cities of Baja California after twenty vehicles set on fire]
“I think they gave these hitmen orders to cause chaos,” said Mexican security analyst Alejandro Hope.
“Generates chaos, generates uncertainty, generates fear, shoots at everything that moves.
That is something that generates terror,” he added.
But, Hope added:
“Terrorism implies a political goal.
In this case I don't know what the political goal is."
López Obrador suggested on Monday that the seriousness of the attacks was being exaggerated as part of a political conspiracy against him by opponents he describes as “conservatives” and argued that “there is no major problem” with security.
"I don't know if there is a connection or a black hand, if this has been implemented, if it has been articulated, what I have no doubt about is that our opponents, the conservatives, do help in black propaganda," he said.
Tijuana returns to normal, but patrolling will continue in much of Baja California
Aug. 14, 202201:47
Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval later said the cartels have lashed out because they have weakened.
“They want to feel still strong and generate situations of violence where, by way of publicity, they may be sending messages that they are still strong,” he declared.
Tijuana Mayor Montserrat Caballero spoke in a very different tone when
she urged the cartels in a rare statement Friday not to target innocent civilians.
“Today we are telling the organized crime groups that are committing these crimes that Tijuana is going to stay open and take care of its citizens,” Caballero said in a video.
"And we also ask them to settle their debts with those who did not pay what they owe, not with working families and citizens."
he added he.
The streets of downtown Tijuana returned to their daily hustle and bustle this Monday, after an unusually quiet weekend of canceled medical appointments and closed restaurants.
[Clashes between drug traffickers unleash chaos, fires and deaths in Ciudad Juárez]
On Monday morning, pedestrians waited more than three hours to enter the United States at the San Ysidro border crossing, which connects Tijuana and San Diego.
But the reinforced presence of the security forces in downtown Tijuana was not to be seen.
Omar Garcia, owner of a clothing and souvenir store near the border crossing, said tourism evaporated over the weekend.
Monday's heavy traffic lifted his spirits, but he believes the violence could kill his business.
“These are blows that come from time to time,”
said García, 34, who has been selling souvenirs at the border crossing since he was a child.
“We are 100% dependent on tourism.
If they get scared, they don't come,” he explained.
Residents narrate the terror they experienced during the 'narco-blockades' in Mexico
Aug. 11, 202201:44
José Andrés Sumano Rodríguez, a professor and security specialist at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Matamoros, a city on the border with Texas, said the decision to attack civilians was premeditated.
The cartels “have learned that when they push to create terror and attack civilians, it pays off.
Many times it is more effective to do this than to have a direct confrontation with the armed forces, where they are almost always going to lose, ”he stated.
For security analyst David Saucedo,
the attacks were "narcoterrorism"
and said that the Jalisco New Generation Cartel was behind the violence in the states of Guanajuato and Baja California.
[Mexican Authorities Find 45 Migrants Crammed into the Hidden Compartment of a Truck]
Saucedo said there has been a change in Mexico's drug policy since last year, when soldiers at highway checkpoints simply watched cartels fight for control of the western state of Michoacán with drones, improvised explosive devices and land mines.
Saucedo believes this supposed change has angered the cartels.
The hunt for Caro Quintero lasted two months and when he was captured he was running a new criminal organization
July 18, 202201:48
Mexico has done more to capture drug lords in recent months, something López Obrador had said he was not interested in.
Mexican marines captured fugitive drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero in July after years on the run for the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique
Kiki
Camarena.
And lab seizures of methamphetamine and the synthetic opiate fentanyl have also risen sharply in Mexico in recent months.
“There has been a change in strategy in the fight against drug cartels.
Andrés Manuel [López Obrador] has been heavily criticized recently for his strategy of 'hugs, not bullets,'" Saucedo said.
“I think because of pressure from Joe Biden, he is changing that and has agreed to go after high-profile drug traffickers.”
The spark that sparked chaos in Jalisco and Guanajuato last week was apparently when the military inadvertently found a Jalisco cartel boss.
Sandoval, the defense secretary, said the soldiers knew nothing about it and were just trying to intercept what they believed to be a cartel convoy.
[The Jalisco New Generation Cartel sows terror with a show of power never seen before]
"The narcoterrorism of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel is a reaction to the president's change in strategy," said Saucedo.
"If the Mexican president continues with this strategy of capturing high-ranking members of the Jalisco cartel, the Jalisco cartel will respond with acts of narco-terrorism in the states it controls as part of its vast empire."
Sandoval assured that there have been no changes in the strategy.
“It's not that we're looking for the leader… it's not that operations are focused on certain levels of the organization,” he explained.
"We have to know where to use that force, where to use it, the number of people we have to send to reinforce, the specific places, and know where we have to act in order to guarantee security," Sandoval said.
On video: Soldiers and alleged hitmen face gunshots in Sonora, Mexico
July 4, 202201:55
He denied that the government was not reacting and pointed out that in 19 of the 32 states of Mexico the National Guard already has numbers higher than the state authorities.
"It is part of a strategy that is already outlined and that we are going to apply accordingly,"
he said.
There have been such terrorist acts before.
In June of last year, a faction of the Gulf cartel entered Reynosa on the Texas border and killed 14 people authorities identified as "innocent citizens" as part of an attempt to overthrow a rival faction that controlled Reynosa.
Ana Vanessa Cárdenas, coordinator of the international relations program at the Anáhuac Mayab University in Mérida, said that with any other president, half of the security cabinet would have been removed, there would be consultations with international experts, and a new security strategy would be worked on. .
But she does not expect any change from López Obrador, whom she considers in denial.
"We have seen a total militarization of security and of the country, which is the last step," Cárdenas said.
"If, having already reached the last rung in security, we have an increase in violence, in murders, in drug control, then where are we going?" He asked himself.