In Mexico, the army powerless in the face of violence

Mexico City

The boardwalk in La Paz (Baja California Sur) meanders along the bay, passers-by stopping to take a few photos.

Among the tourists, men dressed in khakis, guns in hand, stroll.

A group of American sexagenarians challenge them to pose with them.

Funny postcard.

Yet this is the new panorama of Mexico.

From La Paz to Cancun, on the Caribbean Sea, via Acapulco on the Pacific, the soldiers watch: beaches and shopping streets.

More than 240,000 elements of the army, the navy and the Guardia nacional, a civil security force, are deployed on national territory.

In the mountains of Guerrero (south), Father Filiberto Velazquez never saw the inhabitants take pictures with the soldiers.

In these isolated territories undermined by organized crime, the inhabitants do not take kindly to the presence of the military.

It seems mostly inefficient.

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