Police hunt in Celaya

Among the small wars that corrode entire regions of Mexico, the one in Celaya stands out these days, where criminals have taken over the municipal police.

This Thursday, hitmen murdered a city agent when he was traveling by car with his wife and his daughter.

The gunmen attacked him with bullets and he, who was wounded, later died in the hospital.

His murder was the latest in a long list of attacks against the corporation in the last month.

Guanajuato is the State that registers the most murders of police officers in the country.

Since January 24, there has hardly been a week without attacks.

That day, gunmen attacked a group of agents between Celaya and Salvatierra.

Four died.

On the 26th, criminals shot and killed a traffic officer in the city.

Two days later, gunmen ambushed a contingent of police, but the officers managed to defend themselves and kill three of the attackers.

At that time, the Secretariat of National Defense sent half a thousand soldiers to the area to try to contain the criminal groups.

The count continues.

Many times, the hitmen attack when the police are on duty, preventing them from carrying their regulation long weapons.

This is the case of the agent murdered yesterday, when he was in the car with his family.

Or a classmate of hers, murdered along with her eight-year-old daughter on February 19, early in the morning, when they were on their way to school.

There is no moment of peace or safe place for the agents.

Since January 24, there have already been 10 police officers murdered in the city, according to the account of Causa en Común and the Cobalt Blue Project, which monitor the murders of police officers in Mexico.

Elements of the National Guard at the site of the murder of four municipal police officers on the Salvatierra-Celaya highway, on January 24. Diego Costa Costa (Cuartoscuro)

Although Celaya is a red point, the police tragedy affects the entire country.

So far this six-year term, at least 2,273 police officers have been murdered in Mexico, according to the Causa en Común account, one of the faces of the security crisis that the country has been experiencing for more than 15 years and which annually leaves more than 30,000 homicides.

Daniel Gómez-Tagle, analyst and consultant on police and military issues, and head of the Azul Cobalto project, points out that the municipal corporations bear the brunt.

“They are the ones that suffer the most attacks and casualties,” he says.

“Within the complicated case of Bajío, Celaya is a situation out of control,” explains Gómez-Tagle.

“The statistics of municipal police homicides there in the last year have skyrocketed by 1000%, a situation that has no comparison,” he details.

“If we look at it by calendar years, in the last 365 days they have killed 22 municipal police officers in the city, compared to only two in the immediately previous period,” he explains.

There is no municipality whose situation is close to that of Celaya in all of Mexico.

If anything, Coyuca de Benítez, a coastal town in the State of Guerrero, where 13 municipal agents were killed in a massacre in January.

But Celaya is an onslaught in dribs and drabs, constant, overwhelming.

“The problem is not only the murder of these people,” adds Gómez-Tagle, “but also, from an administrative point of view, the loss of strength of the corporation,” he concludes.

Experts and agents of the National Guard after the murder of a dozen police officers, in Coyuca (State of Guerrero), on October 23. Carlos Alberto Carbajal (Cuartoscuro)

The chronology of attacks intersects with events that draw the reality of this region of the Bajío.

Near Celaya, in Salvatierra, criminals murdered 11 young people in an inn in mid-December.

Weeks earlier, authorities found the bodies of five students next to the local university campus.

They had been murdered.

Criminal violence intensified, while authorities arrested leaders of local criminal groups, mainly the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel and the Jalisco Nueva Generación.

Federal Police and Colombian military

For David Saucedo, a consultant on security issues in the Bajío industrial zone, the violence there is understood in the context of the struggle between these two groups, with interests in the control of highway routes, drug dealing and fuel theft.

“Celaya is an area of ​​high retail drug consumption,” he explains.

“For the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, the surrounding municipalities are important, due to the extraction of fuel from the pipelines.

If you visit municipalities like Apaseo El Grande, you see the warehouses, the rotoplast tanks that they use to store stolen fuel,” he points out.

In the case of Celaya, Saucedo, who advises companies and foreign embassies in the development of security protocols in the area, signals the beginning of the onslaught.

According to the account, the current mayor, Javier Mendoza, who was sworn in in October 2021, began a purge of the municipal police, pointing out links with the two groups.

“Mendoza appointed a new police chief, Jesús Rivera, who was a high command of the Federal Police, and they made that decision.

But those from Santa Rosa de Lima, which is actually the most important group there, reacted negatively,” he says.

Municipal police observe the security camera monitors in Celaya, on February 28. Fernando Llano (AP)

Saucedo explains that the reprisals began there.

“The first thing was Mendoza's son, murdered by this group about a year and a half ago,” he recalls.

In August 2022, gunmen killed Guillermo Mendoza when he was leaving a pharmacy.

Hitmen shot him down when he had just gotten into his truck.

Days later, the federal government announced the arrest of six people, which it linked to the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel.

“The mayor has maintained his position in any case, fighting this group,” Saucedo continues.

“And the police chief maintains the confrontation.

He has hired former members of the Federal Police, who have better training, and a greater mystique, a matter of vocation for service.

And, above all, they have no ties to the local mafia,” he adds.

To further complicate the matter, it seems that criminal groups in the area are looking for specialized labor to fight their battles, a situation similar to what the mountain area of ​​Michoacán, south of La Huacana, is experiencing in recent months.

“Those from Santa Rosa de Lima have hired Colombian soldiers, that is, professionals.

It turns out that the widows of these soldiers took steps to repatriate bodies, that's how we found out.

We are aware of four, at least since last year.

And they also hired hitmen from the scorpion group of the Gulf Cartel,” he explains, “famous for the case of the Americans kidnapped in Matamoros last year.

But hey, the CJNG has done the same.

“He has hired kaibiles,” he says, referring to elite soldiers from the Guatemalan Army.

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