CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — The special forces arrived at the airport, ready to take back the streets of this city, besieged hours earlier by criminals who sowed chaos, setting cars and buses on fire and killing 11 people, the majority of them innocent, including a 12-year-old and a pregnant woman.
But no sooner had the soldiers taken to the streets on Aug. 12, when about half the 600 who had just arrived were sent on their way to the next city under siege — Tijuana. The attacks on the two border cities came on the heels of more than two dozen convenience stores set ablaze in the central state of Guanajuato and buses and cars burned in the neighboring state of Jalisco.
So went the messy week for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose government is on pace to surpass the number of homicides under his predecessors, Enrique Peña Nieto and his much-touted nemesis, Felipe Calderón. More than halfway into his administration, López Obrador who ran for office on a promise to rescue a country from organized crime, is on par to leave behind more deaths on his watch than his two predecessors.
“The succession of high-profile violent attacks in a single week,” said Alejandro Hope, a prominent security analyst and former intelligence official, “shows that the López Obrador government lost control of the narrative.”
As of Thursday, 128,923 homicides had been registered under López Obrador, with more than two years left in his term, which ends in October 2024. This compares with 156,066 under the six-year term of Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, Mexico’s former ruling party that for 71 years governed promising paz y tranquilidad, peace and tranquility.
Homicides under López Obrador have also surpassed the number during the government of his detested foe, Calderón, whose government recorded an estimated 120,463 homicides from 2007 to 2012. The numbers were compiled by The Dallas Morning News, using data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, Mexico’s official census bureau.
Calderón had declared war on drug cartels just after he won the 2006 election by a hair. Election observers approved the vote, but López Obrador called it illegitimate, leaving Calderón without a strong mandate. Critics maintain Calderón’s war was an effort to legitimize his weak presidency by rallying the country through what now seems like a never-ending war that’s cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
Calderón’s defenders say he had few alternatives. Mexico had been a single-party state and had controlled local officials through patronage and corruption. When the Institutional Revolutionary Party political machine crumbled, the bad boys became even more unruly, as drug cartels filled the vacuum, buying off mayors, judges and the media, turning a nation that once seemed tamed into a prolonged nightmare.
This week, the U.S. Department of State reissued a travel advisory for multiple Mexican states, including some neighboring with Texas, warning travelers of high risk of crime and kidnapping. The state department warns travelers about cartel-related crime as well. In sum, 29 of Mexico’s 31 states are on the list of Do Not Travel, Reconsider, or Exercise Caution. Only two states, Campeche and Yucatán, fall under normal travel precautions.
Based on increased criminal activity #Zacatecas joins five other states on the @StateDept #TravelAdvisory do not travel list’s #TravelAdvisory do not travel list: #Colima, #Guerrero, #Michoacán, #Sinaloa, and #Tamaulipas. (1/2) https://t.co/gaOmCtMgL3
— Embajador Ken Salazar (@USAmbMex) August 17, 2022
“Without security, there is no prosperity,” U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar said in a statement, touting a revised U.S.-Mexico security agreement, known as the Bicentennial Framework. “It is important to reaffirm our commitment to citizen safety by providing training and resources to Mexican justice and security institutions and deepening our cooperation. The United States will continue to work with our partners, friends and neighbors as we build a peaceful future together.”
During a press briefing, Salazar added that “insecurity” can lead to “dire consequences,” warning of a chilling effect on foreign investment, tourism and “safety of Mexicans,” including journalists.
On Friday, while traveling in Tijuana, López Obrador defended his security strategy and said: “I have nothing to fear. I feel safe in ... in all of Mexico.”
As for the U.S. travel advisory, López Obrador pushed back and, referring to frequent mass shootings in the United States, he asked: “Do we issue warnings so that Mexicans don’t travel to ... certain states in the United States?”
Moreover, he blamed the reaction to last week’s violence on “propaganda” by his “political adversaries.”
In Ciudad Juárez, the violence raised concerns not just among residents, but business leaders on both sides of the border. Ciudad Juárez, and the border, are key for the U.S. business strategy to lure manufacturing away from China to the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border.
“The recent violence in Juárez and throughout Mexico was tragic,” said Emma W. Schwartz, co-founder Samaritan Trade Technologies, a technology company with offices in El Paso, Frisco and Ciudad Juárez. “Cartel-driven disruptions remind us of the importance of economic diversification and opportunity.”
To help quell the violence and restore security, the López Obrador government sent an estimated 600 special forces, but about half left immediately for Tijuana, “where the situation became difficult,” said a spokesperson for the military based in Chihuahua City. By Tuesday, the spokesperson added, the special forces had left Ciudad Juárez, adding “the city was back to normal.”
The deployment of military personnel also raised renewed questions about López Obrador’s approach of putting all responsibility for security in the hands of the military rather than civilian police forces, and underscored steep challenges ahead.
Once a critic of what he called the “militarization” of Mexico, López Obrador’s “hugs, not bullets” strategy is focused less on strengthening law enforcement and democratic institutions, and more on expanding the role of the military for everything from infrastructure development to everyday public security, particularly control of Mexico’s southern and northern borders — to aid the Biden administration’s effort to slow down migration north.
Since the drug war began in 2006, the number of federal troops has doubled to more than 200,000.
“López Obrador made a bet that the military will solve the security problem. This is a lesson in hubris,” added Hope. “Even if Mexico were to devote all its forces to law enforcement, they would not be enough. You still need some measure of police reform. You need to reform the criminal law enforcement institutions across the country. And that is not happening.”
A week after the mayhem in Mexico, the nation’s security remains fluid. In Celaya, Guanajuato, blasts went off Thursday, just a day after the mayor’s son was assassinated. In Colima, bombs were reportedly set off Thursday, following the capture of a key drug trafficker in Mexico City. In Tijuana, last week, 15 people were killed in a span of 24 hours, according to Zeta Tijuana.
And here on Aug. 11 in Ciudad Juárez, where the terror was dubbed Black Thursday, life immediately came to a screeching halt: Schools, including the university, and day care centers were forced to shut. Some grocery stores reduced hours. Others closed. The night shift at maquiladoras was suspended, followed by mass absences on Friday. Moreover, some businesses, restaurants and bars closed through the weekend. A soccer match was suspended and public transportation was limited. Streets were eerily quiet. Even peddlers stayed away.
A week later, on Thursday, residents and businesses were slowly returning to normalcy, at least on the surface.
Local leaders went on the offensive, imploring that Ciudad Juárez was open again for business, downplaying any hint of “narco-terrorism” as some analysts called it. Chihuahua Gov. María Eugenia Campos took to social media, showing her traveling the streets of Ciudad Juárez, overseeing police operatives. Some even blamed “Black Thursday” on media propaganda.
Ricardo Mejía Berdeja, assistant secretary of public safety in Mexico, attributed the violence in Ciudad Juárez to the criminal group Los Mexicles and said 12 of its members were already in custody. The Mexicles allegedly stormed the state prison in Ciudad Juárez known as El Cereso and killed two members of the Sinaloa cartel known as Chapos. In response, the Chapos went on a rampage throughout Ciudad Juárez in a common operation known as calentar la plaza, which essentially means, heating things up to force the government to crack down on its foes.
Mexico, Mejía Berdeja said, usually registers more than 200 homicides per weekend. Despite the bloody week in Mexico, homicides were actually down to 196, he added.
“One thing is criminal propaganda with events that try to generate social impact and gain media coverage, and another thing is actual acts of fatal violence,” he said.
Howard Campbell, a border anthropologist at the University of Texas at El Paso, is author of Downtown Juárez: Underworlds of Violence and Abuse. What struck Campbell about last week’s violence was the “indiscriminate mass shooting targeting civilians,” he said, “and sheer fear that forced the city to shut down, and that’s scary because it worked. It’s a new chapter for Juárez.”
Campbell said the normalizing of violence is underway, at a new level. “Homicides in Juárez are a lot like the waves of COVID. You have sharp peaks of violence, followed by a decline, and relatively calm,” he said. “But now things have plateaued at a high level of violence, just like the COVID situation. That’s worrisome.”
Teodoro Morales, 49, is a bartender and margarita specialist at Kentucky Club, on Juárez Avenue, near the Paso del Norte International Bridge. The bar was empty a week after “Black Thursday” forced this legendary cantina to close through the weekend. That worried Morales, whose clientele was just returning to pre-pandemic crowds.
“We all want to get back to normal, but what is that anymore?” he asked. “What we saw last week was different and we can’t forget that.”
Behind him was a sign that read: “My Happy Place Is Anywhere That Serves Margaritas.”
Marisol Chávez is a special contributor for The Dallas Morning News and Al Día based in Juárez.
