Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum presented on Tuesday a national security plan that will seek to strengthen investigation and intelligence to reduce high-impact crimes but that will continue to rely on the same strategies of her predecessor, who left public security in the hands of the military and He did not confront the powerful drug cartels.
The moment that Sheinbaum chose to present his strategies is not the most opportune. The brutal murder of a mayor in the south of the country and the wave of violence that has worsened in the states of Sinaloa and Guanajuato—where more than twenty people have died in the last week—show how, despite the strong presence of the military in crime has not been contained in the streets.
During his morning press conference Sheinbaum outlined the four axes of his security plan: attention to the causes of violence through social programs to prevent young people from being recruited into crime, the consolidation of the National Guard under command of the army, the creation of a national intelligence and investigation system, and the coordinated work between the federal government, the states, municipalities and the Public Ministry.
Sheinbaum confirmed that he will maintain former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s policy of non-confrontation with the drug cartels, which control vast regions of the country and have plunged some cities such as Culiacán, capital of the northern state of Sinaloa, into violence. In the last month, a bloody dispute has been unleashed between two factions of the Sinaloa Cartel after the arrest in the United States of two of its bosses.
“The war against drugs is not going to return,” said the president, referring to the security strategy of the government of former President Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), which left several hundred dead and numerous disappearances and complaints of human rights violations against agents of the Armed Forces and the police.
When referring to the situation in Culiacán, Sheinbaum reiterated criticism of the United States for not having provided information about the arrest that took place in July in Texas of the historic leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, and announced that the chancellor Juan Ramón de la Fuente will meet with US ambassador Ken Salazar to talk about the case.
Since September, the side led by “Los Chapitos”, which is made up of the children of the detained former leader of the organization Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, has faced Zambada’s followers.
The clashes occurred several weeks after the arrest of the historic capo who was arrested along with Joaquín Guzmán López, one of the sons of “El Chapo”, who allegedly set a trap for Zambada and kidnapped him to take him to Texas in an operation that still has many questions.
As part of the new policies, the Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, Omar García Harfuch, announced that a national investigation and intelligence system will be created that will unify the investigation capabilities of all the country’s security institutions.
When defending the initiative, García Harfuch, a former federal police officer who directed security in the Mexican capital for almost four years, expressed that the new intelligence system will allow “developing more effective strategies to combat criminal organizations.”
Although the new federal Secretary of Security has assured that there will be coordination between the police forces, the National Guard and the military in security and intelligence tasks, some analysts have expressed doubts that this can be achieved.
Another of the Sheinbaum government’s bets is the National Guard, a body that López Obrador created in 2019 to replace the defunct federal police and that since this month formally passed to the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) after being there for years. under civilian control.
García Harfuch ruled out on Tuesday that the transfer of the National Guard to the army represents a militarization of that body and defended the measure by ensuring that what is sought is to “take advantage of the capabilities” of the Sedena.
Despite having some 130,000 members, the National Guard has not had a major impact in combating violence, which some specialists attribute to the fact that the body has only dedicated itself to dissuasive activities and the control of migrants and does not investigate or confront directly to criminal cells.
In a country that last year closed with a record of around 30,000 murders, consolidating the trend of recent years, it seems very difficult to resolve the problem of violence in the medium term.
According to security analyst David Saucedo, it is a “wrong idea” that the aim is to solve crime through actions from the federal or state level and he told The Associated Press that the solution to the problem lies in the hands of the leaders of the Jalisco Nueva cartels. Generation and Sinaloa. “Those who set the rules, those who until now are the vanguard in this problem, are them,” he asserted.
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