MEXICO CITY: The number of homicides in Mexico has grown during the new coronavirus pandemic, including a 9.2 percent increase in murders of women, according to government figures released Monday.
Data for the first half of 2020 showed homicides increased 1.9 percent to 17,982, compared to 17,653 in the same period in 2019.
Activists have always been concerned that increasing the confinement of families in their homes would increase the murders of women, and in fact grew from 448 in the first half of 2019 to 489 in the same period in 2020.
Meanwhile, some experts hoped that the blockade caused by the coronavirus would limit the activity of drug trafficking gangs, which is one of the main causes of violence, but on Monday the Department of Defense published an analysis that said a disturbing video of gunmen from the mass drug cartel posted online last week The week was truly genuine and had received around 16 million views in just a few days.
The department said the video showed a column of about 75 Jalisco cartel gunmen dressed in military-style uniforms with a dozen homemade armored vans, one anti-aircraft gun, nine strap-powered machine guns, ten .50-caliber sniper rifles, six grenade launchers and 54 assault rifles.
The department said the video showed “evidence of military-style training” and could have been timed to coincide with the July 17 birthday of Jalisco cartel leader Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera.
The department said the video was apparently filmed near the border of the Jalisco and Guanajuato states and shows a “elite group” of cartel gunmen formed in 2019 who have been linked to an attack on police, but who apparently they have not used armored vehicles in combat. or directly attacked federal forces.
Many of the trucks have welded steel armor, turrets, and firing slots. Some were painted with the initials of the Jalisco poster.
The army said that “the weapons, equipment and vehicles used show unlimited use of the money obtained from illegal activities.” While other drug cartels have released videos showing its impressive firepower in the past, the military said the group shown on the Jalisco tapes “is the only group of its kind.”
The department also suggested that the Jalisco cartel may have been filmed and another video “in response” to a suggestion by another leader of a drug gang that he could ask the Sinaloa cartel for help in fighting Jalisco. Jalisco is fighting the Santa Rosa de Lima gang for control of the central state of Guanajuato.
In a video posted in June, José Antonio Yépez, the Santa Rosa gang leader, spoke about teaming up with the Sinaloa cartel to fight the Jalisco raid. That power war has already made Guanajuato the most deadly state in Mexico. Guanajuato was where gunmen broke into a drug rehab center in early July and killed at least 27 people. Those murders were not included in the figures released Monday.
Mexico’s security analyst Alejandro Hope wrote in a column in the El Universal newspaper on Monday that the cartels have shown similar or larger displays of force in the past, and that the Jalisco force would likely avoid a direct confrontation with the Mexican Army. But he said more rural patrols were needed to establish government control.
“The importance of the videos should not be minimized, but it is also unprecedented,” Hope wrote. “But the fact that these things happen over and over again shows the structural weakness of the Mexican government. That is what we should be talking about. “
The Department of Public Safety noted in its report that the growth rate of homicides has slowed somewhat. But the continued high level of killings is likely to draw more attention to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s policy of avoiding direct confrontation with the cartels. He prefers to tackle social problems such as poverty and unemployment that, according to him, contribute to crime.
But López Obrador has given the federal security forces, the Army, the Navy, and the newly created National Guard so many duties outside of law enforcement that it would seem to leave them understaffed to address the drug cartel problem in war.
For example, approximately 50% of the 173,776 non-administrative and support employees of the three available federal forces are currently assigned to crime-free fighting tasks, although several thousand more carry out drug eradication or other general patrol efforts.
Non-military and non-security functions performed by federal forces include transportation and supporting efforts to combat the pandemic, protect pipelines, monitor migrants, and build infrastructure projects.
The effects of the blockade on crime were varied and, in some cases, unclear. Authorities reported a 12.1% increase in street-level drug trafficking cases during the first six months of the year, but it was unclear if that was due to reduced street traffic during the pandemic, which it would have made drug deals easier for the police to detect.
The pandemic seemed to have resulted in a sharp drop in some types of crime. Because far fewer people ride buses, passenger thefts on public transportation decreased 45.1% during the first six months of the year, and kidnappings decreased 37.3% compared to the same period in 2019. Other types of robberies also decreased.
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