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Photo: Dario Lopez-Mills / AP / TT
Mexican military. Stock Photography.
Murders and the war on drug cartels continue to claim victims in Mexico.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s strategies to combat violence have been unsuccessful, and on Monday he ordered the military to continue participating in the active work of making the streets safer.
The military, under the direction of the National Guard, will patrol the streets until March 2024, that is, a few months before López Obrador’s mandate.
In doing so, it extends a measure for which it criticized former President Felipe Calderón.
López Obrador has previously opposed demands for tougher confrontations with the gang to prioritize instead addressing the roots of the problem, such as poverty and unemployment. Among other things, he noted that violence only increased when the government in 2006 deployed the military against the cartels.
His line of “hugs, no bullets” has not yet paid off. In March of this year alone, an estimated 3,000 people have been killed in Mexico, the second highest monthly number ever measured in the country. In 2019, around 35,000 homicides occurred in the country.
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