The arrest of Ismael El Mayo Zambada opened several discussions around the role of the Mexican Government in the fight against organized crime and regarding the alleged collusion between politicians and public officials with drug trafficking groups, especially with the Sinaloa Cartel: the most institutionalized on the Mexican criminal map and -perhaps- the only one capable of enforcing the pax narca.
Infobae Mexico spoke with Edgardo Buscaglia, the Argentine academic and expert in economics and law, who in turn recalled that upon the arrival of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the Presidency of Mexico, he questioned the first person in charge of public security of the so-called Fourth Transformation (Alfonso Durazo) about whether they would resort to negotiating with organized crime so that it would be a single criminal group that would take more power over the others.
“From what they explained to me, I got the feeling that the Sinaloa Cartel was the most institutionalized in Mexico (…) It has a social policy, a way of capturing the social fabric to protect itself; it offers work and has had an enormous network of political protection for decades”: Edgardo Buscaglia.
The pax narca project – giving the criminal monopoly to a single group to reduce the rates of violence in a region – has failed in “the dictatorships” where it has been implemented, Buscaglia said: from Chile with Pinochet, El Salvador, South Korea, Venezuela and Putin’s Russia.
The idea of pax narca in Mexico is not new. In the so-called “war against drugs” of Felipe Calderón, a part of the federal government was accused of tilting the balance in favor of the Sinaloa Cartel, capturing and focusing the State’s military force on its rivals and with Genaro García Luna as the main executor of this policy. In that era, big bosses fell, such as Arturo and Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, Heriberto Lazcano, “Nacho” Coronel and Óscar “El Lobo” Valencia Nava, among others.
“Hugs, not bullets” failed
There is a phrase attributed to Juan José Esparragoza Moreno, alias “El Azul”, co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, which states: “Social peace does not depend on the government, but on the agreements reached by the cartels.”
Before the fall of Mayo Zambada – arrested on July 25 in New Mexico, United States – the governor of Sinaloa Rubén Rocha Moya boasted that the state was one of the safest in the country, with low homicide rates; However, a month later, this narco peace collapsed with the outbreak of the war between Los Chapitos and La Mayiza (Pizzas vs Sombreros) that only on September 15th -on Independence Day- 14 people were killed. It is worth remembering that the president was pointed out by the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel as one of the attendees who would attend the meeting in which he was allegedly betrayed, kidnapped and taken to the United States.
“Mexico is full of fiefdoms of politicians, governors and mayors who work for different criminal groups; unlike Russia and Chile (with Pinochet), who did concentrate political power, avoided fiefdoms and then made the criminals do the dirty work of the State”: Edgardo Buscaglia.
After the conversation with Alfonso Durazo (now governor of Sonora), Edgardo Buscaglia states that he understood that the idea of negotiating with the Sinaloa Cartel was going to fail and would not be carried out, however: “later we saw that the attacks against the Sinaloa Cartel did not happen through the policy of ‘hugs, not bullets’ and it was intended to bring organized crime to the negotiating table, with the idea that they would not be treated (without arrests or confrontations) as with Felipe Calderón.”
“The Sinaloa Cartel has become a parallel state in Mexico; López Obrador has gone from bad to worse, in the sense that during his mandate this group became stronger; and if there is any arrest against the cartel, it is due to North American pressure.”
Edgardo Buscaglia’s words take us back to the role of the Mexican Government after the arrest of the boss of bosses: it took a day to confirm that El Mayo Zambada was indeed arrested, he never knew that one of Los Chapitos was negotiating his surrender – and to this day AMLO asks for information on the agreements between Joaquín Guzmán López and the US -; as if that were not enough, the doubts regarding the role of Rubén Rocha Moya and other politicians and officials (Héctor Melesio Cuén and the former prosecutor Sara Bruna) of Sinaloa in the complex scenario that today has an entire population under siege of bullets remain unclear.
The drug war peace was broken on September 9 and to date has led to 71 intentional homicides committed in 15 days of war.
Source: infobae