The government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced Wednesday security reinforcements in a region of Mexico hit by the increase in violence attributed to narco-trafficking, testing its strategy against cartels.
Mr. Lopez Obrador traveled with his government to Zacatecas state, where 16 bodies have been found hanged since Thursday, the usual method of intimidation by cartels when they dispute over territory and drug markets. Zacatecas recorded 1,277 assassinations in 2021, compared to 920 in 2020 and 560 in 2019, according to Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval.
According to experts and authorities, the region has become a battleground between the two most powerful criminal groups in the country, the Sinaloa cartel heir to “Chapo” Guzman, who is serving a life sentence in the United States. United, and Jalisco New Generation. The United States has pledged $ 10 million for the arrest of its leader, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes.
“We had to be here, in these circumstances of insecurity and violence,” said President Lopez Obrador, who came to support Governor David Monreal Avila, who belongs to his Movement for National Regeneration (Morena) party.
The Minister of Defense announced 460 military reinforcements in the region. “We will thus avoid the confrontation of criminal groups that generate violence in the state,” said Mr. Sandoval.
A total of 3,848 elements of the army are already deployed in the region.
Faced with the rebound in violence, the regional government dismissed its regional security official last week, replacing him with a retired general, Adolfo Marin Marin.
According to official figures, Mexico has recorded more than 300,000 assassinations since 2006, when ex-President Felipe Calderon launched an all-out war on drug trafficking.
Coming from the opposition, left-wing President Lopez Obrador wanted to implement a policy of “abrazos, no balazos” (“kisses, not balls”).