The Latin American Report # 237
Mexico is red hot
From what I understand, a majority—relatively representative—of Mexicans believe that the political force of Andrés Manuel López Obrador is better than any other in the "market" to rule the destinies of the nation. They do not transfer to the veteran politician the critical responsibility for the scandalous violence reported daily, among political assassinations, massacres, and the appearance of mutilated or burned corpses. In truth, he does not bear all the responsibility for a crisis of (in)security that was enthroned long before he arrived at Constitution Square, but it is obvious that his plan to seed peace through "hugs" and not bullets has not improved the situation. Events such as the recent forced displacement of citizens from the municipalities of Pantelhó and Chenalhó, Chiapas state, are a sad reminder of the Mexican bloody nightmare. Some 700 people—most of them Tzotzil Indians—fled there to take refuge "after three days under siege by armed and hooded men" who threatened to kill them, they denounced. The statements show the impotence and the feeling of abandonment, while the Army is absent. "I left because the military did not enter (the community), I don't know what the military's schedule is, because when [criminals] shot at us there was no military", said a woman to the Spanish agency EFE.
The problem is not of now and this is the most serious. Pantelhó has simply exploded again, but life has been suffering there every day for a long time. About three years ago, for example, it was reported that the violence from organized crime—colluded with the authorities—had displaced 2,000 people. In July 2021, a self-defense group called "El Machete" was publicly presented, allegedly to defend the population. This narrative is very fertile in light of the evident incapacity of the authorities—at all levels—to guarantee citizen security, but it often hides the true purpose of some of these "self-defense groups", which is fighting for control of the territories. Anyway, El Machete tends to be seen as the "good" side of the internal conflict by the people, but last year the same paramilitary group they banished from Pantelhó in 2021 rose again, appealing to the same narrative of "defending the people from the bad guys". In mid-February, it was noted that several communities there and in Chenalhó were without electrical service after armed confrontations between El Machete and this other group called "Los Herrera". During the gun battles, people are trapped, with the painful toll of children killed by not "lost" but guilty bullets. Classes were suspended as teachers were rescued by the Army last week. An evangelical pastor was murdered with impunity in the middle of the street last Thursday. Such is life in a part of the Mexican Southeast.
Mueren dos niños durante ataque de grupo armado en Pantelhó, Chiapas https://t.co/e2qnriwmk7 via @Chiapasparalelo pic.twitter.com/fI5VOrckI8
— zona rebelde (@zonarebeldeontw) March 14, 2024
Pantelho bajo fuego.
— Alerta Chiapas (@AlertaChiapas) April 18, 2024
Desde la tarde de ayer grupos armados se enfrentan en dicha localidad. #Chiapas pic.twitter.com/sNtJZlGCjE
Meanwhile, a police officer is murdered practically every day in Mexico. From April 19 until yesterday, April 26, there were seven, bringing the total so far this year to nearly 100 officers killed. As always, those assigned to local forces are the most vulnerable, with 57 victims among them, followed by those assigned to guarantee order at the state level—37, some of them ministerial agents from different prosecutors' offices. Six out of ten of the agents killed were on duty when they were attacked. Chiapas, by the way, is the state with the third-highest number of murdered police officers, after the violent Guanajuato and the State of Mexico. Along with the pastor of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, on April 25, another 90 people were victims of intentional homicides throughout México, indicating a rate of 85 murders per day at that time for the week. Yesterday, the body of the director of a news media—who focused his work on denouncing organized crime—was found with a shot in the head, even though his family paid the ransom demand.
Two policemen were murdered this month in Tenango del Aire, State of Mexico (source).All this occurs while the notorious case of the 43 students from the Ayotzinapa rural normal school—disappeared more than 9 years ago—continues to ricochet through Mexican political developments. Their relatives demand results regarding AMLO's promise to get to the truth of what happened to them, so they have called for a boycott of the electoral process. The leader of MORENA for his part denounces that they are being used as political operators of the opposition, and has refused to attend them directly before the national elections, scheduled for next June 3. Look, who can oppose the struggle of the relatives of the students? With them, I find this case a shame and a sign of the institutional anomie that characterizes Mexico in terms of security. The current president has failed, for the moment, to fulfill his public commitment. But I also wonder: how was it that Enrique Peña Nieto reached the end of his term without solving the case?
The problem is regional
The Chilean security force known as Carabineros de Chile suffered a heavy blow on its anniversary day after three of its members were killed in an armed attack. The murdered officers were on patrol when unknown individuals shot at them. After killing the officers, the criminals set fire to their vehicle with them inside. According to reports, the region where the events occurred—in Arauco province—is plagued by rampant violence involving six criminal groups fighting for its control "to perpetrate assaults and truck robberies, taking advantage of the forests and complex rural roads that surround the area". The head of La Moneda Palace has declared insecurity as its main problem to be solved.
Boric held an emergency meeting after learning of the murder of the carabineros (source). The Government is being strongly criticized right now, starting with the carabineros' relatives, who rejected its declarations of support and promises of prompt clarification and zero impunity. Undoubtedly, the opposition will take advantage of this against the current president, who is in decline.Meanwhile, in Colombia, four people were murdered in the Colombian municipality of Corinto, in the embattled department of Cauca. One of the splintered groups of the extinct FARC-EP is reportedly active in the area. "The artist Sebastián Muñoz and his stage presenter [DJ] Villegas died on the night of Friday, April 26, in confusing events in the municipality of Corinto," reported the agency representing Muñoz, a 68-year-old singer of popular and northern Mexican music. Unidentified gunmen shot at the victims in a house where a private event—to which Muñoz had been summoned at the last minute—was being held. On the other hand, in Medellín, it is reported that another U.S. citizen—50 years old, the psychopath—was sent to preventive prison after being accused of sexually abusing a 15-year-old minor whom he contacted via social media. Brandon Seth Wood also allegedly provided drugs to the minor.
Finally, in Ecuador, seven alleged criminals were killed yesterday by "enraged" neighbors, who accused them of being repeat offenders engaged in motorcycle theft and extortion. One of the dead was allegedly a hitman. As you might guess, the events took place in the bloody province of Guayas, Ecuador's crime capital. "The residents recognized the deceased and told the police that these guys [were] robbing an area near Petrillo called La Artillería. The angry people [followed] them, one of them [fell] off the three-wheel motorcycle and was shot [fatally]. This vehicle in which the other five were fleeing swerved, [people] caught up with them and shot them all", said a police spokesman when the toll was still six dead, found in the three-wheel motorcycle—two of them—and scattered in a rice field. The seventh was found Saturday in a small pond. People self-defense in its purest way.
People withdraw the seventh body this Saturday (source).And this is all for our report today. I have referenced the sources dynamically in the text, and remember you can learn how and where to follow the LATAM trail news by reading my work here. Have a nice day.
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It seems to me that all of this violence is caused by too many unarmed people being available to victimize. The last story of the enraged citizens doing in seven robbers confirms to me that were more unarmed victims armed, there'd be a lot less murderous violence.
Thanks!
I missed this feedback somehow. I would like a society with fewer guns, even better without guns. But considering the incapacity of security forces to guarantee life where organized crime is enthroned, and claim victory over it, I think it is a plausible argument that people who are usually cannon fodder should have something to actively defend themselves with. Anyway, self-defense groups in the region derailed themselves over time, or were born ill. Thanks for sharing this point.
When we can have a society without evil, without crime, without lapse of virtue of any of it's members, or any threats - at all - from without, then we can have a society without personal arms. But you would not like that society.
It is hardship, opposition, and hazards that create our strengths. We have strength of will to overcome impediments. We have skin to prevent pathogens from consuming us. A perfectly peaceful universe will transform us into jellies in vats, without intelligence, without bones, without skin - and without any purpose whatsoever.
Government, the security forces you seem to want to be the only armed forces that exist, is organized crime. Every governmental edict is oppression. Every tax is theft. Every law is slavery. Within a century humanity will have the option to live without any government at all, in habitats crafted by themselves at a place in space they choose where they develop free resources at their whim, and no army can come with guns to force them to obey any law, pay any tax, or agree to any dictate. People will have the option to be utterly, completely free, and as prosperous as they choose by developing the almost limitless resources just sitting there, unowned, unclaimed, unmarked by environmental concerns. Their only limits will be themselves. The combination of AI automating development, solar and nuclear power, 3D printing of structures and machinery, and aquaponics availed CRISPR to create every nutrient, food, or pharmaceutical desirable, creates the ability to go anywhere and build anything anyone wants, and because armies cannot square off against a diaspora, no law or government can be imposed on people in space.
I am absolutely certain there will be lots of things that happen in those circumstances I will vehemently disapprove of. But what they do with their freedom will be none of my business, nor yours, nor any junta, cabal, or political party's. What I do with my freedom will be my only business, and the same for you and everyone else, which is as it should be.
There will never be a society in the foreseeable future that does not face threats, and there will therefore never be a society that is rational and helpless. The best we can hope for is societies that are capable of devastating lethality against any potential enemy, yet utterly dedicated to the felicity and happiness of people that are not enemies. That is what I hope for, armed and dangerous people dedicated to the felicity and happiness of everyone that does not seek to harm them. An unarmed people is a helpless people, and we can see what always happens to helpless people in a world with evil psychopaths in it: they are slaughtered, their land and possessions taken, their children raped and enslaved.
I'm against being slaughtered, impoverished, and my children being raped and enslaved, so I support being armed, and more dangerous than any enemy that threatens. The only group that should be delegated the power of self defense is everyone. Any restriction on the right to keep and bear arms ends up empowering the unrestricted to slaughter and enslave the restricted.
If you cannot be good, you cannot be permitted by society to be armed. If you cannot be armed, you cannot be free. If you cannot be free, you are a slave. Free people are armed people. It is their force of arms that makes them free, as it always has, and it always will. Societies of good people have always existed as societies of armed free people, and no other kind of freedom has ever existed, or will ever exist. There have always been evil people that will harm good people if they can, and this is why good people can only exist if they are free, armed, and dangerous.
I agree point by point, especially with the philosophical approach to life. When I spoke of State security forces being efficient in fighting crime I was thinking of ones that were as clean as possible, although it may seem innocent to conceive such behavior. I understand that today they are colluded and corrupted, or that they constitute in themselves the very source of evil or its repressive expression. I'm reading something about Davy Crockett, an interesting life. Thanks for your always sound feedback.