Michoacán in Flames
Luis Hernández Navarro
Translated by Louise McDonnell
Michoacán is in flames, but according to the government’s optimism it won’t last. According to Monte Alejandro Rubido, spokesperson for the Commission for the Security and Comprehensive Development of Michoacán, the effective deployment of the federal forces and the substitution of the police in 27 municipalities has resulted that the criminal groups’ room for manoeuvre is “practically reduced to zero”.
Similar words were heard during the last two offensives. Today we know that they were a lie, mere words in the battle for public opinion. Their strategies were a failure. The bad guys maintain control of the territory, have grown their businesses and have expanded their influence in every ambit of society and state power. There is nothing to suggest that things will be different now.
Among others, three new facts distinguish the current government plan from previous plans. First, the pressure from foreign investors to resolve the problem of public insecurity. Second, the war against the Knights Templar Cartel by self-defence groups, a simultaneous expression of public discontent and a creation of the government. And third, the direct intervention of the group from the State of Mexico [Peña Nieto’s home-state and therefore his political allies] in the political life of Michoacán, which is outside the federal [constitutional] structure.
In late 2013, the military operations of the self-defence groups became an international scandal. The drug war in Michoacán became news for the foreign press. Foreign investors warned: structural reforms will not be of any use if the public insecurity problem is not resolved. A Reuters article on drug trafficking noted: “the future is uncertain, unless the Mexican government can restore order and win the fight against the Knights Templar Cartel.”
The Secretary of Government Relations, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, is responsible for the straw that broke the camel’s back. After the plane in which the leader of the self-defence groups, José Manuel Mireles, was travelling crashed, Osorio Chong, who is responsible for internal politics, declared: “Yes, we look after him, because he is a person who has hurt the cartels, especially the Knights Templar Cartel.”
When there is a confession, proof is not needed. Certainly, the self-defence groups are made up of many people who are affected by the Knights Templar Cartel; behind them there is genuine social unrest. They are the legitimate expression of the fact that the people have had enough. However, simultaneously, you can see the footprint of the federal government in their birth, armament and the permissiveness of their operations. Their existence is part of a risky State policy. Mireles’ accident made this strategy transparent and obliged the federal government to do a U-turn: the formation of paramilitary groups is not well received internationally.
The appointment of Alfredo Castillo, a close friend of Enrique Peña Nieto, as a modern viceroy, the commissioner for security and comprehensive development of Michoacán, puts the group from the State of Mexico in a key position to define national security policies. Incidentally, the Secretary of Government Relations’ ambit of influence is reduced in this matter.
Why is the success of this new government offensive in doubt? It is because the phenomenon of drug trafficking in the life of the state has taken root. The Knights Templar Cartel made their way in Michoacán society as a local self-defence vigilante group to deal with the barbarity of other cartels. From there, they wove a network of relationships with the economy, politics, justice, state security systems and society. This network provides them simultaneously with a real social basis and an enormous multitude of victims who hate and fear them.
The key geographic centres in the current dispute are the Tierra Caliente [Hot Country, near the Pacific Coast] in Michoacán, the port of Lázaro Cárdenas and the steep Sierra Madre del Sur mountains, which separate one city from the other.
Apatzingán and its valley is the epicentre of economic and political life in the Tierra Caliente. Here the headquarters of the institutions and the formal powers are found. Also Military Zone 43 is here, which has been so ineffective in combating drug trafficking. The bad guys established a kind of financial centre here, from which they control the income from the other municipalities. Their general headquarters are found in Tumbiscatio.
Even though the lack of water is evident in the rural Sierra de Coalcomán, an endless network of black hoses crosses vast expanses of land. They serve to transport the vital liquid from natural springs to the productive marijuana fields, across 60,000 square kilometres [23,000 sq. miles] of rugged terrain. Inhabitants of villages grow marijuana there with increasingly sophisticated agricultural techniques, in enclosed pieces of land so that the animals do not eat the plants.
The mountains of Michoacán occupy second place nationally in the production of opium and marijuana. But it is not the only region in the state where the drug traffickers operate. In the 217 kilometres [135 miles] of Pacific coast, line speed boats with outboard motors arrive, capable of transporting cocaine from Colombia without being detected by radars or discovered by coast guards, to be transported to the United States. In Lázaro Cárdenas, a container port in rapid expansion, the precursors needed to make methamphetamines in secret laboratories arrive; and from here shipments of every type of drugs leave.
On this material base, which generates a multimillion dollar revenue, the Knights Templar Cartel have constructed a prosperous criminal industry which forms part of other illegal activities, like selling protection to farmers and businesses, extortion, charging for the right to use commercial spaces and the sale of pirated products on the street. It involves businesses that launder their earnings through legal companies, like those that export iron ore to China.
Michoacán is in flames. To put out the fire the occupation of military-police in the area is not enough. It is necessary to rebuild all social relationships from scratch. Nothing in the current strategy suggests that this can be achieved.
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/01/21/index.php?section=politica&article=019a2pol&partner=rss
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Original post of Dorset Chiapas Solidarity Group.
Vota por este articulo en europa Zapatista.