In
Fresnillo,
96
percent
of
residents
say they
feel
unsafe —
the
highest
percentage
of any
city in
Mexico.(Photo
by
Alejandro
Cegarra/The
New York
Times) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Guadalupe’s
oldest
son was
murdered
in
Fresnillo
last
month.
(Photo
by
Alejandro
Cegarra/The
New York
Times) |
|
‘We’re
Living
in
Hell’:
Inside
Mexico’s
Most
Terrified
City
By
Oscar
Lopez
nytimes.com
FRESNILLO,
Mexico —
The
violence
was
already
terrifying,
she
said,
when
grenades
exploded
outside
her
church
in broad
daylight
some
five
years
ago.
Then
children
in town
were
kidnapped,
disappearing
without
a trace.
Then the
bodies
of the
executed
were
dumped
in city
streets.
And
then
came the
day last
month
when
armed
men
burst
into her
home,
dragged
her
15-year-old
son and
two of
his
friends
outside
and shot
them to
death,
leaving
Guadalupe
— who
didn’t
want her
full
name
published
out of
fear of
the men
— too
terrified
to leave
the
house.
“I
do not
want the
night to
come,”
she
said,
through
tears.
“Living
with
fear is
no life
at all.”
For
most of
the
population
of
Fresnillo,
a mining
city in
central
Mexico,
a
fearful
existence
is the
only one
they
know; 96
percent
of
residents
say they
feel
unsafe,
the
highest
percentage
of any
city in
Mexico,
according
to a
recent
survey
from
Mexico’s
national
statistics
agency.
The
economy
can boom
and
bust,
presidents
and
parties
and
their
promises
can come
and go,
but for
the
city’s
140,000
people,
as for
many in
Mexico,
there is
a
growing
sense
that no
matter
what
changes,
the
violence
endures.
Ever
since
Mexico’s
government
began
its war
on the
drug
cartels
nearly
15 years
ago,
murder
statistics
have
climbed
inexorably.
In
2018,
during
his run
for
president,
Andrés
Manuel
López
Obrador
offered
a grand
vision
to
remake
Mexico —
and a
radically
new way
of
tackling
the
violence.
He would
break
with the
failed
tactics
of his
predecessors,
he said.
Instead
of
arresting
and
killing
traffickers
as
previous
leaders
had
done, he
would
focus on
the
causes
of
violence:
“hugs
not
bullets,”
he
called
it. He
was
swept to
victory.
But
three
years
after
his
landslide
win, and
with his
Morena
party in
control
of
Congress,
the
drumbeat
of death
continues,
suggesting
that Mr.
López
Obrador’s
approach
has
failed,
fueling
in many
a
paralyzing
helplessness.
“We’re
living
in
hell,”
said
Victor
Piña,
who ran
for
mayor of
Fresnillo
in the
June
elections
and
watched
an aide
gunned
down
beside
him
during a
pre-campaign
event.
Zacatecas,
the
state
Fresnillo
is in,
has the
country’s
highest
murder
rate,
with 122
deaths
in June,
according
to the
Mexican
government.
Lately,
it has
become a
national
horror
show,
with
cadavers
found
dangling
from
bridges,
stuffed
into
plastic
bags or
even
tied to
a cross.
Across
Mexico,
murders
have
dropped
less
than 1
percent
since
Mr.
López
Obrador
took
office,
according
to the
country’s
statistics
agency.
That was
enough
for the
president
to
claim,
in a
speech
last
month,
that
there
had been
an
improvement
on a
problem
his
administration
inherited.
“There
is peace
and
calm,”
he said
in June.
Many
in
Fresnillo
disagree.
“‘Hugs
not
bullets’
doesn’t
work,”
said
Javier
Torres
Rodríguez,
whose
brother
was shot
and
killed
in 2018.
“We’re
losing
the
ability
to be
shocked.”
“We’re
losing
the
ability
to be
shocked,”
said
Javier
Torres
Rodríguez,
whose
brother
was
killed
in 2018.
Credit...Alejandro
Cegarra
for The
New York
Times
Among
other
strategies,
Mr.
López
Obrador
has
focused
on
tackling
what he
sees as
the root
causes
of
violence,
funding
social
programs
to
improve
education
and
employment
for
young
people.
His
government
has also
gone
after
the
financing
behind
organized
crime.
In
October,
the
authorities
said
they had
frozen
1,352
bank
accounts
linked
to 14
criminal
groups,
including
powerful
drug
cartels.
But
the
collection
of
programs
and
law-enforcement
actions
never
coalesced
into a
clear
public
policy,
critics
said.
There is
“an
unstoppable
situation
of
violence
and a
tragic
deterioration
of
public
security
in
Mexico,”
said
Angelica
Duran-Martinez,
an
associate
professor
of
political
science
at the
University
of
Massachusetts
Lowell.
“There’s
not a
clear
security
policy.”
Mr.
López
Obrador
has also
doubled
down on
his
support
for the
armed
forces,
embracing
the
militarization
that
also
marked
previous
administrations.
One
central
pillar
of his
approach
to
fighting
crime
has been
the
creation
of the
National
Guard, a
100,000-strong
federal
security
force
deployed
across
some 180
regional
barracks
nationwide.
Last
week Mr.
López
Obrador
announced
that the
guard
would
receive
an
additional
$2.5
billion
dollars
in
funding.
A street
mural
shows a
young
man
killed
in the
Olivares
neighborhood
of
Fresnillo.
Credit...Alejandro
Cegarra
for The
New York
Times
But
security
experts
say the
guard,
which
the
president
plans to
incorporate
into the
armed
forces,
has
proved
ineffective.
Without
a clear
mandate,
it has
focused
more on
tackling
low-level
crime
than
cartel
violence.
And as a
security
force
made up
of
members
of the
federal
police,
the
military
and
other
security
professionals,
it has
not
found
cohesion.
“It’s a
force
that
comes
out of
trying
to mix
oil and
water,”
said
Eduardo
Guerrero,
a Mexico
City
security
analyst.
“There
are a
lot of
internal
struggles,
and that
has
detracted
from the
performance
of the
Guard.”
In
Fresnillo,
the
National
Guard
hasn’t
done
enough,
according
to the
city’s
mayor,
Saúl
Monreal,
a member
of the
president’s
Morena
party.
“They’re
here,
they’re
present,
they do
patrols,
but what
we
really
need
right
now is
to be
fighting
organized
crime,”
Mr.
Monreal
said.
Mr.
Monreal
was
re-elected
during
national
midterms
in June.
This was
one of
Mexico’s
most
violent
elections
on
record,
with at
least
102
people
killed
during
the
campaign,
yet
another
sign of
the
country’s
unraveling
security.
His
family
is
politically
powerful.
His
brother,
David,
is
governor-elect
of
Zacatecas.
Another
brother,
Ricardo,
leads
the
Morena
party in
the
Senate
and has
said he
intends
to run
for
president
in 2024.
But not
even the
family’s
political
prominence
has
managed
to
rescue
the city
or the
state.
Fresnillo’s
mayor,
Saúl
Monreal,
said the
National
Guard
hasn’t
done
enough.
Credit...Alejandro
Cegarra
for The
New York
Times
Bordering
eight
other
states,
Zacatecas
has long
been
central
to the
drug
trade, a
crossroads
between
the
Pacific,
where
narcotics
and
drugmaking
products
are
shipped
in, and
northern
states
along
the
United
States
border.
Fresnillo,
which
sits in
the
center
of
important
roads
and
highways,
is
strategically
vital.
But
for much
of its
recent
history,
residents
say they
were
largely
left
alone.
That
began
changing
around
2007 and
2008 as
the
government’s
assault
on the
cartels
led them
to
splinter,
evolve
and
spread.
In
the last
few
years,
the
region
has
become
embroiled
in a
battle
between
two of
the
country’s
most
powerful
organized
crime
groups:
the
Sinaloa
Cartel
and the
Jalisco
New
Generation
Cartel.
Children
exercising
as part
of a
local
crime-prevention
program.Credit...Alejandro
Cegarra
for The
New York
Times
Caught
in the
middle
of the
fighting
are
residents
like
Guadalupe.
She can
remember
sitting
on the
stoop
with
neighbors
until
midnight
as a
young
girl.
Now, the
city
lies
desolate
after
dark.
Guadalupe
does not
let her
children
play
outside
unsupervised,
but even
that
couldn’t
stop the
violence
from
tearing
her
family
apart.
On the
night
her son
was
killed,
in
mid-July,
four
armed
men
stormed
into her
home,
dragging
out her
son,
Henry,
and two
friends
who were
sleeping
over.
There
was a
burst of
gunfire,
and then
the
assailants
were
gone.
It
was
Guadalupe
who
found
the
teenagers’
bodies.
Now
she and
her
family
live in
terror.
Too
scared
to stay
in the
same
house,
they
moved in
with
Guadalupe’s
parents
in a
different
part of
town.
But the
fear
remained.
Her
10-year-old
daughter
can
barely
sleep,
she
said,
and
Guadalupe
keeps
dreaming
of her
son’s
killing.
The
motive,
and the
identity
of the
killers,
remain
unknown.
Guadalupe
has
thought
about
leaving
town or
even
taking
her own
life.
But for
now, she
sits in
her
parents’
small,
cinder-block
house,
the
curtains
drawn,
the
shadows
broken
by the
candles
of a
little
altar to
Henry
and his
fallen
friends.
“There’s
nothing
here,”
she
said.
“The
fear has
overwhelmed
us.”
Advertise With Us:
Certified Minority Business Enterprise
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|