The escalation in drug cartel-related violence, including indiscriminate attacks on civilians, has heightened concerns about whether Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s “hugs, not bullets” security strategy is working.
Lopez Obrador’s approach has come under increasing scrutiny as his critics accuse him of attempting to militarize the Latin American nation by placing the National Guard under army control.
In August, a wave of violence in several cities, including Ciudad Juárez on the border with the United States, killed 12 people – including several civilians.
Such attacks “create panic among civilians and confusion among political authorities. Security agencies are paralyzed with no ability to respond,” national security adviser David Saucedo told AFP.
Saucedo branded the violence as “narcoterrorism” — a term Lopez Obrador’s administration no longer uses.
In Ciudad Juarez, gang members carried out a killing spree in what Lopez Obrador described as retaliation following a prison riot involving two rival gangs.
Gang violence killed a suspected criminal and burned businesses and vehicles after a failed attempt to apprehend two cartel bosses in the eastern and central states of Jalisco and Guanajuato.
The government’s response was not to “investigate why it happened and implement the kind of strategies that have been shown to reduce criminal involvement,” said Michael Lettieri, co-founder of the Mexico Violence Resource Project at the University of California, San Diego .
Instead, she ordered the deployment of soldiers — a response similar to previous governments that Lopez Obrador accused of fueling violence by militarizing the drug war.
– “Two Wars” –
While recent attacks have rocked the country, there are dozens of homicides in Mexico every day, and most don’t draw much attention.
The country faces “two wars”: high-profile attempts to capture gang leaders and violence against ordinary Mexicans that the government has failed to fight, said Laura Atuesta, drug policy program coordinator at the Center for Economic Research and Education.
Criminals “keep killing people, breaking into houses and making people disappear,” she said.
Lopez Obrador says his “hugs not bullets” strategy aims to tackle violent crime at its roots by tackling poverty and inequality with social programs rather than the army.
The new approach is “reducing violence,” the president said in his annual State of the Union address last week, adding that federal crime has fallen by 29.3 percent since he took office in 2018.
Between January and July, homicides fell 8.7 percent to 18,093 victims compared to the same period in 2021, according to the government.
More than 340,000 people have been killed in a spiral of bloodshed since then-President Felipe Calderon’s government deployed the army to fight drug cartels in 2006.
Human rights organization Amnesty International has urged Lopez Obrador to abandon his plan to take military control of the National Guard.
The president created the new security force in 2019 with a civilian command to replace federal police accused of corruption and rights violations.
“Experience shows that Mexico is more dangerous today than it was 16 years ago when it was decided that the military should take to the streets,” Amnesty said last month.
“There has been an increase in forced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, physical, psychological and even sexual torture,” she added.
Lopez Obrador’s plan was approved by the lower house of Congress, but it seems unlikely it will pass the upper chamber, so he has vowed to seek other legal avenues.
Even if the National Guard is placed under military control, experts say it will take time for the force to develop operational capabilities.
Lopez Obrador is just managing the security issue rather than solving it, and “laying the groundwork for a future war” that won’t happen until his term expires in 2024, Saucedo said.
