I’ll admit that I don’t like the term “narcoterrorism,” but as Gancho argues, “terrorism” is a pretty accurate term for the recent mass attacks in Torreón. Here is what he had to say:
The mass killings in Torreón have gone largely unnoticed, but 40 innocents have been killed this year not because of any gang affiliation, but because they chose to have a drink in a certain venue. The targets were the civilians. The goal of the attacks was to kill them by the bunch, and to scare the rest of us away from certain bars. And it’s worked; there are basically no nightclubs open in the town.
The tactic of targeting civilians in Torreón doesn’t seem to be spreading nationally, and Mexico isn’t turning into Colombia. However, we need to call a spade a spade, and react accordingly. Until this week, Torreón hadn’t had a federal security presence since last year, despite terrorist tactics being employed on various occasions going back to January. If Mexico’s worried about the Colombianization of its security situation, pacifying Torreón and punishing the gang behind these killings should have been one of the government’s highest priorities. Instead, it sent the message that you can intentionally kill civilians by the dozen, and as long as you don’t score big-time media attention, you don’t have to worry about the Mexican government.
What we do not know is why the gangs operating in the city want to terrorize the citizenry. My own hypothesis is that they are either setting up a protection racket, or dueling it out for control of one. I suspect the former, for the simple reason that the attacks seem to have scared the population away from everywhere, and not just the places in question. (There is evidence that the Zetas and La Familia are fighting to be the first to set up a citywide racket, but that is just a wrinkle on the basic hypothesis.) It is possible that these are just incredibly clumsy hits, of course.
The amazing thing is the incompetence of Mexican law enforcement. In the U.S., attacks like these would immediately prompt hundreds of arrests. Every existing warrant would be executed, every parole threatened. The police would extract plea bargains for information, make more arrests, and find evidence of other crimes among those suspected. (This does, of course, assume that the police care about the victims. As the citizens of many American inner cities can tell you, that is not always the case.) Yet Mexico seems to simply not have anything resembling an investigatory police force, at least not in the north.
Consider the murder of the U.S. consular officials, gunned down in their white SUV returning from a party in Juárez. The U.S. immediately responded with Operation Knock Down, which sent hundreds of federal, state, and local agents into El Paso. It resulted in 54 arrests. The resulting information was passed to authorities in Mexico, enabling the arrest of three gang members, most prominently Jesús Ernesto “El Camello” Chávez Castillo. The rub? The U.S. does not think any of the three were actually involved in the killings.
But they were killers. Why did it take evidence from the U.S. to arrest them? The gangs, of course, threatened to retaliate against U.S. law enforcement. So far, they have been unable to. Which is not surprising: they would be shut down the next day. Unofficial DEA spokesmen have politely expressed frustration that Mexico has not given them access to the information that they would need to solve the crime.
The strange thing, which I will try to talk about later, is that everyone in El Paso believes that law enforcement is corrupt in Texas. They especially believe that federal ICE officials are all on the take. Yet they (which includes law enforcement officers from New Mexico) also believe that the corruption, unlike in Mexico, has no effect on police ability to maintain public order.
Before I explain why they think that, I would like to ask my readers three things. What do you think the killings are about? Why do you think Mexican police forces seem ineffective? And, most importantly, why do you think the violence hasn’t crossed the border? I would really like to hear thoughts on this.
By the way, go read Diego Valle on the topic!
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