A new level in narco-violence in Mexico? At least six people died and 12 others were injured in an “unprecedented” explosive attack targeting security forces on Tuesday near Guadalajara (west).
“It’s something we’ve never seen before here,” Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro said Wednesday, July 12, despite being the head of one of the most violent states in the federation (1,095 homicides and 750 disappearances since the beginning of the year alone). The governor denounced “a brutal act of terror” that amounted to a “challenge to the Mexican state as a whole”.
Three police officers are among the victims, the governor said. The attack also killed two civilians, according to the prosecutor quoted by the newspaper Milenio. The attackers used “seven” “improvised explosive” devices, according to the governor, who said the attack targeted “staff of the State Prosecutor’s Office (of Jalisco) and the municipal police of Tlajomulco”.
In this town near Guadalajara, some 200 bodies were found this year in mass graves. These are presumed victims of the war between the cartels. The security forces targeted by the explosive attack also went on Tuesday evening to the scene of the possible discovery of a mass grave, after an anonymous call to the representative of one of the collectives of civilians who are looking for the people disappeared.
According to information from the local branch of the Televisa television channel, the explosion occurred near a vehicle carrying the police. It was “a trap” designed to get “our police presence”, according to the governor. “We never received this call,” Indira Navarro, from the Jalisco Research Mothers collective, told reporters.
Jalisco is the Mexican state (there are 32 in total) with the highest number of missing persons (some 15,000 out of a total of 111,203 recorded since 1962).
In June, a National Guard agent died and others were injured in a car bomb explosion in Guanajuato state. Last Sunday, in the neighboring state of Michoacan, one person was injured in the explosive attack carried by drone in the village of Apatzingan.
The objective is “to weaken the strike force of rivals from other cartels, as well as security forces, and to cause terror among the civilian population”, summarizes security consultant David Saucedo, who speaks to the Agence France-Presse of “narcoterrorism”.
State forces were also challenged on Monday and Tuesday in Guerrero, where 10 police officers and three officials were held hostage by protesters infiltrated by organized crime, authorities said. These 13 people were finally released Tuesday after negotiations between the federal state and the demonstrators, who had also broken down the door of the palace of the governor of Guerrero with an armored police vehicle and blocked a highway.
Mexico has recorded some 350,000 murders while tens of thousands of people have gone missing since 2006 and the outbreak of a military offensive against organized crime. The CJNG is accused of shooting down a helicopter with a rocket launcher in 2015, killing six Jalisco state officials.
The leader of the CJNG, Nemesio Oseguera, “El Mencho”, is wanted by the United States, which offers 10 million dollars for his capture. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is accused of having preached conciliation with the cartels, which American Republicans would like to classify in the list of terrorist organizations.
“Peace is the fruit of justice, not of coercive measures”, repeated Wednesday Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who had summed up his policy with a formula (“Abrazos, no balazos”, “Hugs, not shootings”) .