 |
| Police in Tepito open air market. Note the Virgin of Guadalupe, the 'Mother of Mexico', in background Photo: Cuartoscuro |
MEXICO CITY – Residents of the Tepito neighborhood remain indifferent towards the latest police operation led by Mexico City’s government following recent acts of violence.
In the streets surrounding the district, which is considered a focal point for informal trade in the capital, cars and motorbikes compete for right of way against police vans and officers sent in by the local government to increase security. The police, sometimes on foot, sometimes in vans, are concentrated in the outskirts of the district and plainclothes officers patrol the streets at the centre, traders told CNNMéxico.
“They patrol around here but you can tell straightaway that they’re not local,” said Ramón, a counterfeit glasses seller who preferred not to disclose his real name for fear of reprisals.Ramón, who continued attending to his potential buyers throughout the conversation, noted that business was the same as before the police operation.
“At first, yeah, it scared the clients off a bit, but then things got back to normal…I think the rain has done us more damage”, he said. [MV Note: It is now the rainy season.]Tepito, located just a few streets from the historic center of the capital, is one of the country’s key distribution centers for pirated goods. According to the Chamber of Small-Business, Services and Tourism of Mexico City (CANACOPE), the scale of business in this area is difficult to assess given its informal nature. However, the CANACOPE suggests that the volumes are comparable to those that pass through the Central de Abastos, the biggest food market in the country.
According to the CANACOPE, Tepito is home to most of the counterfeit product sellers in the city.
At her children’s clothing stall, Lourdes Ruíz confirms the district’s apparent calm.
“Do you see anything out of the ordinary, anyone looking worried?” she asked, pointing out various buyers. “We’re used to this here. It’s always the same when there’s some fuss like this, they send in the police and then it all gets forgotten.”Close to the historic center, Tepito has almost every kind of product on offer, from old clothing for one peso [about US 8 cents] to plasma television screens for 10,000 pesos [USD$777], from furniture and antiques to drugs. Its reputation for commerce dates back to its time as a small settlement of the Aztec empire.
“Everyone here knows where they sell the drugs; I don’t know why the police are making such a fuss here where we’re just traders,” said Janet, a food seller.The police operation was announced on the 7th of June by the head of the city government, Miguel Ángel Mancera, following an attack at a local Body Extreme gym, which left four people dead.
In his announcement, Mancera attributed the attack to gangs of criminals involved in drug dealing, who aimed to “destabilize” the area.
“We are not going to give them the impression that there is a lack of authority, and we are going to do this emphatically,” he said.The attack in the gym took place just two weeks after twelve young people disappeared from a nightclub in Zona Rosa, several of them residents of Tepito.
Alongside the police operation, the Secretary for Social Development in the capital announced the launch of ten initiatives to reweave the social fabric of the district. Among them, Rosa Icela Rodríguez mentioned scholarships, medical conferences and actions to prevent addiction.
However, the scale of the operation in the district has varied. Last Thursday, 350 agents from the local Attorney General’s Office and a further 200 from the Secretariat of Public Security were involved, but this figure decreased at the weekend.
“(Police) presence is going to be permanent. We’ve just increased the number of officers because over the weekend there’s more trade. As of tomorrow, however, we’ll be back to 200 people per institution,” stated Attorney General Rodolfo Ríos Garza, while supervising the zone last Thursday.“La Fortaleza” (Strength) and Previous Operations
In February 2007, the capital’s government confiscated a local piece of land known as La Fortaleza, with the aim of dealing a blow to organised crime which was reportedly based there.
In the face of what some residents considered an affront to the district, a group of artists created a concrete monument nearby as a symbolic homage to the women of the community, whom they described as “the true strength of Tepito.”
A small concrete base, where tourists often take photos, reads:
“to the seven invisible bitches [meaning dissidents, those who fight against injustice] of Tepito. Those from the past and all those yet to come.”The seven bitches referred to on the monument are a group of local women, including Ruíz, who is known as the Queen of Puns for her skillful use of double meanings in speech.
“We Tepiteños have tried get rid of the stigma [on our name] but we’ve only managed to get rid of the Te and the o,” she joked.
MV Note: While Tepito is the shortened Spanish name for the Nahuatl 'teocali-tepiton', residents say it comes from "Si veo a un ratero te pito" (If I see a thief, I'll whistle at you). Hence, the play on words, i.e., they haven't gotten rid of the 'piten', the police whistling. See excellent article on this historic neighborhood in Wikipedia.As well as the intervention in La Fortaleza, various operations have provoked clashes between residents and authorities. One of the most recent examples was in June of 2012, when around 200 people armed with sticks and firecrackers drove back riot police, in an incident sparked by an operation to crack down on pirated goods.
In June of 2010, rumors about the supposed kidnapping of two children led to residents occupying neighboring streets for almost 18 hours.
Requests for Permanent Operations
As well as the Attorney General, legislators from different political parties have reviewed the police operations in Tepito. During a night patrol, the PAN deputies Santiago Taboada and Olivia Garza made calls for the operations in the district to become permanent.
“This operation is important (…) but we insist on the fact that this task is not just a week’s work, so we can just take a photo and go home to bed. It has to be a permanent operation and, above all, one which safeguards other districts of the city,” Taboada said.Following the disappearance of twelve young people from a bar in Zona Rosa and the murder of four people in a gym in Tepito, congressional deputy Jorge Gaviño Ambriz warned the capital’s Legislative Assembly against criminalizing the district's residents.
Gaviño noted that it was important to “have a clear understanding” of the district’s dichotomy: on the one hand, it reaps economic benefit from its commercial activity; and on the other, it is one of areas with lowest incomes in the capital, with families earning between one and three minimum wages [USD$5 to $15 per day], he reported, quoting INEGI [National Institute of Statistics] data. Spanish Original