Translated by Amanda Coe
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." - Isaac Asimov
Once again, Mexico went through a violent weekend. On Saturday July 18th, eleven men were killed and five others wounded in an armed confrontation in San Dimas, Durango. [initial reports say they were mostly miners on a bus, possibly mistaken by one cartel to be members of another] In [Ostula, a village in the municipality of] Aquila, Michoacan, a self-defense group creating a road blockade to protest the arrest of their leader, Semeí Verdía Zepeda, was allegedly attacked by federal or military police or military, killing a 12-year-old boy and wounding several more people, including a 6-year-old girl. In Zacatecas, this weekend also produced the bodies of seven people with signs of torture and a coup de grace. According to relatives, these were day workers who were kidnapped a few days ago by the military.
Official statistics indicate that there has been a decrease of violence in Mexico. Yesterday, the INEGI [National Institute of Statistics and Geography] released its annual report on first degree murder. In 2011, according to the institute, they noted the highest record to date, with 27,213 deaths, or 24 per 100,000 inhabitants. However, in 2014, after a gradual decline, they recorded 19,669 deaths, or 16 per 100,000 inhabitants. This equated to a decrease of 27.7 percent.
I don’t know if these figures are accurate. Some claim that authorities have classified more and more homicides as manslaughter rather than first degree murder, to reduce the numbers. Clearly, these statistics helped instill the idea that violent times are behind us.
This, however, is a pig-headed notion. Cases like those in Tlatlaya on June 30, 2014 [soldiers executed supposed criminals who had surrendered], and in Iguala on the nights of September 26th and 27th [killing of three and disappearance of forty-three Ayotzinapa normal school students] reminded both Mexicans and foreigners that abuses from the authorities and drug-related violence have not disappeared.
This was further enforced by: the battle in La Ruana, Michoacán on December 16, 2014, where two groups of self-defense forces, those of Hipólito Mora and of Antonio Torres González (The American), exchanged gun fire, leaving eleven dead, including Manuel, Hipólito’s son; the attack in May 2015 by a group of dozens of alleged community police in Chilapa, Guerrero, where they took the municipal presidency offices and control of the town without having any authority and a week later they retreated, but not before kidnapping several people; and once again by the second escape of El Chapo Guzmán from the Altiplano prison, proving that organized crime has the power to corrupt anyone.
The Aquila case is indicative of the government's mistakes. According to Germán Ramírez Sánchez, representative of the Ostula community police, Semeí’s self-defense group, created under the system of uses and customs [legal term denoting indigenous customary law], was armed by federal authorities. Yet, those authorities later arrested Semeí for carrying a weapon.
Legalizing self-defenses has done nothing more than multiply the number of armed groups in Guerrero and Michoacan. Supposedly, some groups are made up of people with good intentions, but others are made up of the same old criminals, only now they are protected by the authorities. The army or police cannot be justified in shooting Semeí’s group, but those who were blockading the highway were acting against society.
It is possible that the number of murders is falling. But everyday information reminds us that violence from the war on drugs remains epidemic. Aquila, San Dimas, and Zacatecas are the latest installments of an endless nightmare.
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*Sergio Sarmiento is a daily columnist for Reforma. His perspective is generally conservative. He opposes the War on Drugs for being a failure. See his column, The Real Fault Is Drug Prohibition