A horrible situation
On 6 November Juan Miguel Alcántara Soría, the executive secretary of the Sistema Nacional de Seguridad, issued a warning that the country's drug gangs would unleash another wave of killing after marines killed Antonio Ezequiel Cárdenas Guillén, one of the leaders of the Golfo gang.
Cárdenas Guillén's death on 5 November was important enough for President Barack Obama of the US to phone up and congratulate President Calderón. More ominously, the US State Department also issued instructions to staff at its consulate in Hermosillo on 7 November to be even more careful about travelling in the western Mexican states of Sinaloa and Sonora.
Cárdenas Guillén took over as a co-head of the Golfo gang, which operates predominantly on the Caribbean side of the country, when his brother, Osiel, was extradited to the US in January 2007. Osiel was convicted in Houston, Texas, in January this year and sentenced to 25 years in prison with no parole after a virtually secret trial held under heavy security conditions with elaborate protection for witnesses and prosecutors.
The US authorities have given the impression that Osiel has cooperated with them: some academics in Mexico trace the upswing in violence in Tamaulipas to his trial and conviction. These academics suggest that either Osiel provided the US with information about Los Zetas, or Los Zetas believe he did. Los Zetas used to work as killers for the Golfo gang but have, since Osiel's extradition, increasingly fought the Golfo gang. This year Los Zetas have unleashed a series of punitive expeditions against the Golfo gang, which has forced counterattacks from the latter.
On 6 November, gangsters seized buses and lorries and used them to block roads in Reynosa, on the border with the US. Reynosa is one of the bastions of the Golfo gang. Cárdenas Guillén, known as 'Tony Tormenta', was killed in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, after a six hour chase across the city in which at least two marines and four of the gangster's bodyguards (known as the scorpions) were also killed. A statement from Rear Admiral José Luis Vergara suggested that the marines cornered Cárdenas Guillén and then managed to fend off a three hour attempt by the Golfo gang to free him. The admiral said that 600 marines were involved in the operation.
Cárdenas Guillén is the fourth top-ranking gangster to have been either killed or captured in the past 12 months. Most of these coups have been marine operations, underlining the perception that the marines remain relatively uncorrupted by the gangs. The government appears to believe that the police and the army are less reliable.
The government's trumpeting of its record in taking out senior gangsters suggests that it has reverted to the despised policy of President Vicente Fox (2000-2006) of decapitating gangs. Calderón had criticised the Fox policy of allowing gangs to control tracts of Mexico. Calderón had said that his policy would be to recover these areas from the gangs.
The big fear along the Caribbean coast is that the death of Cárdenas Guillén will lead to an upswing in violence as the Golfo gang's main local rivals, Los Zetas, try to exploit the lack of leadership at the top of the Golfos. Alcántara Soría said that the government's view now is that Los Zetas will end up in control of the Golfo gang's smuggling routes and business. Los Zetas are already the second-most-powerful gang in the country behind the more amorphous Sinaloa gang.
Alcántara Soria argued that it would be absurd to suggest a date for when the levels of drug killing might start to fall in Mexico but he insisted that this would happen in the “medium term". This year (to 19 November) at least 10,514 people have been killed by gangsters. In the whole of 2009, 6,587 were. The death toll for the whole of 2006 was 2,119: President Calderón began his presidency on 1 December of that year.
- Beltrán Leyva