Mexico & Nafta - 7 December 2004

Two detectives were lynched on 23 November in San Juan Ixtayopan, just to the south of Mexico City, and inside the Distrito Federal. The policemen, from the Policia Federal Preventiva, which is supposed to anticipate crime, were killed by locals. 

Eyewitnesses said that three policemen were surrounded after they had been taking photographs of children outside a school. All three were beaten up, and then two, Ví­ctor Mireles and Cristóbal Bonilla, were set on fire. It is not clear whether they were burnt alive. A third detective, Edgar Moreno, was rescued, eventually, though he is badly hurt. A week after the attack he was still in intensive care with acute liver failure. 

Adding to the horror was the fact that a TV crew filmed all this while no one in authority did anything to rescue the policemen. The crew even recorded the dead men's last words when they had been beaten up but had not yet lost consciousness. The pictures were first broadcast on TV Azteca and then on the main national broadcaster, Televisa. Both stations said that they did not show the most gruesome pictures they received, but what they did show was dramatic enough to provoke a national outcry. 

The local police chief said that the three policemen were mistaken for kidnappers. The municipality of Tláhuac, in which 40,000 people live, has been blighted by kidnappings. The overreaction by the locals is a result, the police say, of the high crime levels in the region. It seems that the detectives had received a vague tip-off, either about a drug deal or a kidnapping, which was about to take place and had gone into San Juan Ixtayopan. There is, therefore, the possibility that the policemen were deliberately lured to their deaths. Technically, the PFP should not involve itself with drug deals, but pass on the information to the Agencia Federal de Investigaciones. 

There are also claims, so far unconfirmed, that the detectives, who worked for the federal police could not trust the local police because this force was in league with drug traffickers. One local policeman has been arrested after he was found with one of the lynched policemen's pistols. Another local policeman has also been arrested but it is far from clear why. He claims that he was just going home when he was arrested. 

The local police commissioner, Admiral José Luis Figueroa Cuevas, who was only appointed to the post in October, said that he could not send men in to rescue the two policemen who were set on fire because he feared that he would lose more men. San Juan Ixtayopan (some dictionaries spell it with an accent, Ixtayopán) is just 60km from the centre of Mexico City.

No one to blame
So far no one in authority has resigned and taken responsibility for the systemic failure to rescue the policemen before they were killed. Eventually someone sent riot policemen, some from the specially-trained rapid-reaction group, who rescued Moreno. 

There are calls for the dismissal of the federal law and order chief, Ramón Martí­n Huerta. President Fox is likely to need some persuading before dropping him: he is one of Fox's closest supporters and served Fox as his law and order chief when he was governor of Guanajuato. Martí­n Huerta also served out the fag-end of Fox's term as governor when Fox went off to prepare for the presidential election in 1999. 

The other senior official whose job is on the line is Marcelo Ebrard, the law and order chief in Mexico City. Ebrard was the president's choice for the job: the president and the interior minister, rather than the mayor of Mexico City, are responsible for appointing the senior law enforcement officer there. The mayor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had wanted Francisco Garduño, but he was vetoed by the federal government. 

Ebrard, although he does not belong to López Obrador's Partido de la Revolución Democratica (PRD), is one of the favourites to succeed López Obrador as mayor in 2006.

Another issue is the low morale in the Policia Federal Preventiva. This police force has become dispirited, partly because all its commanders come from the Navy. The inability of junior officers to take decisions, and send reinforcements, probably cost the two detectives their lives. 

Implications
As the murders technically occurred in the mayor of Mexico City's territory, the senate is likely to summon the mayor, López Obrador, to testify. The senate, which is dominated by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) also wants Ramón Martí­n Huerta and the head of the Policia Federal Preventiva, Admiral Figueroa, to explain why the authorities responded so sluggishly. 

The PRI is clearly trying to make political capital out of the murders. It said that the mayor had failed in his duty to uphold law and order. A PRI senator, David Jiménez said that López Obrador should stop spouting on about his economic plans for the country, and focus on the problems Mexico City faces. In particular, Jiménez said, the mayor must look at the way the police force operates, the level of corruption and why nobody seems to take responsibility for rising crime levels.

Some leftwing politicians tried to defend the lynchings by claiming that they were in accordance with Indian uses and customs. This argument was dismissed by a leading senator, Diego Fernández de Cevallos, who said that such people were trying to justify barbarism. One consequence of the televising and barbarity of the lynchings is likely to be that sympathy for Indian usages and customs will diminish. Another consequence is that the authorities will prosecute the perpetrators of future lynchings more vigorously: previously the authorities more or less ignored lynchings on the grounds that all the witnesses were tainted because they shared the common purpose of the executioners. 

CANCUN: The bodies of nine people, three of them officers from the Agencia Federal de Investigaciones, were found in Cancún airport on 25 November. The bodies were found in two different places but all are thought by police to be part of a score-settling between drug gangs. Five men, including the three AFI agents, had been shot in the head. The other four bodies were found in a vehicle: their identities have yet to be established because they were burnt. The drug war in the resort seems to have moved up a gear: on 22 November three other bodies were found on the main road to Mérida. The police said that they were victims of a gangland execution. The three AFI agents were probably killed by the Cártel de Juárez, police sources said. The AFI commander for the region, Armando Alfredo Villalobos, said that he was also worried about the whereabouts of two of his other agents.

AFI: The final full week of November was a grim one for the AFI. Besides losing three dead in Cancún, the service also lost another two agents in Metlapil, just outside Acapulco, Guerrero and another in Celaya, Guanajuato. 

MARA: Another law and order problem is the Mara Salvatrucha, which is spreading into southern Mexico from Central America. On 25 November there was a major police operation in border town of Tapachula, Chiapas, which led to the arrest of 60 Mara gangsters.