Mexico & Nafta - December 2006 (ISSN 1741-444X)

November was a ghastly month for violence in Mexico. It opened with bombs exploding in three locations in Mexico City on 6 November, was followed by an ambush which killed six policemen in Michoacán and took in a bloody prison riot which left five people dead. In addition, drug gangs continued to pick off their enemies, police chiefs and occasionally, local politicians.  

The president-elect, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, admitted on 16 November, before the prison riot, that current levels of violence in Mexico were "alarming". The current attorney general, Daniel Cabeza de Vaca, said that the country was "on a crest, a peak of violence". Calderón promised to take measures to impose peace when he takes office on 1 December.

What he can do to make an immediate difference is far from clear. The obvious option is to reverse President Vicente Fox's decision to ease the army out of anti-drug operations and once again deploy the army against the drugs gangs. The arguments for doing this are persuasive. The drug gangs are, invariably, better equipped than the police and the two main gangs, the Cartel del Golfo and the Cartel de Sinaloa, both employ former soldiers to do their dirty work. The main argument against deploying the army is the temptation it puts in the way of soldiers. President Ernesto Zedillo (1994 to 2000) said that his worst day in office was when he realised that General Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, Mexico's top anti-narcotics officer, was in the pay of a major drug-trafficking gang, the Cartel de Juárez. Gutiérrez Rebollo was arrested in February 1997.  

Longer term, Calderón seems certain to try to reorganise the country's various police forces. President Vicente Fox has done a bit of this, especially in his México Seguro plan of 2004, which replaced the worst state police forces first with federal police and then with fresh state policemen. Fox's problem is that his core federal police force, the Policia Federal Preventiva (created by Zedillo), which has a lot of former soldiers in it, is prone to outbreaks of ill-disciplined violence, most notably when suppressing protests in Atenco, the Estado de México in May this year. An investigation by the Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos accused 67 of the 628 PFP policemen in the operation of human rights abuses. To be fair, the 4,500 PFP men who restored order in Oaxaca on 29 October, maintained their discipline despite facing petrol bombs, stones and lumps of wood as they marched into the centre of the city.  

Calderón seemed genuinely upset by the current wave of violence. Almost all of the violence is part of the vicious war between drug gangs. President Fox's policy of going after drug barons does not seem to have halted the flow of drugs across Mexico and into the US but it has increased the drug-related violence in Mexico. Decapitated gangs fight between themselves, or with other gangs, for control of the lucrative drug trade. Increasingly, the gangs are picking off anyone who stands up to them or crosses them.  

The worry for the authorities is that the seething criminal violence may turn into violent political unrest. This has not happened, so far. The five-month confrontation between the state government of Oaxaca and the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO) only flared into sporadic violence: the arrival of the PFP on 29 October appears to have dampened down the problem, though the increasingly truculent behaviour of the governor, Ulises Ruiz, means that more violence could erupt at any time. On 26 November, Ruiz managed to walk the streets of central Oaxaca for the first time since the protests against him started in May. Simultaneously, the house of a prominent APPO leader was torched.

Bombs

The bombs which exploded on 6 November appear to be the work of old, rather than new, guerrilla groups. This is what the Procuradurí­a General de la República (PGR) concluded on 8 November, despite the fact that five new guerrilla groups had claimed responsibility for the bombs that went off in three different places in Mexico City. The PGR's conclusion, however, does point to a change in tactics by the known guerrilla groups, the Ejército Popular Revolucionario (EPR) and the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo Insurgente (ERPI). The security minister, Eduardo Medina-Mora, also argues that as the bombs exploded soon after midnight and were clearly designed to damage property rather than to kill, they were not the work of terrorists.

The country's two most prominent guerrilla groups, the EPR and the ERPI, have been around for at least 10 years. They have operated mostly in the south of the country, particularly in Guerrero, which was the bloodiest battleground in Mexico's Dirty War in the 1970s and 1980s. What neither group had managed to achieve, until 6 November, was to set off bombs simultaneously in Mexico City. According to the Mexico City security chief, Joel Ortega, the bombs were set off by timers.

The bombs in Mexico City were followed by explosions and alerts across the country. Bombs went off in Ixtapa, Guerrero on 7 November, just before a visit by the President-elect, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa. On 8 November, explosives were found in Celaya, Guanajuato. Some security experts suggest that a team of at least 20 was needed to place the bombs that went off in Mexico City. The other bombs suggest that the guerrillas' "reloading capacity" has increased dramatically. Previously the EPR and the ERPI would go months, if not years, between attacks.  

The guerrilla group that claimed responsibility for the 6 November bombs claimed that it had in fact placed eight bombs: two at the headquarters of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional; two at the Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación and another two at a branch of Scotiabank ( which was completely destroyed). One bomb failed to go off at a Sanborns and another failed to go off at a different Scotiabank branch.  

The group which claimed responsibility, the Coordinación Revolucionaria (CR), said that it would continue with the attacks against institutions and 40 national and multinational companies until Ruiz resigned. The CR said that it was representing five groups: Tendencia Democrática Revolucionaria-Ejército del Pueblo (TDR-EP); Movimiento Revolucionario Lucio Cabañas Barrientos (MRLCB); Organización Insurgente 1 º de Mayo; Brigada de Ajusticiamiento 2 de Diciembre and Brigadas Populares de Liberación (BPL).

The apparent start of a bombing campaign prompted Mexican politicians to criticise the government. Congressmen claim that there have been failings by the intelligence services. To underline their unhappiness with the government, the two opposition parties, the Partido de la Revolución Democrática and the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, plus their allies, united on 7 November to vote against allowing President Vicente Fox to visit Australia and Vietnam (for the Apec summit). Congress has to approve all presidential foreign trips and usually approval is automatic. The congressional vote is doubly significant because this trip was Fox's last as president.  

The attacks in Mexico City were prefaced by warnings. On 20 October a group of unidentified guerrilla leaders held a press conference 'somewhere in the state of Guerrero', where they ratified their commitment to joint action against "repression in Oaxaca". The government ignored this challenge and sent in 4,500 federal police to restore order in Oaxaca City on 29 October.  

The Michoacán prison riot

Four lawyers and a prisoner in a jail in Michoacán were killed on 18 November as the Agencia Federal de Investigación stormed the jail. Michoacán, home state to the president-elect Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, but run by the leftwing Partido de la Revolución Democrática, has seen a huge increase in its murder rate this year, mostly related to the drug trade.  

The authorities claim that the AFI only went in after the four prisoners, who took 15 lawyers and one guard hostage early on the morning of 17 November, started shooting their remaining hostages. The AFI then stormed into the prison. Two other lawyers were wounded as were four other prisoners. The prisoners took the hostages after they were told, while they were still in the prison-visiting area, that they had been sentenced to 40 years for kidnapping. The hostage takers had a couple of pistols. They released four lawyers and a prison guard at 4pm on 17 November, after a round of negotiations. Another two people were released on the morning of 18 November.