Mexico & Nafta - March 2008 (ISSN 1741-444X)

A bomb exploded in an upmarket part of Mexico City on the Avenida Chapultepec at around 2.30pm on the afternoon of 15 February. The only person killed by the explosion was Juan Manuel Meza Campos, 44, who was carrying the bomb. The Mexico City police are confident that Meza Campos (alias El Pipen) was targeting a senior official at the city's department for public security, which stands only 100 metres from where the bomb went off, and that the plot was hatched by gangsters, probably from the Sinaloa gang.

The investigation should start to make progress when the authorities follow up what Tania Vázquez Muñoz has to say. She was shown in CCTV footage, from a camera at a private university, walking and talking animatedly to Meza Campos on the Avenida Chapultepec, hours before the bomb went off. She then got into a car with him and drove off. The pair retuned on foot with the bomb. Vázquez Muñoz was close to Meza Campos when the bomb exploded and as a result she was badly burnt.

Originally the police had thought that there was no CCTV footage because the Mexico City security cameras at that point on the Avenida Chapultepec focus on the traffic. It is worth noting that the head of the private University de las Américas (which owned the cameras) is Alejandro Gertz Manero, who was previously head of both the federal and Mexico City's departments of public security.

The university CCTV footage not only showed the link between Meza Campos and Vázquez Muñoz but also delivered the registration number of the vehicle they used. It is not clear, however, that the licence plate was registered to the car to which it was attached.

The CCTV footage, released by the authorities on 18 February, strongly suggests that Vázquez Muñoz was an accomplice. Contrary to the government's initial assertions, the evidence is also beginning to suggest that the attack did have links to organised crime.

On 19 February investigators concluded that the target for the bomb was a senior anti-drugs policeman, Luis Rosales Gamboa, the deputy head of public security in the Mexico City government. This conclusion reinforces the hypothesis that the Sinaloa gang was behind the attack. The Sinaloa gang has been recently trying to move into Mexico City but has been checked by a series of successful police raids, for which Rosales Gamboa was responsible.

The idea that Rosales Gamboa was the target of the bomb - which went off about 100 metres from his office - comes from the Procuradurí­a for Mexico City. On 18 February the procurador, Rodolfo Félix, had said that an official in the Seguridad Pública del Distrito Federal (SSP-DF) was the target but had declined to identify him.

Some Mexico City policemen believe that Vázquez had been recruited by the Sinaloa gang to carry out the attack. The main reason for their belief is circumstantial: she was supposed to live in Tepito, a virtual no-go area for Mexico City policemen close to where Rogelio Mena Ruiz, one of the Sinaloa gangsters, was arrested on 15 February with a heavy, high-rate-of-fire machine gun. Vázquez also has links to a small-time drug peddler, Hugo Aldace, who got his supplies from the Sinaloa gang.

Vázquez's home has been searched twice by the police. This suggests that her status has moved from witness to suspect. Vázquez still denies that she knew the bomber, though eyewitnesses say that when she was being taken to hospital she asked repeatedly how the man was. It is not clear whether she used his name.

Further police research on the bomb also suggests that it was more sophisticated than the police originally thought. Leaks of forensic reports claim that the bomb was partly C-4 and partly pentaerythritol tetranitrate, which is frequently used by the Basque terrorist group, ETA. The forensic team points out the CCTV pictures of the explosion show little smoke, which suggests that gunpowder barely featured in the explosive mix.

Initially, the police had said that the bomb was homemade, and had been set off by a cellular telephone call. It is not clear whether the bomb was set off deliberately or by accident.

The bomb has already had a political impact. Mexico City is run by a mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, from the leftwing Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD). Ebrard is prominent in the PRD faction which refuses to accept that Andrés Manuel López Obrador was defeated by Felipe Calderón in the 2006 presidential election. Ebrard has refused to have much to do with Calderón and the federal government, arguing that Calderón is an illegitimate president.

As a result of the bomb, however, the Mexico City authorities are cooperating closely with the federal police. On 16 February Ebrard and Noé Mandujano, the head of the federal government's organised crime unit, held an unprecedented joint press conference. At the operational level, Joel Ortega, Ebrard's head of public security, and Genaro Garcí­a Luna, his federal counterpart, also appear to have established a decent working relationship.

Identifying Meza Campos took a couple of days. One of his hands and one of his legs, as well as most of his stomach, were blown away by the explosion. He was formally identified by his brother on 18 February. The brother said that he had not seen him for six years.

Gangsters grabbed

On 13 February Mexico City police arrested seven gangsters who were carrying what the police described as a rotary canon. This is an anti-aircraft machine gun which has an extremely fast rate of fire. The gangsters belong to the Sinaloa gang, which has been trying to move into Mexico City.

What is worrying is the power of the weapons the gangsters have. According to the police, the rotary canon had a heat-seeking sight and its bullets can penetrate steel and concrete. According to the police, the two cars carrying the gangsters were stopped because they were being driven strangely, with strobe lights inside them. Police claim that the gangsters were hired by Rogelio Mena Ruiz, their apparent leader, for a particular operation. It is not clear what the operation was.

The federal authorities are clearly worried about the gangsters' capabilities. On 11 February they cancelled a plan to move Sandra Avila, a senior gangster, from Santa Martha prison to the more secure Reclusorio Norte, fearing that the Sinaloa gang may have been planning to free her.

• Gangsters offer truce

Mexico's Second Military Region, which covers Baja California (Norte and Sur) and Sonora, states through which a lot of drugs are shipped, said that senior officers had been approached by gangsters offering a sort of truce: the gangs would stop attacking soldiers and police stations if the authorities stopped trying to arrest gang leaders. The region's commander, Lieutenant General Sergio Aponte Polito, rejected the overtures which were made at the end of January and repeated at the beginning of February.