Mexican criminals take fight to president
Capital’s police chief escapes attempt to assassinate him
MEXICO CITY — An assassination attempt on Mexico City’s police chief was just the latest and clearest sign that Mexico’s powerful criminal element is bringing the violence it has unleashed on the general population directly to President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s door.
More than 35,000 Mexicans were murdered last year, the highest number on record and a grave threat to the president’s ambitious agenda.
Police Chief Omar Garcia Harfuch was nearly added to this year’s murder total on Friday when more than two dozen gunmen executed a carefully co-ordinated plan to intercept his armoured vehicle at dawn with grenades, assault rifles and a .50-calibre sniper rifle on the capital’s grand boulevard. Garcia survived with three bullet wounds and within hours blamed the Jalisco New Generation Cartel for the attempt that killed two of his bodyguards and a bystander.
It came less than two weeks after a federal judge and his wife were gunned down in their home in the western state of Colima. The Jalisco gang is also suspected in that attack.
“The cartel declared war on the government of Lopez Obrador,” said Samuel Gonzalez, a security analyst and the man who established the Attorney General’s Office special organized crime unit. “He doesn’t have any other option than to go after them,” because otherwise attacks against high-level government officials could continue.
The question is whether Lopez Obrador will accept the declaration of war.
In October, a botched operation to capture a son of Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman in Culiacan, Sinaloa, resulted in the young drug capo’s release after cartel gunmen wreaked havoc on the city. Lopez Obrador said this month that he ordered the release to avoid more bloodshed.
At the time, Lopez Obrador pushed aside criticism that it was a sign of weakness that organized crime would continue to exploit. The president responded that his government will not be forced into a drug war.
“This is pacifying the country by convincing, persuading without violence, offering well-being, alternative options, better living conditions, working conditions, strengthening values,” he said then. He asked for one more year to “completely change this.”
On June 17, Raul Rodriguez a columnist for El Universal, one of Mexico’s largest newspapers, wrote in a column that Mexican intelligence had intercepted a conversation between Jalisco gang operators in which it was clear they were planning to hit a major target in the city.
Rodriguez wrote that two unnamed security officials had confirmed the information and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had confirmed the authenticity of the conversation. No names were mentioned, but analysts determined that the four potential targets were three members of Lopez Obrador’s cabinet and Garcia.
“It’s the way the mafiosos communicate with governments to tell them: ‘You touch me and we’re going to kill your most important officials,’ ” said Edgardo Buscaglia, an organized crime expert at Columbia University.
“When this happens, organized crime understands that the government is taking measures that are going to hurt its business and they begin to kill members of the political elite.”
This month, Santiago Nieto, the head of Mexico’s Financial Intelligence Unit, announced that, in collaboration with the DEA, the unit was freezing nearly 2,000 accounts believed to be used by the Jalisco gang. Nieto was mentioned as one of the potential cabinet-level targets of the cartel this month. There are also nearly a dozen pending extraditions of Jalisco gang associates, Buscaglia said.
The administration should continue to pressure the cartel while increasing security to protect its political elite, starting with Lopez Obrador who continues to fly commercial and travel with little security, he said.
On Saturday, Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum shared a photo with Garcia smiling from his hospital bed and said he was doing well and had “more energy than ever.” She praised Mexico City’s police for a rapid response that likely saved his life.
Since the attack, authorities had made 19 arrests in the case, she said, including the alleged mastermind of the plot.