Mexican president leading the battle against organised crime
SANTA ROSA DE LIMA: Burnedout cars littered empty streets this week in the town where Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador unleashed a first major push to take control of territory absorbed by organised crime during years of mounting violence.
The central town of Santa Rosa de Lima, a few miles east of Salamanca, home to one of the nation’s main oil refineries, is close to a centre of the nation’s auto industry.
It is also a microcosm of the lawlessness permeating swathes of Mexico where cartels have for years replaced the state as benefactors, providing jobs and handouts in return for residents’ loyalty.
Lopez Obrador said he was winning the battle for hearts and minds against a gang of fuel thieves in Santa Rosa.
‘‘If you need work because of a lack of job opportunities, if you need welfare support, you can depend on us,’’ he said.
‘‘We’re the ones who offer you this,’’ he told reporters earlier this week.
But in the grimy settlement of some 2800 people where authorities say the eponymous Santa Rosa de Lima gang paid residents to obstruct marines and federal police with blockades and burning vehicles and by informing on their movements, some were less certain the Government had the upper hand.
‘‘It’s very hard for people to change,’’ said Pedro Mendez (52), who sells household goods in the town, where heavily armed police patrolled and government helicopters circled overhead. ‘‘The bad guys know how to get to them and that there are people who’ll take money to do their bidding.’’
Others accused security forces of damaging private property and breaking car windows in the raids, while denying they were in cahoots with the gangs.
Lopez Obrador said yesterday there have been no deaths in the clashes.
Guanajuato’s governor, Diego Sinhue, estimated about 300 people helped set fire to vehicles, although he defended the town against its infamy as a crime hotbed.
The effort to capture gang leader Jose Antonio Yepez, known as ‘‘El Marro’’, or ‘‘The Mallet’’, and blamed for stealing vast quantities of fuel from the Salamanca refinery, is also a test of the Government’s ability to end organised crime’s growing threat to legitimate businesses and ordinary citizens.
Yepez has so far evaded detention, though federal forces arrested his sisterinlaw, alleged to be his finance chief, along with six others, a security official said. Authorities said they raided his sprawling house near the town.
Fuel theft costing billions of dollars a year, along with dwindling output, has weighed heavily on state oil firm Pemex, threatening to damage the Government’s creditworthiness.
This week, ratings agency Moody’s warned that ‘‘increasing insecurity, robbery and travel warnings hurt Mexican companies’ top lines.’’
Santa Rosa lies in Guanajuato state, part of the country’s industrial heartland that was long peaceful and is a major magnet for carmakers such as Volkswagen, General Motors and Toyota, but it suffered a doubling of murders last year, making it one of the most violent regions, official data shows.
Eduardo Solis, head of Mexico’s automotive industry lobby, said on Thursday the situation in Guanajuato was threatening business and had the look of a ‘‘crisis.’’
Security has sharply deterior ated in the gangland struggle to control fuel rackets, and at 2609 last year, murders in Guanajuato were over 10 times higher than a decade earlier, official data shows.
Hundreds of police and armed forces arrived in Santa Rosa on Monday to restore order.
By Thursday, the president was saying Santa Rosa had begun to reject the gang’s largesse, which locals said they heard included payments of 1000 pesos ($NZ75) or more. The burning blockades and protests vanished on Thursday.
Though reluctant to speak of fuel theft, several residents said they had seen El Marro and that the town was peaceful until ‘‘outsiders’’ began to arrive a few years ago.
‘‘I’m afraid to go out. If I leave the house something could happen to me because I can see the Government’s angry,’’ said Estela Mendoza, a 44yearold grandmother, speaking through a hatch in the door of the modest house she shares with her family and which she said she had not left since Monday. — Reuters