Train robberies add to country's economic woes

Head southeast from Mexico City for about four hours and you will come upon Acultzingo, an impoverished, dusty town nestled against the rugged peaks of the Sierra Madre. Most inhabitants work the land for a living, growing corn and avocados and raising cattle and pigs.

They also rob trains. Lots of trains. So many, in fact, that Acultzingo (pronounced ah-coolt-ZEEN-go) is the train robbery capital of not only Mexico but arguably the world.

Over the past year alone, 521 crimes were commit- ted against cargo trains in the town. And a chunk of

those incidents bore no resemblance to the run-of- the-mill petty crime seen in the bigger cities of northern Mexico — vandalizing a train car or stealing railway

signs. These were massive, choreographed affairs that often started with a low-tech

trick that dates to the days of the Wild West — piling rocks up high on the tracks — and involved small armies of thieves who descended on the derailed cars in waves to cart off the loot.

They’ve swiped tequila, shoes, toilet paper, tires, whatever they could get their hands on. One particularly violent incident alone, which derailed dozens of train cars a few miles east of Acultz

ingo, saddled the railroad giant GMexico Transportes

with more than $15 million in losses. And at Mazda Motor’s offices in Mexico City, exec- utives got so sick of hearing about how parts were being stripped from their vehi- cles that they started ship- ping some of them through the region by highway. Analysts estimate this tacks 30 percent on their transporta-

tion costs. (Mazda declined to provide figures.)

Security forces are so overwhelmed by the sheer number of attackers that a sense of impunity prevails in the area, said political-risk ana- lyst Alejandro Schtulmann, who heads Mexico City-based

consultancy EMPRA: “The problem is getting worse all the time.”

The extreme lawlessness has led some Mexico observers to wonder whether the country is something of a failed state struggling to rule over the entirety of its territory. Homicides are at a record high, and kidnap- pings are on the rise. Reining this crime in, at least some- what, will soon be the task of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the populist leader who rolled to a landslide election victory this month in part on his pledge to restore law and order.

But the train-heist boom underscores just how tricky this assignment will be. The phenomenon really took off only recently, after federal authorities managed to crack down on another crime wave — in the fuel market — in the same area. As soon as some of the huachicole- ros, as the gangs are known, were driven out of the stolen-fuel business, they shifted into train robbery, giving the whole thing a certain whacka-mole feel.

“We saw a mutation in organized crime,” says Benjamin Aleman, head of the country’s railway regulator.

It can be a bit surprising to hear that professional train robbers still roam the Earth. Their heyday, of course, was the 19th century, when the likes of Jesse James and Butch Cassidy were marauding their way across the Amer- ican West. A few decades later, the young caudillo Dor- oteo Arango — better known as Pancho Villa — terrorized railroad engineers on the other side of the Rio Grande.

The robberies largely faded into lore as trains got faster and harder to raid. Nowadays it’s difficult to even track down the heist data in much of the world. But of those countries where it’s available, Mexico reports the most, according to Sensitech, a subsidiary of United Technologies that monitors supply-chain logistics.

The outbreak is concentrated in southeastern Mexico — in Veracruz, where Acultzingo is located, and in the neighboring state of Puebla. All the ingredients are there: Poverty is rampant, the mountains pro

vide natural cover, and a steady supply of cargo earmarked for export rumbles right through the heart of the region en route to the nearby port in Veracruz.

When gangs aren’t stacking up rocks on the tracks, they’re derailing the trains by sabotaging the brakes — a technique that can cause even more grisly car pileups and injuries. They’ve also started inviting the townspeople to partake in

the spoils. This both earns their loyalty, experts say, and gains the bandits an added layer of protection against police officers and soldiers tempted to open fire.

Grainy video images taken by local media depict the same scene playing out over and over again: dozens of people storming a derailed train like a colony of ants while outnumbered officers look on helplessly.

It’s easy to persuade locals to join in, Schtulmann said. Like the people who took up arms against the military in neighboring Chiapas state two decades earlier, many of them feel neglected by the politicians back in Mex

ico City.