Government called ‘spectator in a war’
Mexico’s army criticized for only standing between gangs, enforcing turf divisions
AGUILILLA, Mexico — In western Mexico a small squad of soldiers with about a half-dozen trucks and sandbag emplacements stands guard on a rural highway. In one direction, almost within earshot, one drug cartel operates a roadblock extorting farmers. In the other direction, a rival cartel carries out armed patrols in trucks bearing its initials.
The Mexican army has largely stopped fighting drug cartels here, instead ordering soldiers to guard the dividing lines between gang territories so they won’t invade each other’s turf — and turn a blind eye to the cartels’ illegal activities just a few hundred yards away.
At the first roadblock, set up by the Viagras gang that has long dominated the state of Michoacan, a truck stands parked across the highway and stacked sandbags protect cartel gunmen.
Every few hours, the gunmen roll back the truck to allow farmers through, but they interrogate each passing driver about how many crates of limes — the area’s most valuable product — or heads of cattle are being transported to market. The answers are written down in a book.
Local farmers say the Viagras are charging about $150 for each truckload of limes. They weigh and charge separately for each head of cattle. Further north, avocado growers are subject to similar protection payments on every box of fruit they ship.
“Be careful about what you publish,” the leader of the Viagras roadblock told journalists passing through. “I can monitor you on Facebook, and I’ll find you.”
About 2 miles down the same road, one formally enters another cartel’s territory, marked by squads of armed men and pickups and primitive homemade armored trucks bearing the letters “CJNG,” Spanish initials for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
Between them stand the soldiers, doing very little at all.
The cartel based in Jalisco state is invading neighboring Michoacan, causing thousands of farmers to flee, with some seeking asylum in the United States. While journalists could see few open threats in Jalisco’s newly taken town of Aguililla, Michoacan, local residents report Jalisco gunmen have abducted, and probably killed, youths they suspect of working for rival gangs.
Mexican Defense Secretary Gen. Luis Cresencio Sandoval has publicly said the soldiers are here to stop the Jalisco cartel’s incursions into Michoacan.
“We managed to make one of the cartels, the Jalisco, retreat to the border line of Jalisco,” Cresencio Sandoval said in October. The federal and state governments did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the strategy.
Michoacan’s seaport of Lazaro Cardenas is valued by the cartels as an entry point for precursor chemicals from China used to make methamphetamine and fentanyl. Its avocado orchards and iron ore mines are also a prime target for extortion by the Viagras, a gang that got its name from its founders’ liberal use of hair gel.
Jalisco’s leader, Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera, wants to take over all of this, as well as regain control of his hometown; he was born in the Michoacan hamlet of Chila.
Security analyst Alejandro Hope says the government’s strategy is clearly “some sort of pact of non-aggression.”
“There is something like an increasingly explicit attempt to administer the conflict,” Hope said. “They (soldiers) are not there to disarm the two sides, but rather to prevent the conflict from spreading. The problem is that we don’t know where the army draws the line, what they are willing to accept.”
Just how passive has the army become, and how much abuse will it take? In the mountain township of Aguililla, now dominated by Jalisco, almost 200 soldiers have been barricaded into their command post by angry residents for four months.
The army has been flying in food for the troops by helicopter since townspeople used a grader and a bulldozer to block both entrances to the army barracks in late June. It is part of an increasing trend in Mexico: Soldiers have been taken hostage by townspeople because they know troops won’t even defend themselves under President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s policy of “hugs, not bullets.”
Aguililla residents say they won’t let the soldiers out of their barracks until the army does its job of clearing the Viagra roadblocks that make things like medical care, food, fuel, electrical or telephone repairs impossible or expensive to get. Some residents have died because ambulances are either blocked or delayed at the roadblock.
“There is something like an increasingly explicit attempt to administer the conflict. They (soldiers) are not there to disarm the two sides, but rather to prevent the conflict from spreading. The problem is that we don’t know where the army draws the line, what they are willing to accept.” — Alejandro Hope, security analyst